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Spellshard: The Black Crown of Horgoth (FULL GAME RELEASE)
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HarlockHero
Lord of Romanticism




Joined: 03 Feb 2003
Posts: 58
Location: Florida

PostPosted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 12:22 pm    Post subject: Spellshard: The Black Crown of Horgoth (FULL GAME RELEASE) Reply with quote

Hey all!

I'm happy to announce that Shizuma and I have finally finished the 8-bit RPG we began work on in 2002, SPELLSHARD: THE BLACK CROWN OF HORGOTH.

Some of you might remember this release from the original demo sent out way back when, but this is now the COMPLETE VERSION of the game. Expect around 30-40 hours of gameplay, a robust branching class system, and hopefully, an all-around fun and engaging experience. I'd say more about the game, but you can find out everything, and view screenshots, both at the game's page on our Castle Paradox gamelist:

http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=1045

and at the game's official website:

http://spellshard.crithit.org

The downloadable package has some nice little extras you may want to check out, such as a poster, and a retro-style PDF manual.

The OHRRPGCE community has been a big help throughout the whole creation of this project, and we'd like to thank everyone for their support. It's been an awesome experience. Thanks everyone for checking it out, and we hope you enjoy it!
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Rya.Reisender
Snippy




Joined: 18 Jan 2008
Posts: 821

PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 5:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow, I didn't even know that this was still being developed! I remember it from back when the demo was released. I remember enjoying it quite a bit but was annoyed by the low speed of some characters if I remember correctly.

Going to play this for sure (but not sure when yet).

On a sidenote: It's great to see that someone actually managed to do a full release of his game. And I mean a game that's actually a real RPG. I'm happy now.
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FyreWulff
Still Jaded




Joined: 02 Apr 2005
Posts: 406
Location: The Internet

PostPosted: Sat Sep 24, 2011 2:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Downloadin'.

As a curiosity, have any of the scripts I wrote for this survived to the current version? I think the most obvious to the player one I remember writing was the walk-in-place one
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Rya.Reisender
Snippy




Joined: 18 Jan 2008
Posts: 821

PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 4:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I tried this game finally and I think it's great.


But I still have some critique points:

- dex stat seems to be fairly useless, even the thief has just around 23 dex while the others have around 18 dex, with the OHRRPGCE accuracy system this doesn't make much of a difference

- dungeons don't make physically sense often, particularly when going up and downstairs it doesn't bring you to the same coordinates, also I think you can sometimes see a different floor at the edge of the screen; it was done really well in the dark castle, but that's just an exact copy of a Phantasy Star II dungeon (nice to see someone liking PSII dungeon design as much as I do, though)

- character balance! this could be improved a lot, for example the thief is really strong with his normal attack considering the fact he gets 3 turns while the warrior only gets 1 turn, but the warrior only deals about 100% more damage than the thief (later the balance improves when the warrior gets more useful skills, but at start the warrior is quite useless except for taking damage); and the Wizard is fairly useless, his normal attack can be pretty much forgotten even with his Enchant skills and his magic does rarely deal more damage than the Warrior skills, not to mention that the Wizard dies really fast

- unfair instant death regions, I don't really mind them too much, but some are really hard to just figure out and it sucks that you have to restart the whole dungeon then, it just makes players run from all battles so they won't waste the exp, better would have been to place fairies in front of instant death challenges or instead of instant death just make it "teleport" you back to the start of the challenge

- maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I consider myself quite overleveled, yet the bosses, even though I figured out the strategy on how to beat them, seem to have a least one skill that can instant kill my wizard/warlock, this is incredibly frustrating, especially since you can't really revive during the battle and revive is also quite limited, why do it like this? I wouldn't mind if bosses had a skill taking 80% of the Wizard's HP, but instant kill in a game where you can't revive inside a battle has no longer anything to do with a good strategy... it's just luck about your Wizard not being attacked!


Currently stuck at the Adjurer who seems to have a skill that instant kills the whole party and he also casts shields that make all damage on him just 1 HP. I know I can use defensive stances so at least some of my heroes survive, but with the Wizard and often the Cleric dead as well, I can't do much anymore except waiting for the second time where he uses his strong attack and I'm dead for sure. Well I guess you need to use some stat lowering spells on him? Will keep trying...
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"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
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Rimudora
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Joined: 26 May 2005
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 11:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, the insta-death was a pain and a half. Luckily, you won't be seeing much more of those after the desert world.

The Adjurer can be tricky. Take some time to cast buffs on your party while his shields are up, and think carefully about how much damage he's dealing to your party. (and then think about the number of ways that damage can be calculated in the OHR)
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Rya.Reisender
Snippy




Joined: 18 Jan 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 2:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hm, yeah I noticed how his damage spells work, but that would mean I need to kill him fully while his shields are down, don't seem to manage that yet. Already managed to deal around 2200 HP damage to him with the help of Might and Kamikaze (Fighter 600 HP, Wizard 300 HP, Thief 800 HP and Cleric 500 HP damage), but that still wasn't enough...
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
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Rya.Reisender
Snippy




Joined: 18 Jan 2008
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 07, 2011 6:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually got further now. Still liking the game a lot, in fact it keeps gettign better!

Still kinda confused about the character balance. One more criticism point would be that the dungeons seem to get quite long, yet there are not really enough spells to fight them all out. At least this is my impression. I do around 10-15 battles, then I don't have enough MP left to effectively do battles anymore, so afterwards I just keep running. The dungeon I was in last was really long and had at least 50 random encountered, so I pretty much had to run from 30-35 of them, was kinda boring, I like my battles. Wish there were more fairies or at least some way to regenerate MP, but I guess that wouldn't be retro enough, heh.

There also start to be more and more typos. I saw some "wierd" instead of "weird" (or was it "weild" instead of "wield?"). And also, what really made he sad was the sentence "He increases the rice tax form 75% to 760%", I'm sure it's supposed to say "76%", it kinda ruins the joke.

But this game is really amazing. You really should fix the typos, get someone to make original music for it and then make a retail release of it.
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
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Rya.Reisender
Snippy




Joined: 18 Jan 2008
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 1:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

How to beat the Illusionist? I tried to kill all 4 at once, but usually one stays alive and kills me when alone. Is there some trick to it or do I just need to be lucky?

It's annoying because I have to repeat all the puzzles.
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
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Rimudora
Psychopath yandere
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hint: He's an *ILLUSIONIST*. Watch out for *ILLUSIONS*.
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Rya.Reisender
Snippy




Joined: 18 Jan 2008
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 6:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks, that hint helped. So you didn't actually had to kill all 4 at once. :-)
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Rya.Reisender
Snippy




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PostPosted: Fri Nov 18, 2011 4:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The final dungeon is way too hard. I decided to quit the game for good now. It's really a shame. The game was fair, challenging and fun up to this point and the final dungeon ruins it all.

Why did you increase the encounter rate? The normal one was perfectly fine. Why is there no fairy in front of the bosses?

Normalize the encounter rate and add fairies on each floor and I'll play it again.
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
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Rimudora
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 8:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The final dungeon is pretty damn hard, but there are save points before each of the bosses. Just.. they're not the usual fairies. Also, they respawn every time you leave the dungeon and come back.

The encounters in the final dungeon give out a lot of exp. What I've done was just to lurk around the entrance for a while and go back after every battle to heal up. Also, if you haven't done it yet, buy hyper shields for everyone. It's the only shield that wizards and sorceress can equip, and it'll probably boost their defense quite a bit.

Lastly, the healing items you can buy in the last town are much better than the ones you've had before. I think one of them restores about 1000 hp to each hero or something. Buy about 99 of those.
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Rya.Reisender
Snippy




Joined: 18 Jan 2008
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2011 12:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hmm, maybe according to your post, I'm not in the final dungeon yet.

I'm at the dungeon where each room is themed after one Lord of Decay. It's the first dungeon to use a unusually high encounter rate (every 5-7 steps).

Battle difficulty is not the actual problem for me, the problem is that I can't really play more than 3 hours straight without saving. =/
And if I die at one boss I don't really feel like keep replaying the last 3 hours again and again.

Is there any way to save in this dungeon?
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"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
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Rimudora
Psychopath yandere
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2011 9:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, that dungeon. :(

There's a fairy on the second to last floor and that's it, unfortunately.

Run from random battles and go back to the town to save when you beat a boss, that's all I can say. I think there are only two minibosses in the tower though, and I only remember the first one being really annoying.
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Rya.Reisender
Snippy




Joined: 18 Jan 2008
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well I don't think I want to get back to it if Shizuma/Harlock don't fix the encounter rate and add a fairy. I ran from all battles already but it still takes me like an hour to reach the second boss and then I die at him. This is not what I call fun.

It's a shame though, because I really liked the game up to this point.
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"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
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