Appreciate the bite-sized approach for this one, cheers.

Super cool! like .... some of the adventurers.... There is a free "prologue"
; ) from decades ago Akalabeth.....

I can see a great progress in Dragons Ruins

In general, I really like what I see.
With at least one (pretty important) exception: the battles are TOO minimalistic for my taste.

From everything I've seen so far (gameplay wise) it doesn't look like I'm making any decisions in battle.

Or rather: I'm making only ONE decision:
(from the game's description):
"Fight through AUTOMATIC battles where you decide whether to FIGHT OR RUN away",
and I understand that as: "whenever an enemy appears, press either 'R' or 'F' (or whatever the keys for 'run' and 'fight' are).

And that's rather not for me. I prefer a little bit more direct involvement.
What a pity.

PS: I also don't like that the enemies are only represented by their portraits - I'd have preferred some "in dungeon" representation (some sprites that actually appear in front of me).

Ah, well...shrug...I have enough other games to play.

I guess others will have a different view, but when I'm tired I'd much rather look at something that looks like Trine or King's Bounty than wire-frame corridors and pixelated menus.

I agree,i do not understand the appeal of games that look like this,specially in 2024

I like pixelart games, but THIS is just lazy.

Wireframe graphics where a limitation of the the time, without any artistic value whatsoever.

Better give the Geister trilogy by the same developer a wide berth then, lest you might pop a vein or something.

Mistake

This interests me out of a love of for "old school" style CRPGs and Dungeon Crawlers. I am someone who really likes the game Nox Archaist which pushes the capabilities of the Apple II to their absolute limits (and is IMO a very well polished Ultima-like that captures why that style of game is fun to play) - I think what makes Nox Archaist work is its built around the hardware limitations of the time, which informs how the game is designed. On modern hardware you do not have those kinds of limitations influencing the game design.


Which is to say if this game was coded for a legacy hardware (be it a PC or Console) with some kind of emulation layer it would interest me a lot more than just a wireframe dungeon throwback. Still its priced inexpensively so I can't really complain.

The game looks like they were going for the look of the 1980 version of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord but with an automap.

The thing that makes me leary though is that the prior game Demon Lord Reincarnation has no mouse support. Keyboard controls only with no button mapping - arrow keys, enter, backspace. It's fine for games to be inspired by old games or go for a retro vibe, but I have concerns (because of the developer's prior game) that things might be retro to the point that I'd rather just play the actual old games that inspired this developer.

This specific Dragon doesn't eat tired people? How odd! (Could be a microgame of "Odd Realm" announced a couple of days ago)

The dungeon itself - specifically, the vector art style of the dungeon reminds me of an old game called "Dungeons of Daggorath" Loved that game, back in the day.

Have you checked out Realms of Antiquity? You might like that game, which was coded for a *different* retro computer.

(By the way, hardware limitations can mean things like not being able to easily divide by anything not a power of 2, and I think that comes up in Realms of Antiquity.)

Completely missed that one, thank you for bringing it to my attention! It is rare to find "new" CRPGS designed around old hardware.