Category: cRPG

King of Dragon Pass for iOS!

King of Dragon Pass is one of those amazing and unique indy titles that only a small studio could have made.  At it’s core it’s a strategy title where you manage a germanic-like clan through it’s trials and tribulations, try to lump some other clans into a tribe and drive that tribe into a kingdom.  While it is a strategy game with resource management and area control,  it’s main goodness is a story component where random events play out over the course of years based on choices made at each point that the story is presented.  If you take in some refugees for instance, it could trigger certain (random) stories where some of the new women are stealing the men from your original clan group, pissing off the incumbent women and this will have to be resolved somehow, if you didn’t take the refugees, it could path out to a different set of random stories.  Given there are a mess of these stories going on at once and they all path, that’s a huge tree of story goodness to experience.   It’s a given that it’s never the same game twice, but what A-sharp did was create a game with that most elusive of all elements: soul.   From the way battles are managed to the aging of your clan elders to the myriad of paintings and images that go along with the stories, the game just oozes out soul from every pore.

So why bring this up now as it came out in ’99 and this game has been lost in the sands of time for awhile, at least in purchasable for?  It’s coming to iOS in September!  While not available on the iPad (which would be ideal), it’s going to be out on the iTouch and iPhone for what looks like OS4/5.

Confrontation lives! (on the computer…)

Shacknews posted a bit that the developers of GW’s Blood Bowl will be doing a computer version of Rackham’s Confrontation– and absolutely excellent miniature skirmish game (at least the 3.0/3.5 rules era).  Now I have another excuse to NEVER PAINT MY DRUNE.

Link for more info. This is one I will be following as closely as allowed by the interweb tubes.

d2 hardcore mraakaires – day 1

what the fuck is a man to do when diablo 3 is over a year away from being released? how about doing some hardcore diablo 2 runs, ya thats right, HARDCORE D2!

NOTE: i’ve never tried to play a hardcore character in diablo 2. this is my first time.

NOTE: i’m going to do my damned best to keep a diary of my progress playing single player hardcore characters here on mraaktagon.com

NOTE: i’m using diablo 2 v1.13c (the latest patch for diablo 2 at this time), plugy 10.00, i’m using some german 3dfx glide hack that lets you use the 3dfx setting with a video card that supports opengl or some shit (makes the game run better!) and that’s fucking it. i’m not going to install any cheats. if you think plugy is cheating that’s okay for you! the main reason i’m using plugy is for the shared stash.

NOTE: i’ve played each of the seven hardcore characters classes up to lv10 just to get this warmed up. no deaths yet. i will pick one of the seven to start with and play until death / or 10 lv’s are made, at which point i’ll switch to a new character. i’ll continue this 10 lv rotation until all 7 characters are dead. this allows me to stash items away for the other characters while ensuring i don’t get fucking bored playing one character class for too long.

so without further fucking around my 7 characters are,

FlyingAssBang – lv10 Sorceress
ShoeDrinker – lv10 Barbarian
SomeCallMeTim – lv10 Druid
BiotchLips – lv10 Assassin
DayLabor – lv10 Paladin
TugandRun – lv10 Necromancer
KunningLinguist – lv10 Amazon

i’m going to start with FlyingAssBang the sorceress. i think i’ve only beaten vanilla diablo 2 with the amazon, barb and assassin, but that was fucking years ago people.

here’s a link to a large image file that has all of FlyingAssBang’s stats at lv10 and all the items she’s using. i am not making some fucking proven build from some goddamned FAQ, i’m not a pro! i’m not going to use the plugy re-spec without making a good argument for doing so and clearly documenting the use or re-spec. i’m kinda scared about how i should spend points on this sorceress character. i think you just spend enough strength to get the armour you need, and get like 50 or so in mana, and the rest goes to vitality or someshit. but how about skills? shit i really have no clue, i am learning the fucking hard way, the hardcore hard way. okay off to play my lv10-20 as FlyingAssBang. i’ll post anything of interest back here, shit i have no fucking idea what i’m doing with this sorc build, i’ve got skill points scattered in all the tree’s already selected, that is just fucking terrible.

FUCKING HAPPY FUCKING NEW FUCKING YEAR 2011

Cthulhu saves the world

Though few have time to play through Old Style jRPG’s that I know of (I’ve been working on Final Fantasy Tactics for my DS for almost a year now), I wanted to make note of Cthulhu Saves the World to call attention yet again why we should be glad the Lovecraftian Mythos is in the public domain.   Yeah!

The place to get the game

A place to look at pictures and read some more information along those lines.

Dwarf Fortressing for Mac

If you’re suffering with no games on your Mac (something that has been an eternal problem), and want to try a pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-pre alpha of a game that is largely unplayable, Dwarf Fortress may be of interest.   While in it’s unplayable state, the game is free, and it’s probably still better than the abortive Elemental War of Magic.  This post is pretty much for Matt.

and not to be overmatched– a Torchlight 2 video

Competition makes products better.  Competition between awesome and awesome makes?!  That said, I’ve watched the torchlight 2 vid only twice and haven’t done the frame by frame analysis that will inevitably be done– what it looks like though so far is that the screen has been opened up and, of course, they went out of their way to show off the outside areas in the game. Looks fantastich.