The Drunken Lizard Pub

First I'd like to say I'm a big fan of the idea behind this company and I couldn't praise its founder more. He's trying to make games he likes and which obviously a lot of us like. Eschalon 1 focuses heavily on story and character and setting--all of which inexplicably seem to be concepts lost by bigger companies.

I would love to see Basilisk stick around for years and I fully expect to buy every game it manages to put out.

That said, I was a bit surprised by the pacing of this game. It just seemed to be getting started--when suddenly it ended. I'm not sure why I felt that way, but I definitely did.

This isn't to say it wasn't worth the money. Absolutely it was. I compare it, though, to the great old Thomas Proudfoot game...what was it? Natuk? Nahlakh? Whichever was the first one. That one seemed to last and last.

Apples and oranges, of course. Maybe it was that the Proudfoot game had random encounters (of which I'm not really that big a fan and which honestly I don't even remember it had).

But I also think of those terrific Isle of Yendor games--which I played so long ago and gosh now I'm not even sure I'm remembering their titles right. Whatever they were called (there were 3 of them), I played them almost non-stop, from what I remember--interrupted only by real life. But even though I played them really quickly, they had pacing and seemed long.

Maybe it's that the zones here didn't seem that much progressively tougher....I'm just not sure, but I do feel as though if I could put my finger on it I'd do Basilisk a service by identifying whatever the cause of the sensation was.

High quality, immersive, interesting--but not much pacing and a surprisingly quick ending. Wonder what that's about. Hm.

Thanks for the kind words.

One thing to note is that this was our first game, so it was hard for us to judge balancing and game length. As for the game ending abruptly, the entire storyline was broken into 3 "books" so there was no easy way to give a deeply satisfying ending to the first game. In fact, Book 2 is likely to leave you hanging even more, while Book 3 is going to be one long "ending" for the entire trilogy.

BasiliskWrangler wrote:Thanks for the kind words.

One thing to note is that this was our first game, so it was hard for us to judge balancing and game length. As for the game ending abruptly, the entire storyline was broken into 3 "books" so there was no easy way to give a deeply satisfying ending to the first game. In fact, Book 2 is likely to leave you hanging even more, while Book 3 is going to be one long "ending" for the entire trilogy.

Yeah I actually was thinking that probably the sequence won't be able to be really measured until all 3 are out. Also as essentially a one-man operation (which I seem to remember your saying in an article/post somewhere) it must have been a heck of a lot of work, particularly given that you had no idea if there'd be a market for it.

I remember reading Tom Proudfoot saying somewhere or other that he just didn't make any money from Nahlakh....So Book 1 must have been a real labor of love. A lot of mundane and picayune work in coding, too. Plus of course the very people who'd love this game would tend to pirate it--a whole other issue there. I remember (this'll date me) the fellow who created Wrath of Denethenor complained about how badly his game had been pirated--and this was before Mosaic, so hardly anyone (relatively) knew of the net. That was a nice game, too.

Anyhow a simple google will find the web site for the creator of that game. (Unsure if posting links here is encouraged).

The nice thing about the length of Book I is that it's no big deal to run through the game two or three times to find stuff that you missed, and try out different character types/stat combinations. Or, if you're like me, it helps when writing fan fiction and you need to play through a section a few times for inspiration.... ^_^

Being the explorer-type, I tend to put a lot of hours into a game... so games designed with 30-40 hours of gameplay tend to take me 50-60 hours to complete. Problem is, after that initial finish I generally have no desire to start up another game and give it another go. The only other RPGs that I've played through multiple times were Finally Fantasy VI and Neverwinter Nights. The former was a bit of an obsession, and the later I hadn't finished on the initial run through.

It's sort of refreshing to be able to play through an RPG in a short enough time where I don't mind going back for more.