GameBanshee caught this little gem from Gamepro, published this past Thursday:

The PC version of the Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII double pack from independent developer Zeboyd Games launched yesterday alongside Gaslamp Games’ charming roguelike Dungeons of Dredmor. All three are excellent games and well worth your time — cheap, too.

But apparently you don’t need me to tell you that, because the two packages have been leapfrogging each other for the top two slots on Steam’s Top Sellers list since yesterday. The developers are, as you might expect, delighted.

“We’re bouncing off the walls here,” said Cthulhu/Breath of Death developer Robert Boyd via Twitter. “I was reading over the Steam contract and it looks like sales data is considered confidential, so I can’t just share sales data whenever I feel like it like I used to. Given that [Cthulhu/Breath of Death has] been high up on the sales chart since it came out, you can probably make your own guesses on how it’s selling!”

“We’re… a little overwhelmed, and also going about with large grins on our faces,” added Nicholas Vining of Gaslamp Games. “Being #1 on Steam — even if we have been cruelly deposed (for now!) by the Curse of Cthulhu Saving the World — is quite the rush. We should ship games more often. Thank you all for your support and patronage; we’re looking forward to kicking it up to the next level.”

That’s some awfully impressive stuff. Given the extremely low price points that helped these games float to the top, I doubt that this is going to convince any AAA studios to stop their increasing tendency towards genre convergence and return to creating unique and diverse types of games.

What this does do, however, is provide a powerful argument that indie studios can do very well for themselves serving the niche markets that AAA studios have failed to serve. We already know that Jeff Vogel does quite well making old school wRPGs; this proves that indies can also sell gangbusters making jRPGs and roguelikes. Today is a good day for indie RPGs.

It’s that time of the month!

…no, not that time of the month, you horrible, horrible people. No, it’s time for another monthly Indie News Roundup, courtesy of Jay Barnson of Rampant Games! You can read the whole thing right here. The gist:

• Age of Decadence will be getting a demo release sometime in November
• Cthulu Saves the World is out and being sold alongside Breath of  Death VII
• Darklight Dungeon Eternity now has a trailer
• Depths of Peril is getting patched to version 1.018
• Dungeons of Dredmor is out and being sold on Steam
• Fated Haven: Chapter One is out
• Frayed Knights beta is progressing smoothly; according to one tester, the game has an estimated total play time of roughly 30 hours on hard difficulty on a repeat playthrough
• Legend of Grimrock was announced
• Planet Stronghold is getting an add-on expansion which appears to introduce extra romance options
• Telepath RPG: Servants of God is getting a major update in the near future, with a simultaneous PC/Mac/Linux-compatible release
• Timelapse Vertigo has an update in its developer diary

Thanks Jay!

There are a few things that this round-up misses, though, so I encourage you to check recent posts on this site to pick up the stragglers.

Mario Gaida has released a free demo of Silversword, a first-person dungeon crawler in the mold of The Bard’s Tale. Gaida says the game uses a d20 system similar to the older versions of Adavanced Dungeons and Dragons.

You can grab the free demo, “SliverswordLite,” on the Apple App Store here. In the meantime, here is a trailer:

Finnish indie developers Almost Human Ltd. have just announced a new first-person dungeon crawler for the PC, Mac and iOS by the name of Legend of Grimrock. They describe the game as a grid-based dungeon delver of the Wizardry variety:

Legend of Grimrock is a fantasy game loaded with underground adventuring, tricky puzzles, combat and role-playing elements. In other words, it’s a dungeon crawl game.

Based on the screenshots they’ve released, it appears you’ll be able to play with a party of 4 characters, and that humans and minotaurs will be among the available races. Also, it’s apparent that the game features some pretty slick graphics. Beyond that, however, details on the game are sparse right now. More info as it comes!

UPDATE: Almost Human have released a short teaser showing off some smooth, smooth in-game animations. Good lord, this game is pretty.

Word has it that Gaslamp Games‘s comedic roguelike Dungeons of Dredmor has just hit Steam at a $5 price point. You can nab it here.

NOTE: As of the time of this writing, Steam is discounting the game 10%, so it’s actually $4.49 a copy.

DOUBLE NOTE: According to Gaslamps’s Twitter, DoD is presently the #3 top-selling game on Steam. Wow!

John Walker of Rock Paper Shotgun has written a review of indie dev Zeboyd‘s new jRPG Cthulu Saves the World. He takes issue with the random battles and magic point balancing, but otherwise seems to enjoy the game.

This comes in the form of a top-down, old-school RPG, reminiscent of Nintendo classics, as you wander pixel lands, visit pixel towns, and conquer pixel caves, all in the search of heroic deeds. And while it’s undoubtedly a spoof, it also remembers to be a coherent, detailed RPG in its own right. The variety of monsters to fight alone is utterly extraordinary. However far through the game I may be, and I’ve been playing for many hours, I’ve encountered literally hundreds of unique enemies, each with particular fighting styles, their own mini-bios, animations, and a special look for when Cthulhu turns them insane.

CStW, in other words, is a traditional jRPG. Interestingly, it functions a bit like Deadly Sin 2 in that random battles eventually cut off. Rather than letting the player find and deactivate a monster node, however, each screen has a custom cap on the maximum number of random encounters you can get. Once that cap is reached, they stop entirely. Personally, I like DS2’s approach better, but it’s good that they thought to limit the random battle grind at all.

Zeboyd is offering the game bundled with their previous effort, Breath of Death VII, on Gamersgate for a trifling $3. More details on getting the game here. Meanwhile, here’s a trailer so you can see what this game looks like in action:

RPG Italia has posted an exclusive interview with Vince D. Weller, lead designer on the upcoming wRPG Age of Decadence.

From the sound of it, this is going to be an extremely open-ended game with a strong emphasis on role-playing. Interestingly, they’ve decided not to include a traditional magic system in the game at all:

Will it be possible to utilize magic? If yes there will there be even not-combat spells (for exemple to utilize in “social” context or to resolve determinate quest)?
No spells.
The magic in the game is a form of energy. You can’t cast fireballs or summon monsters, but you can use it to power up some relics of the past, ranging from “power” armor to entire locations. Something like:
You carefully insert the power tube into the opening. For a long time nothing happens, but then the console lights up and a low humming sound spreads through the cave.
[lore] Recite an appropriate mantra.
Leave.
You put your hands on the controls and recite “commanding fire elementals to bless ore” mantra, performing the rite as you speak the ancient words.
The mantra doesn’t require you to understand what you are doing, but it does a good job leading you through a series of steps grouped into chapters. Some chapters require you watching the dials and adjusting the valves to achieve divine harmony; other chapters warn about dangers of overheating and tell you how to keep the fire elementals under control.
1. Complete the ritual.
2. Overheat the machine

So far, it seems like they’ve made all of their design choices quite deliberately; it will be interesting to see what effect a “no magic spell” approach has on the game’s feel.

Roguelikes seem to be on the rise these days, with yet another release joining their ranks. This time, however, it’s a game for Mac called 100 Rogues. Created jointly by developers Dinofarm Games and I’m-not-quite-sure-what-they-are Fusion Reactions, 100 Rogues is a Mac exclusive, so Apple fans should be all over this like worms. In an apple. Okay, maybe that was not the best analogy.

Regardless, the game is out for a mere $4.99 on the App Store. Here is some in-game footage, as well as a link to Alec Meer’s (quite favorable) impressions of the game on RPS to help you decide if you want to snatch it up.

Gaslamp Games has just announced that Dungeons of Dredmor, an indie roguelike with a heavy emphasis on humor, will be released for both Mac OSX and Windows via Steam on July 13. The price? A piffling $4.99.

Hit the jump for the full announcement.

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Legends of Yore is a simple point-and-click roguelike created in Java and playable in-browser, with links to download the game for iPhone and Android.

Although LoY is a roguelike, it features a basic, functional GUI and auto-mapping. Additionally, like roughly half of all indie RPGs (and 90% of indie roguelikes) currently in development, LoY uses Oryx’s spritesheets from the TIGSource Assemblee competition*.

LoY is still in development, with updates about new features and content posted on the developer’s blog. Currently, the game is playable past level 50, at which point “advanced” classes become unlocked. My initial impressions: it’s quite accessible, but it also feels very lightweight. I can’t comment on whether it gets deeper later on, however. Those curious should go ahead and give the game a try, as it’s presently free-to-play.

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