Mysterious Castle 1.8 now for Windows and Mac

[eclectocrat]

Hello!

NEW! 1.8 is out for Mac and Windows at www.mysteriouscastle.com Also available for iOS! Tons of changes!

Hi there roguelike fans! I have an announcement and a question. The announcement is for Mysterious Castle Beta 1.3, my graphical party based roguelike. It's a game heavily inspired by Tactics Ogre and the Avernum Series. In this version I've added a randomly generated town, much improved AI, new spell, storyline features, and larger world.

Here's a battle taking place with a party of angry Kobolds.


My question surrounds the often discussed 'what is a roguelike?' It's been asked to death so I'm reframing it as 'what is NOT a roguelike?' I like my game, I think it's a roguelike, but how far can I go before it's no longer in that category?

Right now the features that my game posses that make it a roguelike are few:
-Randomly generated terrain
-Randomly generated/placed monsters/npc's
-Turn based (of course)
-Line of sight/field of vision
-Permadeath
-High challenge level with death being the reward for reckless play
-...?

Is this a roguelike? I don't see too many party based roguelikes out there, I've already blasphemed with the graphics vs ascii and mouse interface bits, so... whatcha think?

PS: Gameplay Video

[Psiweapon]

Awesome graphics!

Who's providing them?

[eclectocrat]

Those are classic David Gervais 54x54 isometric tiles from Dungeon Odyssey, now free for use with attribution. That Mr. D. Gervais is a swell guy! Golly!

[jim]

Wow dude! Looks pretty. Love turn-based party tactics. Right up my alley. I'll download this as soon as there's a version that works for the most popular OS in the world.

Random terrain, random monsters, and permadeath definitely seem to be the big 3 for Roguelikeness.

[getter77]

Yes, it looks to be a Roguelike---worry not what some people get too wound up about in terms of taxonomy.  It has the the spirit in mind alongside some attributes, so all is well.  Besides, there are a few party-capable/based Roguelikes out there.

[Skeletor]

I'm not a big fan of tiles/graphics but I have to say that's a very appealing screenshot!

[eclectocrat]

Hey!

I have an experimental build for 32bit Windows up now! It's got no sound, and a fullscreen bug that may or may not crash the game, but it's a start!

Please try it out! www.mysteriouscastle.com

[getter77]

Nice work on the start of getting Windows  builds tamed!   

[Skeletor]

I takes a lot of hits to kill those kobolds!

[eclectocrat]

Nice work on the start of getting Windows  builds tamed!   

Yeah, I was using SDL 1.3 with mingw and DirectX so there was some untangling to do. Actually stumbled on a couple of nasty, obscure bugs, one involving the Floating Point Unit causing crashes in code that had nothing to do with floating point math (on the surface). Sigh.

I takes a lot of hits to kill those kobolds!

Yeah, there aren't meant to be any 'easy' creatures in the game. I'm still experimenting with balance, let me know what you think of it. To make battles a little quicker I recommend having an archer stand back and 'snipe' targets (use the snipe option, next round don't move anywhere and use the 'shoot' option), and have a spellcaster with high intelligence use 'bolt' spells.

The game is lacking documentation, yet another TODO.

[NON]

Roguelike-ism isn't binary, it's a percentage value.  

I'd say this game is more Roguelike than not.

[jim]

Yay, I get to play it!

*20 minutes later*

You are clearly someone with a lot of work to do between now and version 1.0!

You are also definitely a person of serious talent to have offered this upcoming gem out of nowhere. I sincerely hope it goes places. It shows incredible promise and is already a joy to play. I look forward to your progress, and urge folks who can afford it to donate.

[eclectocrat]

Yay, I get to play it!

*20 minutes later*

You are clearly someone with a lot of work to do between now and version 1.0!

You are also definitely a person of serious talent to have offered this upcoming gem out of nowhere. I sincerely hope it goes places. It shows incredible promise and is already a joy to play. I look forward to your progress, and urge folks who can afford it to donate.

I'd like to thank you for your kind words and let you know that encouragement like that means a lot to an isolated developer, and really motivates me to work hard. I'm glad someone else sees the potential that I do. You're right that I have a lot of work to do, but I'm enthusiastic and full of ideas, so I'm sure that the game will evolve and get better all the time!

[jim]

You're not isolated, eclectocrat. You've got a whole community ready to lavish praise, and maybe even money, upon your efforts. Plus, there's a rogue right behind you, lining up for that backstab.

 If you wouldn't mind adding my 2c to the long wish list, one of the things I find most engaging about turn-based tactics games is clever use of the environment in order to even the odds.... ideally I would eventually like to kick over tables to block the incoming hail of arrows, throw someone out the window, climb up to the rooftop... jackie chan / xena / x-com type stuff. Eagerly awaiting your next release. Great work.

[eclectocrat]

Hey!

www.mysteriouscastle.com

I've just released 1.4 for intel Macs, the Win32 version will follow shortly. The changelog is really long, some of the most important new features include:

- Saving and loading
- 4 new player races: halfelf, gnome, gnoll, and troll
- Deeper cave levels
- Sneaking + Sneak attack
- Two weapon fighting
- Flanking
- Environmental ambient sounds
- F1 toggles a help screen
- Wands
- Roads lead from the town to a few sites
- Treasure maps

It's a big step for the game. Saving and loading is a long time coming, but it's still a beta so two things to keep in mind: it worked for me, it might break for some lucky chap, and permadeath is not implemented. This one is tricky because it requires me to keep track of whenever a party member is killed and then silently and quickly modify the old savefile to eliminate them. Or I could just force overwrite the old savefile on game exit, but you could force quit the application to get around that. Right now you just need to be disciplined if you want to simulate permadeath.

In this version the tactics have become much more prominent, with the inclusion of flanking, sneak attack, and two weapon fighting, many more tactical possibilites arise. I've included a player guide with the download, as well as put one up at www.mysteriouscastle.com/playerguide.

Hope you have fun, and please report bugs. Windows users: thanks for your patience.