I actually like that than the inventory list we have in most games. The tetris works far better than list.

Looking forward to this game though, along with Torchlight 2.

Looks pretty ambitious, hope it works well in the final game too.

Im probably getting this on day 1, as the setting is interesting. Rather than having a typical fantasy setting, Grim Dawn actually have steam punk-like setting.

I might pledge for this game. Loved how Iron Lore supported Soulstorm towards the end of the studio's life span.

Probably gonna put down $18 or maybe $50 for the game. The lead designers and producers of Crate are extremely friendly and down to earth. I think Grim Dawn is what i want Diablo 3 to look like to begin with. Gritty and bloody. Not like Diablo 3 looks bad, but it's art style wasnt exactly what i want. Loved Grim Dawn's Victorian Steampunk style too.

Titan Quest is also a fairly good game to begin with, so Grim Dawn might not be that bad.

Not gonna fund for Wasteland 2 or any other indie game, but Grim Dawn, hell yea.

This post has been edited by Cheesenium: Apr 17 2012, 11:25 PM

Dont get me started with the armor in Diablo 3. Most of them are absolutely terrible, as it looks like some Chinese MMO designs. The shoulder pad designs are overboard. I do not want the art style to stop me from enjoying the game, as Diablo 3 on it's own, its a fairly enjoyable game. There are still a lot of merits in the game.

Unfortunately, Grim Dawn will not have a very large environment to play due to small team. However they claim that the maps in the game will be extremely fun, like the latest video. Going house to house to kill some creatures in an abandon town does look intriguing and they say the game will be incredibly well paced.

I dont think D3 is dumbed down a lot. Things like stats allocation are just a relic of older RPGs. Depending on how the RPG is designed, i do not see whats wrong with throwing out some of the old RPG ideas. Skyrim did it fairly well without stats allocation and a simpler skillpoint. Guild Wars 2's stats can be chosen, depending what you want.

D3 is still fairly enjoyable. I rather see the way Diablo 3 is now, than Diablo 2 with shinier graphics.

I am going to pledge $35 next week.

These guys has a fully playable alpha with more of the coding done. At the same time, they are the great guys who made Titan Quest which is one of the best ARPG around. No way i am not funding these people. I want to see the real Titan Quest without any publisher breathing down their neck.

The other one i'll pledge would be Nekro. They have their engine almost done, with really nice lighting effect. Looks like they need a bit more to finish the game.

It is inspired from games like Dungeon Keeper with a little bit of Overlord. The team consist of people from Blizzard and Microsoft employee.

Personally, i like their art style with a little bit of the Warcraft 3 vibe with it and humors like also exploding pigs to make bacon. The gameplay sounds interesting on paper, where you are playing as a Dungeon Keeper sort of thing, with minions to do your bidding. I miss this sort of game, so this is definitely a must for me to pledge. I like the idea of randomised maps every time you play the game, where i find it to be a good idea to make the game to be very replayable.



http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/343838...kro?flyingspaghettimonster=history

I pretty much only pledge for the companies that have something to show and being honest, instead of those with some nice concept art and thats it. Kinda regret for missing Banner Saga.

Sorry for going off topic.

Already pledged $50 for the game. Might add a bit more when my money comes.

Might go up to $100 at the end, if there is a chance to have the additional survivor city.

Hello Arthur, just want to say, good luck and all the best with Grim Dawn. Cant wait for the Alpha to be honest. ARPG with open world elements sounds like the next evolution of ARPG.

Because Crate wants to remain independent as they were burned badly over the whole Titan Quest issue. They didnt get paid much for making the game to begin with, on an IP they dont fully own. Then, there are other superiors from THQ instructing them to do things to THQ's liking, such as no mature creature design and content must be designed in a way that every player get to experience it.

One of their blog post did mention that there are a couple of publishers wanted to buy over their company and game, but Crate wants to remain independent. I think the designer was even offered a job personally by Jay Wilson to work at Blizzard to develop Diablo 3.

Do correct me if im wrong.

From the numerous blog posts i have read from Arthur, i think he wont want this to happen again. It is gonna be fully indie.

I just hope they can improve their engine, like Slightly Mad Studio with their DX11 powered engine that is heavily upgraded from Shift 2.

Then, tell me which publisher is good then?

None of the major publishers are good, including Paradox because they always have interesting ideas, but their games are incredibly buggy at launch.

I prefer developers to be independent if possible as i believe it is possible to make an AAA game without a major publisher backing you financially with luck and expertise. For instance, Valve and CD Projekt Red are probably the best example. Every developers have their own vision on a game they truly wants to build, however, publishers tend to get in a way of the game design because they want to cater for the casual audience too. Publishers tend to prefer to dumb down the game mechanics, wants every content to be able to be experienced by a casual player and ignores what the hardcore players wants. I believe you do not run a business where you throw your loyal customers away for new customers. This is what most major publishers are doing these days which is disgusting.

Grim Dawn is the vision that Iron Lore/Crate wanted to develop in Titan Quest, but THQ do not let them design it the way they want, like THQ doesnt want to have hidden monsters that yield good drops, hidden bosses and even a darker and grim setting in Titan Quest. Iron Lore didnt really have the control over the IP as THQ put a leash on them.Then, once they finished Titan Quest, Iron Lore did not get enough funding from THQ to develop future games because of the whole royalty crap that give them peanuts. The worst thing is, THQ will not fund anymore ARPG because they think ARPG is a dead genre that is confined to PC.

Seriously, look where is ARPG now. 6.5 million sales on the first week with Diablo 3 with majority of the retailers has no stock for Diablo 3. Then, Torchlight 1 actually sold better on Xbox LIVE if compared to PC on day by day basis since the product launch on respective platform. ARPG is not a dead genre, just because major publishers think so. So does this apply for adventure games, space combat games and so on, these genre are not dead, but publishers are picky over it and have no balls to pick it up. I think if some publisher decides to make a really good AAA space game, it will be a resurgence of space games like how Diablo 3 revived ARPG.

The best example of independent development now is, Project CARS made by Slight Mad Studio who made Shift series and GTR2. These guys didnt get a publisher to back them. Instead, all they did was investing 1.5 million euro of their own money and have a kickstarter sort of campaign where they have collected 1 million euro to date, with very little marketing, other than word of mouth. SMS listens to the fans, to the point they changed their business model from a free to play to a full priced $50 retail game, because the fans do not want to pay for Nurburgring and Spa seperately. At the same time, SMS is also taking feedback on physics, car list, track list and so on. It's a win win situation as far as i am concern, and i do hope Project CARS will be the first AAA independent game that can compete with the stuff that big boys are making. I think Project CARS is aiming to be the Forza or GT5 on PC with a wide selection of iconic cars, good physics, great graphics and lots of tracks.

I have pledged for the game, and at the moment, the pre-alpha is looking great and it plays great. It is a bit like Shift 2, with much more demanding physics while still playable on a 360 pad. It quite unoptimised now, and unfinished too, but seeing the game progress every month does feels awesome.



Bring on the Grim Dawn alpha. I am looking forward to see the faction system in play.

Haha, thanks. I still cant think of a good publisher. Paradox is probably the closest, as they are great innovators and very open to obscure games like Crusader Kings and also their nice little twist on the Battlefield/ Call of Duty with War of the Roses. I still wont put them as a good publisher as most of their games are either still buggy or it will take expansions to get a fully functional game. I mean if i had to choose, the best so far will be Paradox. Square Enix's Eidos branch, probably second because the their willingness to try reboot "dead" franchises like Deus Ex, Hitman, Lara Croft and also publish Sleeping Dogs. The rest like EA, Activision and Ubisoft, they are probably the worst lot. I think Activision and Ubisoft is losing some hatred to them, as EA is pretty much taking all the flak with ME3's ending and their new NFS which apparently pissed off the whole community. Also, where it is probably just me, where i hate all their recent games so much because they are really awful games with a lot of bad designs.

I dont know whether i can find that pie chart back, where in a $60 game, only $15 goes back to the developer. $10 go to the console maker, while the rest go to publisher and distribution. Which is why independent games are growing insanely these few years as if they put up a DRM free game, the developers will be able to keep all the money and also own the IP they make with full control over it. Steam takes a bit like 15% for independent developers. Thats why i didnt hesitate to support a developer if i see a proven developer like Crate or Slightly Mad Studio trying crowd funding for their upcoming games.

This post has been edited by Cheesenium: Jun 8 2012, 12:56 PM

Activated my Alpha on Steam, awaiting Alpha launch.

This is the second game that I pledged for Alpha. Brace for tonnes of bugs and WIP stuffs. Not sure I am upgrading for PA alpha or not since its coming soon.

This post has been edited by Cheesenium: May 15 2013, 05:11 PM

Wont be taking videos, but I dont mind putting up screenshots and maybe some thoughts or first impressions.

Downloading the game now. The file size is about 1.1GB.

Played the game for an hour, and I say i did enjoy the alpha so far.

The art style felt a bit Steampunk-ish or similar to Fallout 3's post apocalypse feeling, instead of typical fantasy like Diablo or Torchlight.

The combat is definitely better than Titan Quest, as melee attacks felt impactful while range combat is alright, as it felt like it has very little recoil. However, it is no where as good as Diablo 3's more viseral and violent combat.

Skill system is similar to how Titan Quest's Dual Class systems work. Havent played much, so I cant comment.

Will post more feedback and first impressions tomorrow but so far, it felt pretty good for an alpha.

Some videos from youtube:







Yeah, the soundtrack is awesome, IMO.

My first hour impression is pretty good, IMO.

The melee combat felt meaty, just like in the videos.

At the moment, GD has the more generic ones, such is typical warrior, rogue or magician. I am not too sure how many masteries will there be in the final game, though.

Still, from my experience with Soldier, which is Warrior in typical fantasy, it feels like the same run the mill ones, except this one borrows elements from TL2, PoE, and D3. My Level 5 Solider has a special basic attack modifier where he will double his damage every 3 hits. There is also a stun spell, that is similar to something from TL2, while the low end of the tree seemed to have quite a lot of passives like PoE. I am not too sure what I am expecting here, but I cannot judge a game at this stage with such limited experience.

More on the gameplay, the monster variety is pretty nice, IMO, as I have been encountering quite a few different types of enemies so far, but not none of them stand out much. There is a quest where you have to go inside a cave where you get surrounded by zombies was pretty cool as the gameplay is a mix of kiting, evading some AoE attacks and dealing damage. Also, the maps felt a lot more open than say, TL2 or D3 eventhough it doesnt not have any randomised map system. I think I can literally just walk off the main quest and roam around freely if i really want it.

GD still feels a bit generic at the moment, im afraid so if you are expecting it to reinvent the wheel, prepare to be disappointed. Also, the game is a bit stripped down now, as there is only normal difficulty, which feels like Hard in D3 or something between Normal and Veteran in TL2. No MP or any higher difficulty. The game feels quite polished and completed, at least from what it looks like, but I think there are still some missing content.

Still, overall, it feels pretty good for an ARPG made by 6 people.Reasonably polished, with decent combat feedback and interesting skill system.

My monitor is 1080p, so, i expect GD to support 2560x1600.

This post has been edited by Cheesenium: May 16 2013, 10:25 PM