Gates Of Integrity - free The Bard's Tale clone

[CryptRat]

https://tarjan.itch.io/gates-of-integrity

I just started to explore the second dungeon. The game is very much like The Bard's Tale, and maybe even more like The Devil Whiskey since visually it also looks like it, including using real time outside combat (and classic phased-base combat), if you've played The Bard's Tale or The Devil Whiskey you know exactly what to expect.

I don't know if there's a way to play the game in full screen, and the game does not have mouse support, no biggie, full keyboard control works.

You start in a town and dungeons are accessible from there, you unlock the access to the next dungeon by completing the last one. You can only save your game inside the adventurer's guild. That's fine but unfortunately I don't think there's a way to Save & Quit.

I got poisoned once but until I finally encountered some mages targetting the full party all monsters had basically no ability, the only difference between them was stats, at least the difference can be high enough that you need to learn when you'd better try to run. Besides the randomly triggered random encounters there are also fixed spots which also trigger random encounters, I also found at least one fixed encounter but I got no reward other than gold and xp so I barely saw the point.

One difference with The Bard's Tale and many directly inspired games is there's no distance (10' ...), or so I think, although' the mentalist, which is not a spellcaster, has an ability to pull a group of monsters, I never fought more than two groups of enemies and what I assume is that they may be more than two in which case the third one is not accessible in melee or something like that.

The classes are quite classic and the spells I got so far are what you would expect, some damage or paralysis spells targetting one monster or a group, one spell telling your coordonates which helps placing your map on your paper sheet, levitation (over traps), disarm (chest) traps, some light spells and summon spells since the game is directly inspired by Bard's Tale.

One weird thing is that so far anytime I tried to use weapons they made less damage than fists so I just fight barehanded. My warrior may deal some damage with a weapon but because of his low dexterity he never manages to hit so I'm not sure. I have not found any missile weapon (maybe the shop has one and I'm just blind) and then my mentalist in the second rank is useless. I bought some weapons I never used but the shop also has some basic armor parts to sell, and the beginning of the game is partly about buying those parts, then you'll get better equipment from killing monsters. For the rest raising levels take all your gold.



Some screenshots :

Spoiler

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

 

[Lurker47]

Gates of Integrity kind of sounds like a parody name.

 

[CryptRat]

I got the Teleport spell which can teleport the party anywhere in a dungeon so now going back and fourth from dungeon to town is just a matter of a few clicks and MPs.

My two spell casters reached the highest level of spells in their class and then switched to the other class available at the start (there are 2 unlockable classes).

 

[ArchmageTarjan]

Hello CryptRat!

Thank you for sharing my game here!

"Some tips from the underground":

Spoiler

The game only works windowed and you can only save your game in the adventureres guild. This was intended to prevent saving every 10 seconds.
The Mentalist will do some more or less useful monster shuffling when there are 3 groups or more because only the first two groups are reachable for melee attacks as you assumed. Depending on your armor and how much you leveled at this point, he may or may not be helpful...
I just looked at the calculations for damage dealing. At very low Strength and Endurance levels fighters indeed tend to do a little bit less damage with weapons than with bare hands. This will change when the character gets stronger and/or finds more powerful weapons.
Your spellcasters will be able to learn the other two spell classes when they reach the highest level of their second class. You may find it useful to exchange one character for a new, third mage then.

I played the original Bard's Tale 1 on Amstrad CPC over 30 years ago and since these days I wanted to create a game with the exact same atmosphere.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[ArchmageTarjan]

so no exit save?

No, you must return to the guild if you want to save.

 

[CryptRat]

(in reality it's a quite organically presented puzzle)

Maps of the town and of the two first dungeons in case someone would want those :

 

[Lukipaluki]

I really like the art, it looks so clean and simple. Are you an artist ArchmageTarjan ?

 

[ArchmageTarjan]

I really like the art, it looks so clean and simple. Are you an artist ArchmageTarjan ?

Thank you, Lukipaluki! But I did no artwork for this game. Some stuff I bought on various sites, some are public domain graphics. My job with the art was just to select a fitting combination of graphics and to present it in a nice, but old-school way. There is a long list of credits for the graphics in the online help

 

[newtmonkey]

Any guy that makes a blobber has my support (and money)!

I just got done running through BT1-3 so will take a break from that formula, but once I'm ready for more BT I'll play GoT!

 

[ArchmageTarjan]

Any guy that makes a blobber has my support (and money)!

Thank you very much, newtmonkey! I hope you enjoy it!

 

[CryptRat]

 

[Shackleton]

Bumping this as I'm playing at the minute and enjoying it in a true old school way. Hoping ArchmageTarjan is still around, as it appears there's no way to inspect weapons and equipment I can find? Perhaps just blind.

I'd not bother and just go with 'more expensive = better' but I noticed when I gave my Thief the Electrum sword, she only did 1 damage with it, but my warrior did 20+ with it so I'm thinking there's a STR requirement somewhere that I can't see. Is this by design or am I missing something?

 

[ArchmageTarjan]

Bumping this as I'm playing at the minute and enjoying it in a true old school way. Hoping ArchmageTarjan is still around, as it appears there's no way to inspect weapons and equipment I can find? Perhaps just blind.

I'd not bother and just go with 'more expensive = better' but I noticed when I gave my Thief the Electrum sword, she only did 1 damage with it, but my warrior did 20+ with it so I'm thinking there's a STR requirement somewhere that I can't see. Is this by design or am I missing something?

Shackleton, STR and END play a role when using any weapon in the game, so a stronger char will hit harder. When a character is doing only 1 point of damage with a weapon, it could be the character is OLD. You may check this in the character screen.
And there is no way to inspect the details of items. I hope you have some fun with this old school crawler.

 

[Shackleton]

Bumping this as I'm playing at the minute and enjoying it in a true old school way. Hoping ArchmageTarjan is still around, as it appears there's no way to inspect weapons and equipment I can find? Perhaps just blind.

I'd not bother and just go with 'more expensive = better' but I noticed when I gave my Thief the Electrum sword, she only did 1 damage with it, but my warrior did 20+ with it so I'm thinking there's a STR requirement somewhere that I can't see. Is this by design or am I missing something?

Shackleton, STR and END play a role when using any weapon in the game, so a stronger char will hit harder. When a character is doing only 1 point of damage with a weapon, it could be the character is OLD. You may check this in the character screen.
And there is no way to inspect the details of items. I hope you have some fun with this old school crawler.

Thanks for replying Tarjan. I'm not blind then! Yeah, my thief is an Elf with STR 9 and END 12 so that's probably too low. It's a bit weird that she hits harder with her fists though.

Definitely going to donate once I've finished, this is certainly better than some of the blobbers I've paid for on Steam and deserves recognition. Did you not look into publishing on Steam? Might not have made you a millionaire but maybe given you a bit of a boost.

 

[ArchmageTarjan]

Bumping this as I'm playing at the minute and enjoying it in a true old school way. Hoping ArchmageTarjan is still around, as it appears there's no way to inspect weapons and equipment I can find? Perhaps just blind.

I'd not bother and just go with 'more expensive = better' but I noticed when I gave my Thief the Electrum sword, she only did 1 damage with it, but my warrior did 20+ with it so I'm thinking there's a STR requirement somewhere that I can't see. Is this by design or am I missing something?

Shackleton, STR and END play a role when using any weapon in the game, so a stronger char will hit harder. When a character is doing only 1 point of damage with a weapon, it could be the character is OLD. You may check this in the character screen.
And there is no way to inspect the details of items. I hope you have some fun with this old school crawler.

Thanks for replying Tarjan. I'm not blind then! Yeah, my thief is an Elf with STR 9 and END 12 so that's probably too low. It's a bit weird that she hits harder with her fists though.

Definitely going to donate once I've finished, this is certainly better than some of the blobbers I've paid for on Steam and deserves recognition. Did you not look into publishing on Steam? Might not have made you a millionaire but maybe given you a bit of a boost.

Thank you for playing! That's a bit weird indeed. My intention was it would be harder to wield a heavy weapon than to hit your opponent with bare hands - at least for weak characters.
I considered releasing it on Steam, but I chose not to because the game is really HEAVILY inspired by The Bard's Tale 1, although no art is directly stolen. ;-) I have some ideas for a second part and I intent to release this one on Steam.

 

[Shackleton]

That number puzzle in the third Gate dungeon was a bit of a bugger. I doff my metaphorical cap to you Tarjan, that took me a good few attempts to get it right despite having all the information to hand. I'm not spoiling, but your use of the word 'loot' in the second level led me a bit astray.

One more dungeon to go. I also take my hat off to CryptRat for somehow managing to finish with only 2 magic users, I've just trained up another to have 4 in total. Mass Paralyze is just too useful to not have at least 3 on the go in the first round.

 

[Shackleton]

And finished.

Spoiler

Enjoyed it, really good homage to the original Bard's Tale. Didn't outstay it's welcome and kept a good supply of stronger monsters right through to the end. Never bumped into the old '99 Bezerkers x4' amount of mobs (apart from that fixed spawn of Lower Demons), but I wiped a couple of times on the combats with lots of enemy spellcasters that went before me. Once I had 4 Archmagis it was a bit of a doddle though. 3 to Paralyse or Poison, one to full heal party at end of every round.

If I could give you a bit of constructive feedback, it would be around the dungeon design. The original Bard's Tale did have more difficult maps to traverse. It's something a lot of the newer blobbers I've played get wrong; the map is the enemy and the monsters are just there to drain your resources before you are forced to retreat, having conquered a bit more each time. Here, with no dark zones, no anti-magic zones, no chutes, teleports or spinners it was all a bit simple to get around. Even with an auto map, you can make it challenging by disabling the map in dark zones and anti-magic zones. Throw a couple of spinners in there and a teleport or two and suddenly you've totally disoriented the party. There's nothing like dropping down a chute in a dark zone to a deeper level and struggling to get back up while trying to stay alive. Sorry, I know everyone's an expert and you're the guy who made the game but it was the one thing I wanted to feed back on in what was overall a really enjoyable game. Oh, and Mentalists are pointless lol.

Off to the Donate button now, you deserve it.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Shackleton any idea roughly how long it took you?

Too bad about the lack of mapping challenges, although I get why you'd decide not to include it as a dev. People who like that stuff are a minority within a minority.

 

[ArchmageTarjan]

Well done, Shackleton! Thank you very much for your support! I will keep your feedback in mind for part 2 of the series.

 

[Shackleton]

Shackleton any idea roughly how long it took you?

Too bad about the lack of mapping challenges, although I get why you'd decide not to include it as a dev. People who like that stuff are a minority within a minority.

Probably around 15 hours or so. From reading the comments it seems that the auto map was added after launch and I think if you were mapping by hand it'd probably double the play time at least.

Regarding the 'minority in a minority' comment, I really don't think that's right. The people who don't like difficult maps are the same people who moan that the games are boring as all there is is combat, and combat is never enough to sustain interest in a DRPG. I would say that players who don't like mapping challenges are players who don't like blobbers. It'd be like changing the Dark Souls formula by getting rid of checkpoint saves and allowing quicksaving to try and attract players who don't like the genre, but then it ruins the game for everyone.

So many Experience Inc games have gone down this path and it just doesn't work. Making maps just a corridor with mob spawns always gets tedious, no matter how good the class system and turn based combat. If the combat is challenging, players grind until it isn't. If you limit the mob spawns to stop that then it fundamentally changes the game from the 'classic DRPG' formula and you're left with the Bards Tale 4 travesty. The challenges have to come from traversing the environment and you can be ruthless and brutal, or gentle and forgiving but there has to be a level of challenge other than just 'press W until you get to the exit'.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Regarding the 'minority in a minority' comment, I really don't think that's right. The people who don't like difficult maps are the same people who moan that the games are boring as all there is is combat, and combat is never enough to sustain interest in a DRPG. I would say that players who don't like mapping challenges are players who don't like blobbers. It'd be like changing the Dark Souls formula by getting rid of checkpoint saves and allowing quicksaving to try and attract players who don't like the genre, but then it ruins the game for everyone.

You're forgetting about Might and Magic III-V, which are probably the most popular blobbers here (don't have any exact figures obviously, just going by amount of discussion). After that it's probably Wizardry 6+7, and those aren't about mapping either. That's not even mentioning the gridless blobbers that followed in both series. Then you have the Bard's Tale remaster, which added an automap and in the process attracted many new players who I'm going to say probably wouldn't have played them if they'd had to map them manually. If they changed Dark Souls in the way you describe it would've been a much shittier game for sure, but it might have been more popular as well. Certainly there are many action game fans who are turned off by the save system and lack of direction.

Making maps just a corridor with mob spawns always gets tedious, no matter how good the class system and turn based combat.

Maybe to you (and to me), but I'm telling you, many people like it like that.

 

[Fluent]

Strange Fellow Hey man, quick question if u don't mind (a bit off-topic). You mention Wizardry 6+7 aren't about mapping. What do u mean by that? I thought one had to map those games by hand as well since there wasn't an automap system in either of them? Again, sorry for going off-topic but I'm curious about this from someone who knows so much about the genre.

 

[Shackleton]

Regarding the 'minority in a minority' comment, I really don't think that's right. The people who don't like difficult maps are the same people who moan that the games are boring as all there is is combat, and combat is never enough to sustain interest in a DRPG. I would say that players who don't like mapping challenges are players who don't like blobbers. It'd be like changing the Dark Souls formula by getting rid of checkpoint saves and allowing quicksaving to try and attract players who don't like the genre, but then it ruins the game for everyone.

You're forgetting about Might and Magic III-V, which are probably the most popular blobbers here (don't have any exact figures obviously, just going by amount of discussion). After that it's probably Wizardry 6+7, and those aren't about mapping either. That's not even mentioning the gridless blobbers that followed in both series. Then you have the Bard's Tale remaster, which added an automap and in the process attracted many new players who I'm going to say probably wouldn't have played them if they'd had to map them manually. If they changed Dark Souls in the way you describe it would've been a much shittier game for sure, but it might have been more popular as well. Certainly there are many action game fans who are turned off by the save system and lack of direction.

Making maps just a corridor with mob spawns always gets tedious, no matter how good the class system and turn based combat.

Maybe to you (and to me), but I'm telling you, many people like it like that.

I wasn't forgetting them, but I don't really consider them the same sort of game. There's too much sperging about this sort of thing in that Thac0 thread about blobbers, but I was talking more specifically about the classic Wizardry/ Bards Tale likes where you explore the typical multi-floored dungeon in a grid pattern. The M&M games are more about exploration and finding cool stuff than they are about fighting a war of attrition down the deepest depths of a dungeon. I like that sort as well, but it's a different style of game.

*Edit* So I just realised, I suppose I do agree with you after all Strange Fellow , we are a minority in a minority!