Legend of Grimrock sales have covered dev costs, patch coming
Almost Human's retro-inspired dungeon crawler Legend of Grimrock more than covered its development costs within a few days on sale, and now there's a patch coming too.
Amidst all this hullabaloo over Kickstarter projects reviving beloved vintage gaming franchises, Finnish indie Almost Human released its own original classic genre revival last week, Legend of Grimrock. Evidently there's still plenty of interest in ye olde gamese, and the retro-inspired dungeon crawler earned back far more than its development costs within two days. So what's next? First of all, a patch.
"The development costs of the game have now been covered many times over so the future of the company seems pretty secure," Almost Human said in a blog post. "So, everyone who has bought our game and supported us, you have our gratitude!"
The team's working away on a patch, which will bring fixes for bugs, exploits, and other issues.
If you buy Grimrock now, the 10% launch bonus is still in effect, so it'll only cost you $13.49. It's available on Steam, direct from Almost Human (who'll also give you a Steam key), and on GOG.
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replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Legend of Grimrock sales have covered dev costs, patch coming.
Almost Human's retro-inspired dungeon crawler Legend of Grimrock more than covered its development costs within a few days on sale, and now there's a patch coming too.-
Woot! Hope to see more from them in the future that's for sure, I think it's still like 20% off on a steam sale right now too.
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Sweet! Game looks awesome and ppl seem to really love it, gonna get it as soon as I get a few of my older AAA games finished.
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What's with all these PC games turning a profit after only a couple of days?
Haven't they heard of piracy?-
If only they had included DRM!
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I know you're being facetious, but it's worth noting that the recent examples of this (Alan Wake, Legend of Grimrock) were digital distribution-only affairs with little traditional marketing. They don't have to buy commercial time or ad space Best Buy's spread and they don't have to share the cost of the game with Walmart (although Steam and GOG sales do take a cut).
Perhaps as a result, the games are cheaper. Alan Wake debuted at $30 and Grimrock here is $15 at most. And so people like me are more apt to buy them since they're not a whole lot of risk.
This is a tremendous advantage for the PC over game consoles. Game consoles are absolutely married to retail. When a AAA game comes out on a console you have to go get a copy at a store, face retail shortages, travel somewhere at midnight if you want it on release, etc. since I don't think any of the consoles do DD day-and-date with the disc release. With Steam and DD you can get it day one, no shortages, and it unlocks in your own home at midnight.
Steam pisses off GameStop and so GameStop stops carrying many PC games. Which just means you go to Steam to buy the game and stop setting foot into GameStop. Win/win. If Sony or Microsoft piss off Walmart then Walmart stops carrying their consoles in the store and they're fucked.-
While it's true that digital distribution is generally more convenient than retail, it seems kind of sill to think that Walmart can stop or really seriously dent the sales of consoles or that GameStop stopped carrying PC games because Steam pissed them off.
In the first case, there are a myriad of places to buy consoles and gamers will simply go there instead. In the second, GameStop doesn't carry PC games and especially Steam games because they can't be resold the same way console games can and GameStop's profit comes from reselling used games.
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Dear Esther, Amnesia, Witcher, I could go on. PC games do well, and their development and marketing costs are potentially lower. If you're not going to be Madden or CoD, console sales take a ton of capital for quite the gamble.
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He means just looking up guides and faqs. I strongly recommend avoiding both.
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For your first playthrough, there's really no difference between a static and a randomized dungeon, might as well go through it at least once.
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This game is not designed at all for randomized content. The levels, puzzles, secrets, and loot distribution are all obviously meticulously crafted. You can literally spend hours on each floor and constantly find new areas to explore.
More dungeons will no doubt come in the form of new content releases from the developers, and I've heard murmurs that they are going to release a map editor at some point.
Not every game needs randomization, especially not this game.-
I like this game as it stands but I think some clever randomization could work out in its favor.
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Seriously love this game.
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Fucking awesome, they deserve it. Looking forward to future games by them.
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Bought the game yesterday, ended up playing til 2am. This is how old school games should be brought to the present tech. Same addicting gameplay with polished and detailed graphics. No need to overthink a successful game design and 'innovate', just clean it up and refresh it with today's graphics tech! This game is FUN to play. Imagine that!
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so what they should have done with Diablo III?
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Ironically, I've had friends ask me what Diablo 3 offers over a game like WoW, which has a more tangible progression and end game, and my response was that Diablo 3 was actually fun to play.
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WoW was insanely fun to play 6, 7 years ago.
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It was... Kinda. If anything there are more buttons to press these days, in fact a lot more. I don't know why it feels so mechanical, except that it's just totally played out and uninteresting and..... Easy.
The absolute and complete lack of challenge in all the questing content is probably the biggest issue. It's like they spent literally all their time trying to figure out how to make a more cinematic game experience in an MMO.
Anyway, so far I think D3 is much faster paced and variable, I like very much!
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This game gets a lot more serious when you step down into level 4. I've had a few fights were I had one guy alive, keeping the enemy on a diagonal, and swinging and moving when the enemy moves so I get and attack and am gone before he gets turned. I've also had to cheat and consult guides a couple times - all (all) the good loot is behind secrets and I'm getting concerned that I'm going to be fucked later for missing secrets and just sucking at video games in general.
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I am zealously avoiding all guides. So much of the game is about having a keen eye and being a good investigator/problem solver. I find the mental aspects of this game incredibly satisfying to discover and conquer. Seriously one of the best experiences I've ever had with puzzles and secrets in a game.
I feel like reading guides and just following the steps someone wrote is the exact opposite of what this game is all about. -
The beginning of level 4 is kicking my ass :(
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Interesting. I assume you mean buying off of http://www.grimrock.net/buy/
I may just grab it from there instead then!
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I'm always curious about the details of reports like this. I wonder what they consider to be development costs? Are they including the human labor, or just out of pocket expenses?
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Well for that matter, is Almost Human a developer with an office and a payroll or is it a bunch of dudes programming in their spare time? i.e., ere there even labor costs yet?
I would think that in the case of Remedy's claims about Alan Wake's PC success they are considering labor costs.-
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Yeah, exactly; it'd be nice to know approximately what their "costs" were so we know how successful this is.
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Someone asked this question on their blog. This was their response:
"It’s the salaries, rent, hardware and any other costs that have cropped up during the development Legend of Grimrock. That being said our salaries have not been astronomical and the development time has been comparatively short which has helped keeping the costs down but regardless we are very very happy with the sales regardless."
Hope this answers your question.-
That exactly answers it! It includes their salaries which was mainly what I was wondering. I wasn't sure if they were a "in our spare time" type outfit where they don't actually value their time
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Not in one year like they did, but lots of indie games started as a "in our spare time" project and they only went full time during the final months
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I'm terrible at these games now. I can't even get off of the first floor.
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I just got buttfucked by a room full of spiders. I love this damn game.
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rule34'd?
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[deleted]
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Use one of the blue, standing crystals which also restores your entire party to max health and autosaves your game in an autosave slot
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Okay I fucking love this game, but have not really played this genre and have looked up ZERO info other than the in game tutorial, but don't want to spoil more than necessary.
1. I started playing on easy because of all the comments on how hard it is. Is normal so hard that that you could potentially get stuck?
2. How many types of crafting are there? Can I make bombs? -
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I made a mess of my Rogue 8-(
For some reason I pumped points into Assassination to get the "hit from back row" perk, then didn't put any points into daggers :( I started pumping up missile weapons for some reason, but found throwing stuff was awesome, but it's impossible to change from bow/arrows to daggers during a fight. I think it would have been amazing to have assassination + daggers + dodge + throwing. Dagger in one hand, shurikens/throwing axes in the other.. hit from range and backstab up close without having to change any weapons. As it is, missile weapons + dodge with wastes assassin skills = my rogue.
On the other hand, my bugman chitin filled hand-to-hand brawler is f'ing awesome :D
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huh how about that.. the devs originally did a different early concept game, called "Escape from Dragon Mountain" which was originally called "Dungeon Master 2000"!
But it actually didn't have grid movement.. wow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Put6IOUUYLI
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there is a list of spells for legend of grimrock here:
http://bit.ly/grimrockspells
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