Indie Passageway of the Ancients - Baldur's Gate-Like RPG with Dual-Persona Character Development

[mediocrepoet]

I normally dislike RtwP, but I'm still excited for this one. It has this unique quality, you feel it's a project fueled by love and passion for the genre, immediately after looking at it. They always grab my attention, in the sea of souless products masquerading as RPGs.

Have you tried the demo? I'd recommend it, see what you think.

Spoiler

• I assume the writing is ESL and is an interesting "big brain" word salad for most of it with a few typos / missing words in sentences.
• The assets and UI kind of remind me of Din's Curse in terms of budget and presentation.The RTwP combat feels weightless and uninteresting (but this could just be the tutorial - I didn't have interest in playing more of it tbh).
• There are a lot of combat options and that could be interesting, though the implementation is fairly clunky (menu options, save menu, watch it play out by way of autoattack.
• This kind of sucks because it feels like the video game version of an Ed Wood movie: lots of passion and an earnest attempt at making something great, but not matched by the prowess required to pull it off. I hope it comes together and is a good time for anyone who picks it up on release, but right now I just don't see it.

 

[d1nolore]

I’m going to give the demo another go this weekend. Had some issues last time

 

[JonG]

Have you tried the demo? I'd recommend it, see what you think.

Thanks for the recommendation

 

[mediocrepoet]

Have you tried the demo? I'd recommend it, see what you think.

Thanks for the recommendation

Is the demo still representative of what you're expecting for the release version of the game?

 

[JonG]

I’m going to give the demo another go this weekend. Had some issues last time

We will be posting a major update to the Demo by Friday please check it out!

 

[JonG]

mediocrepoet​

We hope the full version will be quite a bit more than the demo. Pleas check out the new version of the demo that will be available late Friday

​

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

JonG Any fixes to the character model faces?

 

[JonG]

@JonG Any fixes to the character model faces?

Exactly what do you mean by fixes to character model faces?

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

@JonG Any fixes to the character model faces?

Exactly what do you mean by fixes to character model faces?

The eyeliner on non-asian males because of some problems with character models

This issue you are pointing out has its origins in the fact that some of our models have issues with the way eyes were modelded and textured and the fix unfortunately make them look a bit dicey sorry for the irritation.

 

[JonG]

to BosanskiSeljak​

Oh yes that one! No that would take a core change to the base model's primary textures. That would be difficult to change at this point. I believe we have more than one Asian like group represented on Arieyon try one of the others. Also try morphing the eyes on your selected character this may blunt at least part of the problem.

 

[d1nolore]

Gave the demo another try, it’s definitely updated. Fixed issue I had with effeminate male characters, particularly when you change ethnic. So definitely can make masculine characters now. It’s actually quite interesting how customisable body shape is considering it’s an indy game you don’t get that often.

Looks like they listened to feedback as it has some good improvements. Lock picking was fixed for me. Tutorial videos better I think. Combat definitely less clunky as you can right click to attack. Not sure what to think about the combat options menu, not something I think I’d like. But need to delve more into combat to get a better feel.

One thing I think would be very good to add would be highlighting characters that are selected so you can see directly in game which ones are selected. At the moment the green circle does not change colour when you select the character, only the portrait indicates it, so you have to keep eyeing the portraits to see who’s selected, and who’s not.

Game engine needs some updates but would recommend waiting to work on that for the next game and focusing on bugs and quality of life stuff here.

Will see if I’ve more time to play tomorrow

 

[d1nolore]

I’m going to give the demo another go this weekend. Had some issues last time

We will be posting a major update to the Demo by Friday please check it out!

Played demo some more.

Feedback:
Weapon sheathing is cool but if it’s sheathed before combat and you click to attack your character will run over and then unsheathe which gives the enemy 3 attacks before you fight back. Maybe fix the sequence so the character unsheathes first then runs over. I know you can just unsheathe with the button but casting sheathes and it’s easy to forget.

Allow spells to be cast on a character by selecting also the portrait icon.

I know it’s the starting house but there’s so many containers, takes like half an hour to loot it all. It’s a tiresome practice as you are forced to in case you miss anything. Consider less lootable furniture in general and more static furniture. The green highlighting vs white is good but why not just make furniture static and non-interactable if it was alway empty. Less lootable stuff and more static stuff would make the screen way less busy. Like think of your kitchen: there’s 15+ cupboards and draws, how many would contain items worth looking at? Clicking 15+ objects is not overly fun when you could just click one draw for a kitchen knife and the freezer for hidden cash.

I like the look of the skill tree very cool, and am getting more use to the combat options. Overall quite like it so far.