Vaporum - Eye of the Beholder fan art

The developers of Vaporum did a fan art video for Eye of the Beholder.

Dungeon Master was a defining game of this type, but many of us have also spent a lot of time playing one of its successors. We could even say that it is the second best known representative of this sub-genre of RPGs. Eye of the Beholder is very close to our gamers’ hearts, and, several decades later, it definitely was one of the strong examples we were drawing inspiration from while creating Vaporum.

Perhaps if it wasn’t for Legend of Grimrock, nobody would even think that this old type of gameplay could work in modern times. But, as Grimrock has proven, and we hope that Vaporum has too, a system based on the legacy of Dungeon Master and the likes works like a charm, even today. So it’s no surprise that while working on Vaporum, we sometimes talked about Eye of the Beholder and its appeal. What could this game look like in this age, with today’s possibilities? Dressed in modern 3D graphics, yet at the same time staying true to its original style?

During the winter holidays, we created a small visual homage to this big piece of inspiration of ours, and now we want to share it with you.

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More information.

If only it was turn-based...

It was a superb game, but yes, being turn based would have made this product perfect. If they do a sequel, maybe that will be turn based, who knows.

I can't believe I am agreeing with screeg ...

I love the format too as long as it is turn based. If it’s realtime I find the system limiting and frustrating. Grimrock has an amazing look but I’d rather play The Quest quite frankly

Yub, same here. Prefer turn based. Also, please go away from being so generic!

While this video is clearly focusing on replicating level 1 of EotB1 most newer dungeon crawlers just look so generic and have absolutely zero story. Ist just Dungeon Master all over. Level after level with enemies and puzzles. But nothing interesting to find. No NPCs, no traders, no events, no decent stories. Imho that's what missing the most.

And it would be so easy to do. Just get some decent artist, and let him design like 20 animated pictures for some special events. Apparently Aeon of Sands wants to be more story based. It's also real time though...but let's see...

From a dev point of view, I don't get what's so alluring about RTWP. It's so much more difficult (or downright impossible) to make a decent combat system. When was the last time you played a RTWP game where the combat was better than adequate?

screeg said:

From a dev point of view, I don't get what's so alluring about RTWP. It's so much more difficult (or downright impossible) to make a decent combat system. When was the last time you played a RTWP game where the combat was better than adequate?

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The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians.

The main issue of RTwP is, that the frequency of "optimal" gameplay is above 2-3 pauses per second on most games.

There are multiple ways to fix this, but hardly any games care, as most players are fine with sub-optimal combat outcome (and maybe they don't play on hardest difficulty where it matters the most).

One way to fix it: Don't make a system which works in "real" real time. Make a system which works in realtime "turns".
What I mean is that usually you can
1. pause at 0.1 seconds, cast a damage spell, the caracter will start casting a spell
2. pause at 0.3 seconds, as a character got hurt, you need to cancel the dmg spell, and cast a heal instead. Character starts casting that spell.
3. pause at 0.7 seconds, the heal is not through yet, the chracter was hit again, you need to improvise and move the hurt character
and so on

What you could do instead:
Every second a turn passes. And all actions are taken care of at once.
So you can pause at 0.1, at 0.3 or at 0.7 - your character will only cast that spell at 1.0s or 2.0 if one turn is 2 seconds. There is no incentive of pausing more frequently as nothing will happen within the turn.
It's comparable to roguelikes a bit which sometimes feel like being real time, while in fact they are turn based (just that the turns are fluently if you are walking 10 tiles in a row).
All Walls Must Fall isn't a good game, and it's actually more of a turn based game, but it also shows in a great way how it can work (all actions take "beats" there, you can plan whatever you want, then it's executed and it plays like:
1 beat - move forward
2 beat - move forward
3-4,5 beat - shoot
and so on.

"The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians" works well as well. And that's because it gets rid of positioning your characters. RTWPs biggest flaw is positioning. It's always a chore to get your rogue into the right position. To have your mage at max range, but within spell range. To put your tank right where it needs to be to block the enemy and so on.
"The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians" just removes all that. Removing the worst element of RTWP. In addition you can query up actions, and in addition you have some wiggle room when to execute spells as there is always a short waiting time and a big cooldown after each planned action (which is filled with auto attacks).