French indie game developers Lugludum are planning to release their first game, Graal Seeker, some time next year. Set in early medieval Britain in the days of the Anglo-Saxon conquest, Graal Seeker is a classic 1990s style RPG. King Arthur sends his regards. As you might be able to guess from the title, the game is about the quest for the legendary Holy Grail. But as fans of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade know, there’s more than enough of these “cups” floating around.
Grail-icious
There are as many as five grails in the upcoming indie title, and the developers plan to give each “grail” its own story and up to three hours of gameplay. Each one has a different ending, hopefully with some pretty cool animation. Players have to deal with typical RPG elements like an inventory, leveling up, and active and passive skill trees for combat and magic. A few of the skills have a cooldown time, but also let you interrupt your enemies’ spells while you cook up a fireball or two to send their way. There are three different races to choose from: Saxons, Picts, and Britons. Each one is unique in its own way – for example, the Saxons tend to be a bit rougher getting things done than their no less warlike neighbors. Characters include druids, archers, bards, and peasants, and each one features a main attack and a range of secondary attacks. Each class has its own strengths and weaknesses, and is specialized in a particular type of combat (poison, melee, ranged, magic, etc.). No particular character is quite like any other – the Briton druid is specialized differently from his Saxon counterpart.
The game’s randomly generated worlds are home to various enemies as well as NPCs, who provide the Grail Seekers with a variety of quests. The main storyline (whichever direction it takes) and available side quests contain about 300 different events. In keeping with the game’s retro feel, there are no voice recordings, and your answers to text-based prompts determine the direction the story will take and which grail you’ll be able to claim as your own at the end. Parties can have up to four members who will have a bearing on combat. During combat, the screen switches to an 8x6 square “chessboard” of sorts, where battles are waged in real time.
Classic 90s
The game art shows a high degree of attention to detail, and the concept art included in the press kit seems to bring the characters to life. The game itself is highly reminiscent of similar games from the early 90s like Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager (1994), not as pixelated as those games tended to be, but just as purely text-based. It doesn’t take long to run into the kind of puns this genre is so well-known for: “a white high keep raised by a motte and surrounded by a moat”. The art really lets you see how talented the artists are, and lends the game a certain charm. The inventory menu is uncluttered and arranged in a clear and intuitive manner. Real-time combat takes place in an animated environment. Every aspect of the game appears to be well thought out, clean, and just plain nice to look at. The developers have said that one of their major non-video-game inspirations in creating and designing the game were the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books that were popular in the 80s and 90s.
Unfortunately, there was no playable version available at Gamescom in August .The Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign has its minimum goal set at €10,000 (about $12,800). It started a few days ago, on September 17, and ends on October 22. The game is supposed to be released DRM-free for Mac, Windows, and Linux, and the price for the full version is set to be €14. As a true retro game, it should run pretty well even on older computers and laptops with less-than stellar performance capabilities. However, the developers still haven’t released any official specs for the game yet. As a little something extra, the game will also come with an XML-based editor to allow fans to create their own story surrounding yet another grail. The developers plan to release the best of these stories on their website. The project already has its own Steam Community site.
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