I just wanted to follow up on something I got completely wrong on my last post about Sword of the Stars: The Pit.
I griped about not knowing what statistic impacts which skills. I was looking for some kind of textual pop-up menu or something to explain this to me, but developer Kerberos Productions reached out to me on Twitter to point out I wasn’t seeing what was right in front of my face. Stats and skills each have an icon that indicates how they’re connected. I’ve highlighted the column of icons in this screenshot.
Turns out I was way off! Next time I dive into The Pit I’ll be better prepared!
When a game contains “Sword of the Stars” in the title, the first thing you think of is space, right? Ships and planets and mining and tech upgrades…SotS is an established space-based 4X IP.
So the first thing I have to tell you about Sword of the Stars: The Pit is to forget all about that. The Pit is actually a sci-fi based roguelike. It is set in the SotS universe, but don’t worry if you’ve never played those games (disclaimer: I haven’t… crazy right?); that’s all just for flavor. The story, if you must know, is that a plague is turning the entire population of a planet into ghouls and the only hope for a cure lies at the bottom of a fabled pit in the Feldspar Mountains where the Suul’ka (I guess if you’re a SotS player you know who the Suul’ka are) once had a base.
So off you go, you brave Scout or Marine or Engineer you, to delve deep in an attempt to find the cure.
This is an old school rogue game. Turn-based combat, random effects on consumables, permadeath (actually I haven’t died yet but I’m assuming it has permadeath) and a constant tension between your two primary resources: health and food. Health slowly regenerates over time, but as it does, hunger grows, and food is scare in the pit.
If you don’t like Roguelikes, stop here. There’s nothing about The Pit that is going to change your mind. If you do like them, read on.
The Pit has a ton of stuff in it. You’re constantly scrounging resources and finding machines that you can use to craft those resources into something usable, in theory. Your first problem (besides all the beasties and bots that want to end you) is that many of these machines are damaged. Luckily you have a chance to repair them. I’ve been playing a Scout and she’s not great at repairing these things and more often than not they go from “Damaged” to “Ruined” when she tries. I suspect the Engineer is better at this, and I fear the Marine is probably damned near hopeless.
Which brings me immediately to my biggest gripe with The Pit. Your stats are never explained. You can guess that Strength influences melee attacks. Brains probably helps with all the crafting skills, which leaves Finesse to control how accurate you are. But I’m just guessing and I’d like to know for sure. Update: I got this bit completely wrong. See this post for details but the short version is that stats and skills all have icons to indicate how they are inter-connected.
Same with Skills. Does the Melee skill only influence bare-fisted punching, or does it also enhance the Knife and Blade skills. Speaking of which, what’s the different between “Knife” and “Blade” anyway? I was ‘born’ with a Knife..maybe there are swords in the game only I haven’t found one yet?
Not a deal breaker but it’d be nice to know this stuff.
I like a good Roguelike and so far I’m liking The Pit an awful lot. I’ve only gotten down to level 7 (of 30) and my Scout is level 6, and I’m playing on Normal level (2nd of 4 in increasing order of difficulty). The first couple of levels were a little easy but I still had my moments.
There’s nothing quite like the heartache of having your weapons and armor damaged badly, finding a broken repair station and, in attempting to bring it online, ruining it completely. After that happened I took to using my fists on a lot of the easier enemies since I’ve only got this one knife and if it breaks I’m screwed. I do have a couple of pistols of course, and so far ammo isn’t a huge concern, but as a roguelike player, your instinct is to hoard things.
Like grenades. I was hoarding every frag grenade I found. Then I stepped on a trap that destroyed my entire supply of frag grenades? Fiendish! What kind of evil mind came up with that? Stranger still, some traps have beneficial effects, like speed boosts or even heals.
For the more ‘serious’ roguelike players, there might actually be too much stuff going on. You have to collect or discover recipes to craft with (I’m guessing those are the same from game to game) and in addition to the potions with random effects that most roguelikes have (here called serums) there are bio mods for both weapons and armor that likewise have random effects. In my game so far I’ve consumed a purple serum that knocked my Brain stat down two points permanently, a black armor bio mod that bumped up the armor rating of a piece of gear by 10%, and a black weapon bio mode that improved the weapon’s durability by 20%.
A few aspects do set The Pit apart from the other roguelikes I’ve played. First, when you level (at least on Normal difficulty) your health returns to 100%. That makes things a lot easier. Every time you level you also get points to use to increase your main attributes (Strength, Precision, Brains) and your many skills.
Second, the game incorporates a field of view mechanic. Monsters can sneak up on you if they approach from your blind spot (which is fairly small). The tried old roguelike mechanic of running away gets more tense when you can’t see if the monster is still chasing you, and if it’s gaining on you!
If I’ve piqued your interest, there’s a six level demo that you can try out, or if you want to jump right in, the game is only $8.99 on GamersGate. That’s an introductory price that’s good for a week. After that it’ll be $9.99.
Oh, and there’s a tutorial that’ll teach you how to play. It features an annoyingly abrasive ‘drill sargent’ and mostly you won’t need it to learn how to play, but it does give you a glimpse of what you can expect as you venture deeper into The Pit. The first couple levels are pretty basic.
A few tips:
C brings up the stat page
Escape aborts rest mode
Hey, I tried making a video… this is the first time I’ve every tried to narrate a game I’m playing and I had both technical and performance problems (turns out I don’t multi-task well) but dammit, I made it, I’m gonna post it!
I was really looking forward to the release of Fire Emblem: Awakening and so far I haven’t been the least bit disappointed. I’m loving it!
This time out Fire Emblem has two modes: Classic and Casual. In Classic mode, any unit that is killed in battle is gone for good (unless it’s one of the main two characters in which case it’s Game Over). In Casual mode, they’re just out for the battle and bounce back up after you win. I first started playing in Classic mode but got to a point where I couldn’t get through a fight without losing a ‘major’ character. I thought I’d spread my experience around too thin and that I didn’t have a powerful enough party to get through the next fight, so I decided to start over.
And in so doing, I decided to go with Casual Mode. I knew if I picked Classic mode and got in the same jam and had to start over a third time, I probably wouldn’t. So I restarted, got to the same point as in my Classic game and beat the battle I was stuck on, even though my characters were about the same level.
So then I went back to my Classic game, tried one more time, and got through the battle without losing anyone. So now I have 2 games running concurrently, which makes me feel a bit more brave about my Classic game. I decided I’m going to move forward with it and if a character dies, he or she dies. No more bailing out on a game because a soldier has fallen.
But I can’t just let them die without commemorating them in some way…but that’s what my blog is for!
He shouldn’t have been with us. Chrom had ordered him to stay back at Headquarters to guard it, but young Ricken had other plans. When we accompanied the Exalt to confront the King of Plegia, Ricken secretly followed us, and it was a good thing he did. It was Ricken who rescued Mirabelle, though in truth we nearly lost them both, cut off as they were. But our forces prevailed, the Plegians routed, and we headed home.
Had we only stayed true to our path.
Instead we wandered the countryside a bit, visiting shops in an attempt to restock our gear. It was while doing this that we came upon a Merchant Caravan being attacked by Barbarians. We rushed in to help. It was a chaotic battle, with some of our troops headed to the entrance of a nearby village to help a lone defender and others picking off straggler Barbarians in preparation for confronting their boss. In all the confusion, Ricken paused for a rest within range of several enemy archers. They skirted past our armored defenders and peppered him with arrows. Tragically, Ricken fell. The archers paid the ultimate price but alas, that won’t bring Ricken back. His youthful enthusiasm will be missed.
At least the village, and the mysterious woman who was defending it, were both saved. Ricken would be pleased to know that much, at least.
Your sacrifice will be remembered, Ricken! You were the first of us to fall but I fear you will not be the last. We have a long and bloody war ahead of us.
I’m still messing around with LeapDay and learning a little more all the time. The goal, as developer Danc pointed out in the comments to my last post, is to save the land from evil ghosts. In order to do that you have to (as step 1 anyway) defrost towers and then deliver a specific item to them. I’ve gotten a tower defrosted and found it needed Polished Gems, made with 1 water, 1 stone, and 1 wildcard (anything as the 3rd component).
I set up a track and a factory to build polished gems easily enough but actually getting the gems to the tower is going to be a bigger challenge. The Flans that travel the roads will pick up any resource they walk past. So I can’t run this deliver road past anything but the factory pick-up spot and the tower where I’m delivering the gems. Otherwise the Flan will pick up some other resource and just circle around with it endlessly (the tower will only accept Polished Gems). I solved this issue with an elaborate series of 3 cranes, as shown here (you might want to click to get the full sized version):
The problem now is I need 5 houses (at least) to spawn Flans. 1 for the Polished Gem making track, one for the delivery track, and one each for all 3 of those little 1 square sections of road (these will span a Flan who just sits in one place accepting a Polished Gem from one crane and passing it along to the next crane, I hope.
Sadly I don’t have the $$ to do that yet so I have to put my project on hold until later tonight. I still have really big questions around whether or not I’ll get a Polished Gem to that tower before the day runs out. I might have to add additional Flans to the builder track and/or upgrade from the cheap dirt roads to faster stone ones.
What a compelling game… you really need to try it. But be prepared to do a lot of thinking and trial and error when you do. For instance you might wonder why I don’t move the factory closer to the Tower. If I did that I’d pass more water resources and would be in danger of getting 3 water in my factory which would then produce (I think) a barrel of water, which the delivery system would hand off to the delivery Flan and the tower wouldn’t accept, thus gumming up the whole works.
Things I learned:
After your first game (which takes 4 days of real time) you’ll unlock trains and train tracks.
This is 100% a co-operative game. You and the other 7 people on your map all win or you all lose. There’s no ‘score’ to compare yourself to other players so there’s no incentive to trying to ‘beat out’ the other guy. Quite the contrary.
I just wanted to follow up on something I got completely wrong on my last post about Sword of the Stars: The Pit.
