Eldritch

[Rich Wilson]

A friend of mine from 2K Marin has been working on his first indie offering for the past few months, and it looks like he's finally announcing/greenlighting/etc.

 

The game's called Eldritch, and it's a first person roguelike with a Cthulhu mythos vibe, plus stealth and cool mobility (mantling, power slide). Basically Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth meets Spelunky.

 

http://www.eldritchgame.com/

 

Seems like a good fit for the Idle Thumbs emergent narrative crowd.

[sclpls]

Oh, this looks interesting. Thanks for sharing!

[Salacious Snake]

Jumping across a gap and mantling up the far side in a cave gave me a serious Thief vibe (particularly the Lost City). I'm definitely interested in this.

[jeremywc]

Oh yea, this is definitely in my wheelhouse. Gave it a vote on Greenlight and I'll have to pick this up when it comes out.

[youmeyou]

So you can play the beta now if you preorder the full game.

 

Some thoughts:

 

Despite being originally kind of bummed at how similar this game's aesthetic was to Minecraft's it plays so differently that you quickly forget the visual similarities. The AI in Eldritch, while still simple, is noticeably more complex simply thanks to the inclusion of stealth mechanics. So you can evade pursuit and sneak around enemies, they don't merely head straight to your coordinates. It's also made clear via audio cues exactly how exposed you are. Enemies all have their own barks, patroling, alerted, etc. It takes playing a bit to figure them all out but listening is rewarded and becomes vital as the game gets more difficult.

 

The procedural levels are just fantastic. One of the many similarities this game shares with Spelunky is the modular level design and how you start to recognize certain chunks even as they are swapped with others each time the levels regenerate (this happens whenever you die. You are returned to a central hub from which to chose 1/3 books which represent levels). There's a refreshing amount of variety in level layout and enemy mix, it doesn't feel confusingly random, but there's always potential for surprise around every corner.

 

A really interesting mechanic is the looting system. When you loot a monster it gets respawned somewhere in the level. If you don't loot it, it stays a corpse. What a brilliant way to manage item greed vs. self-preservation. Most of the time I end up looting but there have been a few moments when I only had 1 heart left and just wanted to get through the level and so I left the bodies alone and limped toward the exit.

 

I've done two books so far. The first one is a bit easy as it's primarily a tutorial, but it gets challenging very quickly in the second. I have little doubt the third one will kick my ass. 

[osmosisch]

Can you kill the black blobby tentacly enemies? They absorbed all my bullets and daggers

[youmeyou]

I never have. Getting stuck in a room with those guys is terrifying! You'd think they couldn't get through doors. I even threw a stick of dynamite at one and it did nothing. Running works pretty well.

[osmosisch]

It's kind of interesting to me that this is one of the first roguelikes I've played that I don't really want to look up spoilers/guides for just to get me started. I feel the encountering the unknown part is integral to the theme. I look forward to getting into this more.

The movement feels really good to me somehow too, and I love how fast the attacks are.

[youmeyou]

Yeah, its closeness to Dishonored is what extra-sells Eldritch for me. I love sprinting at a mage, sliding under his cast spell and whacking him repeatedly with my dagger. Dagger + gun is a great combo. However, I will pick up a dynamite stick whenever I come across one, useful for blasting shortcuts through the level.

[sclpls]

Saw on Polygon that this cleared Steam Greenlight, so congrats to the developers. I haven't checked it out yet just because I haven't really been playing games lately, but I'm definitely excited about this one.

[sclpls]

This game is 20% off for the next few days so if anyone was contemplating grabbing it, I recommend doing so now. It doesn't seem super challenging at the moment, but it is definitely a lot of fun so I don't really care!

[sclpls]

Okay, I started the 3rd book and I take back what I said about the game being too easy. I got stressed out enough to have to stop, and come back to the game later!

 

So far everything comes together really nicely. I hope lots of people pick this up so it can continue to be supported as it would be sweet to see this game develop and evolve overtime, it's such a strong foundation for a lot of really good mechanics.

[osmosisch]

I've been unable to get through the 2nd book so far, and don't feel like going through the trivial first book again for the bonus health from fountains. Those bloody snake statues get me all the time when I'm not paying attention.

[clyde]

I didn't see anything that implied it was early access, so I thought this was it's final form.

[hammerpants]

I played through this game yesterday. I found it to be enjoyable, but it felt way too easy to me. I think I was playing very cautiously having read that it takes inspiration from roguelikes in its description.

 

I've been streaming my Spelunky daily challenges recently, so when this was released I decided to just stream myself playing it cold with no knowledge other than "you should play this game" recommendations from some folks I follow on Twitter.

 

I had one death early trying to figure out how to kill the blob thing (I think you just run away and never look back) and then beat the game on my second playthrough.

 

The stream can be found here if anyone is curious.

http://www.twitch.tv/jeconner/b/472335124

[hammerpants]

Alright apparently there's a new game plus mode that's actually more challenging. Anthony Burch talks about it briefly in his Spelunky daily challenge video (

if interested).

 

I'm going to have to give Eldritch another go.

[sclpls]

Yeah, I haven't gotten there yet, but I'm excited to see how New Game + mode works out. The PC Gamer review basically said it should have been the default mode for the game...

[sclpls]

I've been following Dave Pittman on twitter, and it looks like he is working on an expansion for Eldritch that features a new world, and new items. Looks promising so far...

[Security_Tubbs]

This is on sale for 2,39€ on Steam right now. I know that's not a huge financial investment, but I hate buying games I end up not liking, even if they're super cheap. However, this was on my list of games to keep an eye on.

 

Judging from the previous posts, it is/was super easy, but there has possibly been more content added since then. So has anyone played it recently?

 

And actually looking at the recent news:

 

The "Happy Birthday, Lovecraft!" update

H.P. Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890. In celebration of his significant influence on the horror genre, we're releasing a big update for Eldritch today!

Changelist:
Added Asylum expansion.
Added Steam trading cards.
Added Steam achievements.
Added Steam leaderboards.
Fixed Steam screenshots in OpenGL.
Fixed Mac savegame crashes.
Improved voxel lighting.
Improved audio occlusion.
Improved display of keys/buttons.
Improved display of FOV.

[Murdoc]

Yeah I finally picked it up on the sale, I really should have bought it earlier. Though to be fair, I've watched enough footage of the game where I don't feel like I need to play it, but I did appreciate what it was doing. Still not in love with the character art.

 

I'm going to fire it up at noon to see what might have changed or what have you.

 

I remember talking with a friend about the game as he was helping Pittman with some feedback before release, so I'd be curious to see if some of the design suggestions were ever implemented.

 

edit: Yeah... don't play the asylum expansion if you haven't played for awhile. It seems like a cool new area and a bit more of a challenge than some of the other areas.

 

I do like the game and there is a certain charm to the visuals and atmosphere, I think the sound design by far does the best job to reinforce that though. I have no idea how these levels are created, but, and the obvious comparison here, is looking at it compared to minecrafts random seed(or whatever) for generation could be improved to be a bit more interesting. The lighting and atmosphere really could be bumped up too. So whether its just an update or in the sequel, it would be cool to see some improvement in this area.

 

Like I said, it has its charm and is cool, but the possibilities of what it could be would suck me in a lot more.