RPG Codex 2012 Year in Review

The folks at RPG Codex have published their customary “Year in Review” editorial for 2012, covering, among other things, some of the indie titles highlights like Legend of Grimrock, mid-budget titles like Piranha Bytes’ pirate-themed Risen 2: Dark Waters, the various Kickstarter projects that were funded, like Wasteland 2, Dead State and Project Eternity, and, of course, the AAA controversies that kept the various comment sections around the internet busy for months and months and months.

On Kickstarter:

The success of Double Fine saw the potential for an industry reborn. Old games (like the adventure game market Double Fine were aimed at) with their old fans and niche market couldn’t get funding in the modern era. Fans clamoured for these games on forums but the true size and financial possibility of that market was not understood. Or at least, it was a lot smaller and harder to make games for than simply stuffing another Call of Duty remake out the door and cashing the profits. And perhaps the publishers themselves, being inbred dimwits, only really understood games where lots of stuff exploded.

KickStarter changed all of that. By bypassing the publishers and sourcing funds directly from the market, suddenly a whole new world of funding opened up.

And it was huge.

Or at least, bigger than expected. It turns out since the late 80’s when the RPG was almost the mainstay of the PC game industry – before the first person shooter killed everything, all those old RPG fans moved out of their mum’s basement, got jobs and now have very deep pockets. Wasteland 2 only asked for $900,000 – a pittance compared to the $25 million rumoured to be required to actually make an RPG. Fargo was backing it up with another $100,000 from his own personal slush fund. At $1M, we’re still talking peanuts compared to modern game development for AAA titles. Still, the fans had faith and the $900,000 goal was surpassed in mere days. By the time it was over, inXile had well over $3M in total funding to play with (when combined with PayPal receipts not shown in the KickStarter total).

And on Legend of Grimrock:

As mentioned before, Grimrock is a “grid-based dungeon crawler”. Now the dungeon crawler part is self-explanatory – you’re dumped in a dungeon and have to crawl around – but it’s the grid-based movement that sets the game apart. Unlike most modern RPGs where you might point and click with the mouse or simply walk around using WASD and use the mouse to direct just where you go, Grimrock uses a 2D grid for movement.

In a sense you use WASD as “normal” but tap W and you will walk forward from your current tile, into the tile ahead of you. If you wish to move sideways, you first have to press Q or E to face that way first. You’ll turn ninety degrees the corresponding way, at which point you can tap W to walk forward again. You can side-step with A and D – which comes in handy when fighting monsters – but most of the time you’ll want to see where you’re going, lest you fall into a trap of some sort.

This odd (or should I say, classic) movement system will trip you up from time to time, especially during combat (more on that later), but it grows on you and it won’t be too long before you find it wholly appropriate for the game. In fact it has a nice way of slowing you down and making you not only appreciate the level, but think more about what you’re doing… and thinking is going to come in really handy, because the dungeons of Grimrock are full of puzzles, traps and other assorted challenges which will have you racking your brain for the answer.