RPGCodex Poll for 2019 of 101 Greatest RPGs Of All Time[rpgcodex.net]

Only 22nd? I knew I should have fixed that stacking algorithm.

Ranking here[docs.google.com].

Pretty good for an indie.

Note that with the exception of Underrail (which is a fantastic post-apocalyptic game) that every other game on that list higher than Grimoire cost at least a million bucks and had a minimum of a dozen people working full-time on it under real producers. Grimoire is the only game in the top 25 of that list that was mostly written on a laptop during a train commute.

I am currently working on the next update for the game, which will feature a new splash screen (just for the novelty) and numerous small enhancements in addition to the usual tweaks/bug fixes.

Update 2.0.0.20

• INT (Intelligence) now gains extra skillpoints for characters in MENTAL category at Level Advancement if INT >= 25
  
• Holy fountain effects regain SPIRIT
  
• Persistent spell "Sonic Shield" now working
  
• All spells involving attacks with illusion, hypnosis or light now have improved saving throws if persistent spell MIRROR MIRAGE or GAZE REFLECTION is active
  
• Crafts succeed with much lower skill in required skills once craft is acquired.
  
• Bug fixed applying poison to target on penetration in weapons poisoned by crafting
  
• Initial skills for races/professions are based on a 3D6 roll plus any bonus modifiers for their race-class combination
  
• Fixed Demonhead Coin Easter Egg
  
• Fixed Owl Miniquest
  
• Energy firearms correctly discharge power cells
  
• Lethal blow for open handed fighting for Assassins/Jesters only with LETHAL BLOW > 75
  
• MEDITATION skill now enhances SCRIBE skill when scribing spellbooks
  
• "ACCURACY" skill added to To-Hit bonus for ALL Thrown, Shot, Lashed and Hurled weapons
  
• Heal, regain magic points and restore vitality at double the normal metabolic rate sleeping in front of a hearth
  
• Fixes to some text formatting in message window
  
• Small fixes to interface to improve keyboard support
  
• Improvements to encounter groups and some monster data

Update 2.0.0.15

New icon with tooltip for dropping items on the cell.

Resistances can now improve versus CONSTITUTION, up to a maximum of 60 out of 100 or the race limit for the resistance. Each time your character saves versus some kind of attack in the game, they have a small chance of increasing their resistance to those kinds of attacks depending on their CONSTITUTION ! Note that this is impossible until a character's CON reaches at least 50 or higher ! This is an incentive to increase a character's CONSTITUTION at level advancement, especially with weaker characters like Feyfolk and Aeorbs. Eventually the resistance will increase by successfully saving against attacks that apply a save versus that resistance. This is actually an original game rule in Grimoire that was simply commented back in. At the end of combats you will get a notification that a certain party member's resistance(s) have improved.

Update 2.0.0.14

A longstanding bug involving a combination of keystrokes with clicks on the Inventory Hoard Selector box has been fixed. This bug was fixed thanks to excellent feedback on how to reproduce it. If you find any bug in Grimoire, please see if you can describe how to reproduce it in a reliable fashion. If you were holding down the ENTER key while clicking some of the buttons in this box with an item selected, it was crashing because of the keyboard buffer overflowing with keys in the middle of a redraw/repaint event. It was also possible to lock down the buttons doing this when they were disabled and then flipped to enabled while clicking and holding down the ENTER key. All of these problems are now fixed. Any other bugs related to this kind of bug are also fixed.

Some minor glitches with monster attacks and some use of items around NPCs (caused by absent data) also fixed.

Update 2.0.0.12

I have uploaded an extensive new version with far superior indicators for level advancement, new skills at character creation, fixes to items, spells, weapons and an assert fix.

When you advance a level and have undistributed points, spells or increases remaining you get an icon over top of where the individual leap to Inventory Workshop is now until you have distributed them all. I thought it might help as a reminder. Also the funny glitch exiting after only selecting two spells is fixed. Many, many other minor glitches fixed.

If you have played Grimoire and enjoyed it, please write a review for it!

If 10% of the players who have enjoyed Grimoire would write a review of it, the game would be rated overwhelmingly positive in only 24 hours.

Early on, Grimoire was subject to an organized campaign that was coordinated on Reddit, Quarter to Three, Broken Forum and many private forums with political slants (no gamers, just social justice warriors) to abuse the refund policy on Steam by purchasing the game, letting it run for a few minutes and then writing a bad review before asking for a refund. Many of these "reviews" made it obvious that the "owner" had never played the game and almost looked like it was copied and pasted in from a forum somewhere, basically rehashing things that never happened and bugs that never were and issues that only existed in the minds of people at Reddit. This was all politically motivated by the same sort of people who screamed at the sky in public in huge crowds because Donald Trump won the election. For example, over a hundred people agreed on a forum that it was racist and cultural appropriation that one of the pirates in the game was named "Black Pierre." I wish I could make stuff up like this, it would make for a fantastic narrative but I am afraid even my talents fall short in the face of this kind of delusional thinking. I'm glad now I never put in that "Blackboard Puzzle" I was thinking about that was solved using "Oreo" cookies.

Incredibly, many of the people who "refunded" the game simply made a pirate copy and have been playing the game for over a year, whilst asking for support on the forum and playing very intensively for hundreds of hours. With the release of V2, I started to ban these people if they didn't have the purchase icon beside their names on the forum. You have to draw the line somewhere.

I estimate based on downloads from pirate sites that Grimoire has been downloaded and played by over a 100,000 people for well over a hundred hours on average. I don't really care about piracy because I wasn't making a game like Grimoire for pirates. I was making it for fans of the genre.

Any game that goes on Steam has to put up with some of the great diversity in the Steam user pool, which is considerable. I don't believe Grimoire currently has a fair rating on Steam at all and I think it's been deliberately skewed by politically motivated attacks the same as Donald Trump has been in the newspapers the past 3 years. If you want to help correct this situation and you enjoyed playing the game, please take 5 minutes to post a review.

The average game on Steam is never played at all or else only a couple hours before it is abandoned forever. Grimoire is one of the only games on Steam that people can play for 300 hours and then complain because they think this or that race does not recharge mana fast enough - or because their party got killed by a monster. Think about how crazy that is, then think about that plus a person who has actually pirated the game complaining in this fashion. You can see why supporting users on Steam can be very "challenging" and now you know why people call them "precious snowflakes." There's entitlement ... then there is entitlement. If you want to help Grimoire and you enjoy the game, please take a few minutes to write a review.

The manual is online hosted at the Golden Era Games site :

Grimoire Manual Version 1.0[goldeneragames.com]

This is convenient until the permanent copy for printing is ready. The online manual will be updated regularly until it reflects any detail remaining to enjoy playing the game.

Some of the tables are formatted oddly but revisions to these layouts will correct them so they print off correctly for hard copies.

The manual is currently around 100 pages, will probably be 200 pages when it is ready to ship as a hardback.

There is an "Australia Day Sale" on presently for Grimoire at 50% off until the 29th of January.

The latest update to V2 will be available soon with numerous further enhancements to gameplay.

Have put an updated build on Steam that fixes a possible glitch in inventory management and a couple changes to configuration to protect users from screwing up their own configuration file so badly they have to delete it to get the default.

You should not be able to set a screen mode or scaling in configuration unless fullscreen mode is first set to ON. Otherwise both these values will remain at defaults for a windowed mode. I suspect this might solve some problems where users toy with their configuration file and set something like a windowed mode with scaling and a different screen resolution on.

Working on the manual every day, should be out by this Friday. Almost all Grimoire milestones are due next Friday and this one is no different. The manual is bound to come out by next Friday.

There has been a fairly brisk trade going on in micro-issues, minor patches, tiny bug fixes and tweaks since Version 2 went up shortly before Christmas.

Response to the game is good, it is selling really well. I am working on the manual here, mainly adjusting the tables from the games so they are formatted correctly in the glossary and updating them to reflect changes to the data that has taken place in the past couple of months.

The new game feels and plays substantially better than the first incarnation for many reasons. This often happens as a result of feedback from many people playing it for long periods of time. A game as complex as a Wizardry really needs 50 testers playing it full time for a couple of years to get it refined, so Grimoire is only now starting to show the mirror polish of a very well adjusted game. I have tweaked the data so many times to try to fine tune it you would not believe it.

If you have enjoyed playing Grimoire, please write a good review for it. It helps enormously. If just 10% of the people who purchased it this previous week wrote a good review the rating would easily move into Positive and stay there for good.

I will continue polishing it before it moves onto other venues next year but I am proud it was on Steam before it was anywhere else, it is truly a great distribution platform for Independent Game Developers. The support for developers behind the scenes is fantastic, believe me.

Version 2 of Grimoire is now live on the Steam Store with a 50% sale through to the New Year! The most incredible old fashioned computer roleplaying game just got a little more awesome!

CURRENT WISHLISTS # : 39,812 (combined)

Huge amounts of tweaks, fixes, adjustments and new content is found in this version, including the crafting workshop and all the item enhancements!

You can see all the items in your inventory, sort them on a variety of attributes like type and value, assay them, poison them, forge them, enchant them and merge them into new items! There is now a forge, alchemy bench, shrine and hearth in the game where different classes acquire various crafting arts they can apply to items to modify them or greatly improve them in combat!

The manual is being output to .PDF shortly and will be made available on the store from the main page freely so it can be examined by players who have not yet purchased the game to get a good feel for the mechanics. It is extremely extensive and explains all facets of gameplay with detailed explanations of all modes including combat, NPC interaction, character creation, level up, character review and the many mini interfaces like lockpicking and door forcing. It is suitable for printing and formatted for A4 output.

Beginning a new game from the classic game start will reveal new monster graphics and additional features have been added to the original maps. None of this should affect existing save games but players who have completed these areas may not see some of the new events. This will not affect the new regions at all which constitute brand new areas in the game.

If everybody who enjoys playing Grimoire wrote a review for it, we'd have 95% positive rating on Steam! Please write a review for Grimoire if you have had fun playing the game, even if you are now in a second playthrough! Help push Grimoire back up to it's original 92% positive rating before the assault of the SJW refunders!

You may believe that a single roleplaying game could not fulfill all your deepest desires and wildest dreams. That's because you have not played V2 of Grimoire.

In Grimoire V2 these are just a few of the things you will be able to experience:

• Travel to the ends of time and back (or beyond)
  
• Hunt down exotic insects for the Rhattu Mafia
  
• Reach your personal potential at the world renowned Mass Gainers Spa
  
• Bust up an evil cult of Wyrm worshippers at midnight
  
• Enjoy a glamorous lifestyle as a high roller at the casino tables
  
• Have psychedelic visions of other worlds
  
• Explore the realm of the Titans and an abandoned village
  
• Actually cast purify air spell and have it purify the air

The manual is only a couple of hours away from being completed!

YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT COULD HAPPEN THIS WEEK!

For 25 years I have simply wanted to add some minigames to Grimoire when higher priority items were finally completed. I solved this problem to release V1 by cutting out the Rhattu Casino altogether, saving me all the work I would need to do to stock it with minigames. I figured I would do that at a later date and so I have. Nobody would ever miss it if they never knew it was supposed to be in there until I did finish it off.

I know it is ridiculous and largely non-essential for any game but the truth is that Might&Magic and Bard's Tale and many of the other great classic blobbers had minigames thrown into them. I always felt that in order for any RPG to be considered for inclusion into the ranks of the classics, you had to have some minigames in there somewhere.

The minigames are done now. They are short, fun, zero learning curve and add a bit of color to the Rhattu's underground gambling casino where text might have sufficed but would not have been as much fun. The casino and it's inhabitants figure into the general plot with the two Paragons that have been restored to the storyline in place of just the one that was there before. Khan Raji now explains that one of the Paragons was hidden in the Grand Refuge of the Ancients - but the other one was pawned to the Rhattu mob when the Imperial Palace became desperate for money. We have to investigate to determine what the mob wants in return for giving the Paragon back to the Palace. This entails exploration of the now expanded regions like the Titan Mines and the Fissure.