List of indie RPGs

Found a great thread at rpgcodex forums. Advanced gamers post links to different indie cRPG projects. So, CRPGs - post 'em if you find. I hope you'll find something useful.

Teudogar and the Alliance with Rome

Recently I've tried Ultima-like cRPG Teudogar and the Alliance with Rome. Developers assure that their game is just great. Here is the list of features:

* large and diverse game world
Meet kings and warriors, noble ladies and slaves, peasants and priestesses, legionaries and barbaric mercenaries. Explore Teutonic villages and farmsteads, royal halls and miserable huts, sacred groves and Roman camps, and countless forests, swamps and caves.

* eventful and exciting plot
Negotiate with stubborn chieftains, win legendary duels and bloody battles, overcome insidious intrigues, consult seers, liberate a village, fight for a woman, find treasures, capture Roman arms, overthrow a king, and many other adventures.

* multiple different storylines
Become farmer or merchant, warlord or pensioner, Roman mercenary, or king of your tribe. Countless sub-plots, and great freedom of action in every game situation.

* historically authentic and informative
While playing this game you'll learn a lot about our barbaric ancestors and the Romans. Game world, plot and texts are historically correct up to the smallest details. The game also includes an online encyclopedia on Teutons and Romans (100 pages).

* classic role-playing features
As you play your way through the game you'll gain experience, improve your skills, arm yourself with chain mail shirts or Roman weapons, learn wizardry, capture booty, hunt for treasures, or trade goods. What kind of skills and character you develop depends only on your actions.

* detailed and realistic game world
You can talk to all characters within the game world, barter with them, make friends or quarrel with them. All objects within the game world can be used and have realistic attributes. People produce new goods, merchants sell their wares. The entire surrounding of each location can be explored.

* strong artificial intelligence
All persons within the game have their own daily schedules, relationships, plans, and views. They act realistically in everyday life and interaction with others, and they react intelligently and naturally to everything the player says or does. All persons are aware of their surroundings, the player and other persons, or interesting events, and they can refer to these during dialogs.



Free demo version is only 6 Mb.

Promising RPG-projects

Last year I strongly felt lack of new RPGs. I mean old-fashioned well-designed RPGs with thousand strings of dialogs, unexpected plot turns, vivid characters and complicated gameplay. Now it seems RPGs are popular again. All RPG-playing world discuss Oblivion, approaching Gothic 3 and Neverwinter Nights 2. But Oblivion is so far from RPGs, which I mention above. Neverwinter Nights 2 disturbs me more and more. The only hope is Gothic, but who knows.

Luckily this year I noticed two pretentious projects by obscure teams. It seems these people are hardcore old-school RPG fans and they know what is needed. They concentrate on games’ filling, so graphics are simple (but in any case this is much better then Adom-like games).



“The Age of Decadence” by Iron Tower Studios



“Eschalon: Book I” by Basilisk Games

Upd.: both teams on realease date say: "It will be done when it is done"

Two Ideas On How To Write Exciting Texts

I wish to learn writing exciting texts, but it’s not so easy. Well, it’s almost impossible. Of course, you’ll reach some level if you write and write and write, but...

So what are the ways to progress in your writing style? I’ve two ideas.

1. At worth1000.com I found not only Photoshop contests, but also text contests. You need to invent some short witty text on the instructions. It’s a great training. You read other variants, compare them with yours, see the clichés, learn some tricks. Good school.

2. Read books, especially books by classical authors with beautiful language.

Plan B

These New Google Features Are Great :)

I've already blogging here for about 2 weeks and noticed some drawbacks but these Google new features (especially new template customization system and tags which are for some reason called "labels") made me happy. Really :)

Photoshop Contests At Worth1000.com

Often using Photoshop for routine matters I dreamt of making collages (like these). And finally my dream comes true (nice cliché, heh). Yesterday I registered at worth1000.com, read a lot of rules and guidelines and now suppose I know what to do.

Photoshop contests for beginners are held constantly and I’ve already participated some. My results, hmm…, I wish they were more prominent. My first successful image I’ll post here and hope soon. So one more useful site is worth1000.com (what a piece of news!)

In Search Of Worthy Blogs

It seems the quantity of blogs keeps on growing from day to day. It’s excellent. And the same time it’s terrible. The ratio between worthy and worthless blogs changes constantly. Suppose these changes are negative.

What are the ways to find some interesting content?

One of the most popular ways is visiting aggregating sites (joint blogs, catalogs of blogs) where there’s not so much content but a lot of links sorted and categorized. The main minus is that in some way you don’t choose what to read and to look. Everything is done for you. You see only what other people shows to you, what is interesting to the most of the audience. But the advantages of such sites trump the drawbacks. It’s a really great way to find nice blogs and sites quickly and surely.

The other method is searching by yourself, browsing and browsing lots of pages. The efficiency of this way is quite low, but the results may be fine. Blogger.com fit for exploring badly. That links in your profile (interests, movies, books) works poorly.

Still everything is not so bad :) Google provides a powerful tool for searching blogs at blogsearch.google.com. Use Advanced Blog Search page to tweak your queries and get incredible results.