Inferno - Beyond the 7th Circle - Released

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The dungeon crawler Inferno - Beyond The 7th Circle has been released:

Inferno - Beyond The 7th Circle

The world is dominated by demons: few humans survived and now they are just a minority on the planet. You are one of the survivors, struggling to find food and resources while demons and abominations rule over the Earth.

Inferno - Beyond The 7th Circle is an old-school Dungeon Crawler with survival elements. It's made for hardcore gamers and fans of 80s and 90s cRPG.



It's the spiritual successor of The 7th Circle. Unlike its predecessor, Inferno - Beyond The 7th Circle has a more "classic" approach to the Dungeon Crawler genre: you can now save and load the game when you want and if you die you can just reload your last saved game. Also, there are plenty of new contents: more items, more skills, more spells, more tasks, quests and lot of resources to find.

Key features of the game


  • Grid-based First Person Dungeon Crawler. If you've enjoyed classic CRPG from the 90s, you will like this game.
  • Turn based combat. Take your time, plan your strategy.
  • Create your character: choose attributes, skills, traits, personality and background.
  • Learn more than 70 "Magic Formulas" to cast spells and use resources to empower your magics.
    Deep character customization system
  • Survive: search for food, clean water and other resources to craft items, weapons, armors and useful items.
  • A huge map to explore.
  • Improve your skills as you use them. E.G: the more you use an axe, the more you will improve your "Bladed Weapon" skill.
  • Puzzle to solve, hidden areas to find, tasks to fulfill and a lot of demons to kill.
Thanks Henriquejr!

More information.
 
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There's been a lot of these Grimrock clones the last few years. This one looks decent enough.

Anyone here play The 7th Circle? I wonder why they chose to go the spiritual successor route rather than a sequel.
 
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I picked this up on a whim since I've been in a grid-based blobber phase recently and this looks like it checks nearly every box for me.
 
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There's been a lot of these Grimrock clones the last few years. This one looks decent enough.

Anyone here play The 7th Circle? I wonder why they chose to go the spiritual successor route rather than a sequel.

I played the original about 9 hours a year ago (I did not finish). If you don't mind me quoting myself, here are the comments I had about the game then.

I just fired up the 7th circle, and after playing 3 hours, think its a decent, but not great dungeon crawler. You have 1 character, and skills work like in Daggerfall or The Quest. You initially choose a few skills to be good at. Skills you use improve. At level up you can put points into your attributes. The game has permadeth, but as you go through the dungeon you gain cards and blood, which can be used to buy starting bonuses for your next character and improve their level ups. Also it has a nice crafting and alchemy system. The dungeon itself reminds me more of the first Grimrock, but with less puzzles. Still there are traps and secret areas, and all the equipment you get and spells you learn have to be found in the dungeon, or crafted from things you find.

I have now played over 8 hours and have had no further character deaths and am mostly through dungeon level 3, but am not sure how long I will continue to play.
The good thing about the game is that all of its core systems work well. I like the character building system. I like combat. There is a kind of puzzle called a black hole, which has a well built board game like mini game. The crafting system works well. There are multiple secrets including secret switches, teleporters, illusionary walls, and spirits which appear at certain places at certain times of days. Also the monsters are fairly distinct from one another.
The bad is not much is introduced gameplay wise after level 1. There are no new puzzles. There is only one kind of trap which summons 3 monsters (normally you fight one at a time, or rarely 2)(so its more combat and not so much a trap) and a challenge, which is (yet another) optional combat which increases rare loot chance.
And that is the problem. Though I'm not a fan of its combat system, Legend of Grimrock constantly throws you in new situations. New traps, New puzzles. Also the items were hand planted, so each time you ran into an item it was useful if you had the right build. The same goes with Vaporum, which is closer to the 7th Circle, because you are controlling only one character. So I'll give the 7th circle another play session to convince me to keep playing, but if its simply a lot more of the same, it will probably be my last session.
 
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@forgottenlor; Thanks for the impressions.

Also, I have to take back what I said about Grimrock clones. I made that comment just based on the screenshots, but these aren't Grimrock clones. I played the demo for Inferno last night. It feels more like an old-school dungeon crawler.
 
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Initial thoughts:

First of all, I'm not sure about any previous games by this developer, but this is *not* a roguelike with permadeath etc. It's an old-school turn-based grid dungeon crawler more like Wizardry or Might & Magic. It has a normal save game system and saving often is something I would encourage as this game is somewhat brutal. :) (What would an old-school dungeon crawler BE without arbitrary difficulty and RNG madness?)

It's fun so far. I'm not very deep into the game but here's what I have found out, along with having read the manual:

1) The spellcasting system is interesting - like the old Bard's Tale games, you input a four-letter "code" to cast a spell. Anyone can try to cast a spell, any spell, but you have a chance of failing if your casting level for that spell "school" isn't high enough. For example, cure poison is a level 2 "White Magic" spell, anyone can try to cast it but you might fail if you don't have level 2 in White Magic.

2) The skill system is interesting, you seem to basically go up in skill level by using skills, kind of like Elder Scrolls games. You can't train in, say, "Bladed Weapons" except at the very start of the game up to a few points or by actually using them in the game.

3) There is a combo/"special hit" system in the game that's not really described in the manual and I haven't figured it out quite yet but it seems to be based on the skill level of the weapon you are trying to use. I got my target icon to start going red with "brawler" (fists) up to level 4 when I used my fists and when I got enough circles filled I could execute a "special move" that unleashed a furry of fists upon my foes. I haven't seen this with up to level 3 in Polearms yet, though, so perhaps it's based on the skill level of the weapon type you're trying to use. Lots of little systems and things hinted at in the manual but not fully explained, like this one.

Also some weirdness when talking about initiative being "speed" but it also somehow impacting your dodge chance when you use heavy weapons, and a weight limit imposed but nowhere can I find anything written about what happens when you go over your encumbrance level. So… yeah.

Overall the game is quirky, strange, challenging, fun, and a welcome change from JRPG style blobbers - this one is very "Gritty Western Fantasy" in style and feel. It's maddeningly obscure in some systems which seems be be a part of its old school charm depending on who you are asking. A cool take on dungeon crawlers and I can't see why anyone who doesn't enjoy the genre wouldn't enjoy this game.
 
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Initial thoughts:

First of all, I'm not sure about any previous games by this developer, but this is *not* a roguelike with permadeath etc. It's an old-school turn-based grid dungeon crawler more like Wizardry or Might & Magic. It has a normal save game system and saving often is something I would encourage as this game is somewhat brutal. :) (What would an old-school dungeon crawler BE without arbitrary difficulty and RNG madness?)

It's fun so far. I'm not very deep into the game but here's what I have found out, along with having read the manual:

1) The spellcasting system is interesting - like the old Bard's Tale games, you input a four-letter "code" to cast a spell. Anyone can try to cast a spell, any spell, but you have a chance of failing if your casting level for that spell "school" isn't high enough. For example, cure poison is a level 2 "White Magic" spell, anyone can try to cast it but you might fail if you don't have level 2 in White Magic.

2) The skill system is interesting, you seem to basically go up in skill level by using skills, kind of like Elder Scrolls games. You can't train in, say, "Bladed Weapons" except at the very start of the game up to a few points or by actually using them in the game.

3) There is a combo/"special hit" system in the game that's not really described in the manual and I haven't figured it out quite yet but it seems to be based on the skill level of the weapon you are trying to use. I got my target icon to start going red with "brawler" (fists) up to level 4 when I used my fists and when I got enough circles filled I could execute a "special move" that unleashed a furry of fists upon my foes. I haven't seen this with up to level 3 in Polearms yet, though, so perhaps it's based on the skill level of the weapon type you're trying to use. Lots of little systems and things hinted at in the manual but not fully explained, like this one.

Also some weirdness when talking about initiative being "speed" but it also somehow impacting your dodge chance when you use heavy weapons, and a weight limit imposed but nowhere can I find anything written about what happens when you go over your encumbrance level. So… yeah.

Overall the game is quirky, strange, challenging, fun, and a welcome change from JRPG style blobbers - this one is very "Gritty Western Fantasy" in style and feel. It's maddeningly obscure in some systems which seems be be a part of its old school charm depending on who you are asking. A cool take on dungeon crawlers and I can't see why anyone who doesn't enjoy the genre wouldn't enjoy this game.

Well I liked the core systems of the predecessor, so would be willing to give this one a shot if the dungeon design shows more depth and content. I'd be curious after say play 3-4 floors whether you think the dungeon design is repetitive, or if it throws enough new stuff at you to stay fresh. I'm also happy they've implemented a classical save game system.
 
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I will do so. Thus far it's been more of a very large overland area and one level of "tunnels" beneath that but I haven't played the game for more than a half dozen hours or so. I will say that if anything might start to feel repetitive, it might be a quest system that you encounter early on that provides "bounties" to kill a certain number of monsters on X map. (Like go kill X amount of Orcs at location Y and then return to Z for your reward.) These seem kind of generic and roguelike in a way where I usually prefer hand-crafted grid-dungeon experiences over procedurally generated stuff. The quest system in Skyrim that would just spit out random quests killed a lot of potential immersion and fun for me.
 
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I have played for a while and must say that I am a bit dissapointed so far all the quests have just been go to the next area kill x number of demons free x number of prisoners kill the special demon I would have liked some more story and interesting quests

Edit:
After you have finished the second group of tasks you will get a proper quest
 
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I have played for a while and must say that I am a bit dissapointed so far all the quests have just been go to the next area kill x number of demons free x number of prisoners kill the special demon I would have liked some more story and interesting quests

Edit:
After you have finished the second group of tasks you will get a proper quest

This is good to know, thanks. I was actually a little worried about the "tasks" system myself. I saw that quickly becoming boring without any actual things to do.
 
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