Knights of the Chalice - Steam Release: August 23

Knights of the Chalice will be released on Steam on August 23:

Knights of the Chalice

Knights of the Chalice is a 2D RPG with turn-based combat for Windows. The game uses the OGL 3.5, the set of rules at the root of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, a role-playing game from Wizards of the Coast. Create a party of four adventurers, explore the Crimson Coast of Mindrel and fight valiantly against the evil Council of the Slaver Lords, domineering Giants, fiendish Demons and scheming Dragons.

• Turn-based, party-based tactical combat similar to that found in the old Dark Sun Shattered Lands game made by SSI and in Troika's Temple of Elemental Evil.
• User-friendly interface. Launch a charge, full-attack or coup-de-grace with a single click - the computer will automatically look for the best option available.
• Well-developed artificial intelligence. Enemies act as a group and use special actions like Grapple or Charge and tactics like taking a five-foot step before casting Maximised Fireball.
• Omnipresent help files and clear in-game feedback (a feature also found in Temple of Elemental Evil) on the results of each dice roll, saving throw, attack roll, modifiers, etc.
• 175 magic spells, most of which were taken from, or inspired by, Wizard of the Coast's open game content. The list of spells is available from the developer's website.
• Craft your own weapons and apply enchantments like Wounding, Speed, Flaming Burst and Keen. The lists of weapon enchantments and feats are in the developer's website.
• Multiple-choice dialogue allowing you to resolve situations in unexpected ways.
• A large campaign largely inspired by the classic Dungeons & Dragons modules Scourge of the Slave Lords and Against the Giants.
• Enjoy collecting 100 Steam achievements designed to challenge the best tacticians.

Free Demo/Tutorial: this is a unique adventure.

A haunted forest. Strange ruins. The villagers call this place "Devil's Lair". The ruins may be dead, so they say, but the sinister, malevolent creatures that lurk underneath most certainly are not.

Tightening your packs, you reflect upon this. The devil's lair, Hah! How could any self-respecting adventurer shy away from the golden opportunity? In this short adventure, the player characters are pre-created and start at level 3.

For more information, please visit the developer's website. Thank you for reading!

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More information.

Finally

Well hey, maybe the game will become better known now, and we might actually see a proper walk-through. Maybe. It should be interesting to see what sort of Steam comments it gets.

Nice.

EDIT: The demo pops up in Steam's search, but just takes you to the KotC page...until the release date, I imagine.

I'm confused; isn't this an old game ?

you said:

I'm confused; isn't this an old game ?

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Yes - but it was never released on Steam.

Damn. If KotC2 just looked as good as 1, I'd be really excited.

What, you don't like windows icons representing everything? It will port to phones so easily though.

Great game. I'm happy to get the Steam version to support the dev, and I'm due another playthrough anyway. I went with two fighters, a cleric and a mage last time, but I hear it's fun to have two mages so I might try that next. I've never played the demo area (is that new?) so that's something to look forward to. Happy days!

screeg said:

Damn. If KotC2 just looked as good as 1, I'd be really excited.

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Yeah the graphics in the second one will take some getting used to. I'm not a fan of the tokens either, although I thought they looked better in the videos than when the static screenshots. The movement and spell animations etc gave it a lot more energy than the static screenshots suggested. It's not a deal-breaker for me anyway, I'm still really looking forward to it - especially the editor to create campaigns! News on the Kickstarter seems to have gone quiet recently, presumably because he's been getting the Steam version of KOTC1 ready I guess, but I'm definitely backing it when it launches.

I tried the demo for about 20 minutes - not sure I like it - controls seem very very cumbersome. Need hot keys for spells in combat; or maybe there is a way to stream-line them. Much prefer wiz 8 interface.

I bought this game directly from the developer's website a few years back. No DRM, no hassle. Not entirely sure why people need it to be on Steam before they perform the exact same process to play it? I mean, it's download size is in Megabits not gigabits and takes about 10 seconds either way…

But are there hot-keys for casting spells ? And can keyboard be used to move ? Man many years ago wiz8 got the controls right and today no-one can

lackblogger said:

I bought this game directly from the developer's website a few years back. No DRM, no hassle. Not entirely sure why people need it to be on Steam before they perform the exact same process to play it? I mean, it's download size is in Megabits not gigabits and takes about 10 seconds either way…

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Oh, I'm completely the wrong person to ask about that kind of thing. In 20 years of cRPGing I've never used hotkeys. I don't even use the quickbar. Well, I used the quickbar once in one game once and didn't like the experience: more often than not clicking on the box would simply lift the spell out the box rather than register it as clicked, very frustrating. I've always preferred longhand.

Likewise I've always preferred mouse control to keyboard control. The only time I use keyboard controls is when the game doesn't offer a mouse option for an action. For example, by having keyboard movement you will make things like diagonal movement much more complicated. If you're a huge keyboard-only fan then KotC will probably annoy you as it was designed primarily with a mouse in mind. There are some keyboard shortcuts, but I don't think the game is playable without a mouse.

lackblogger said:

Oh, I'm completely the wrong person to ask about that kind of thing. In 20 years of cRPGing I've never used hotkeys. I don't even use the quickbar. Well, I used the quickbar once in one game once and didn't like the experience: more often than not clicking on the box would simply lift the spell out the box rather than register it as clicked, very frustrating. I've always preferred longhand.

Likewise I've always preferred mouse control to keyboard control. The only time I use keyboard controls is when the game doesn't offer a mouse option for an action. For example, by having keyboard movement you will make things like diagonal movement much more complicated. If you're a huge keyboard-only fan then KotC will probably annoy you as it was designed primarily with a mouse in mind. There are some keyboard shortcuts, but I don't think the game is playable without a mouse.

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You haven't RSI yet?

Lol, no. No-one's paying me to play games, I don't do it eight hours a day Monday to Friday

Another point I should have made is that I usually play games where the number of useful spells far outweighs the number of quickslots or possible human memory for keyboard shortcuts for them all.

I never approach a situation in a cRPG with a preset notion of what I'm going to do. Hence, in the early days when I tried out quickslots and hotkeys I usually found myself always going into my spellbook anyway, always just to recap on my options. And a good cRPG shouldn't require you to use the exact same spell routines for every single combat and/or situation, a well designed cRPG will have varied situations that challenge you to try out lots of different spells.

Like, ok, you could put your fireball into a quickslot or hotkey it to F, but then the game will give you a lava dungeon where you wont be using fireball for possibly hours. And, sure, you can then change your quickslots and hotkeys accordingly, but then you're stopping the game to spend 10 to 20 minutes rejigging everything, which is annoying in its own right. So I just stick with the notion that a spell book is a spell book, you get it out to select a spell whenever you need to cast a spell.

The only quickslots I've ever used with any consistency across many games are the ones for potions, mainly of the healing variety.

If you take Divinity: Original Sin, for example, that game forced you to put all your spells in your quickslots, your quickslots were your spellbook. I think I spent just as much time clicking through that, with just as many clicks, as if I had been simply opening my spellbook.

And the addiction to quickslots is inherently reductive by design, in that it will always encourage a reduction of spell quantity and variety. Either that or it will encourage the game designer to add ever more clutter to the UI.

Spellbooks are great because they declutter the UI, they allow for unlimited number and variety of spells and encourage the game designer to create more cerebral challenges that encourage the player to consider each combat separately rather than encourage clicker-style gameplay, and, once you are used to this style of play, the pacing of the game is never interrupted with quickslot and rebinding tetris. All IMO, of course.

lackblogger said:

I bought this game directly from the developer's website a few years back. No DRM, no hassle. Not entirely sure why people need it to be on Steam before they perform the exact same process to play it? I mean, it's download size is in Megabits not gigabits and takes about 10 seconds either way…

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People need it on Steam so more people buy it. Game's webpage is not known by anyone but a few of us.

I've owned this game for years, and I'll buy it again on Steam just to applaud the upgrade. I'm truly happy that it will be available there, and the best way I know how to acknowledge that is to be a repeat customer. And right after I rebuy it, perhaps a new play-through will be in order!

Archangel said:

People need it on Steam so more people buy it. Game's webpage is not known by anyone but a few of us.

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I guess. I'm not really well versed on Steam, at least in the browsing sense, but wouldn't that still require marketing for people to find it amongst the other 20,000 games? In that, the people who know about it will still be our specialist communities anyway.

How does Steam work, does it self promote stuff like this?

lackblogger said:

I guess. I'm not really well versed on Steam, at least in the browsing sense, but wouldn't that still require marketing for people to find it amongst the other 20,000 games? In that, the people who know about it will still be our specialist communities anyway.

How does Steam work, does it self promote stuff like this?

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Steam looks at games you own and games you wishlisted and browsed and suggests similar games. People that like RPGs, or indie games will surely get this one as suggestion sooner or later. And if it gets a kind of reputation from Steam users that it got from us that found his website it could net him a lot of sales over time.

Good games swim to the top of Steam eventually.