"So now drink deep of battle."
February 7, 2015 5:45 AM   Subscribe

 
Here's a coffee-break Mini Metroidvania to go along with it: Kram Keep
posted by leotrotsky at 5:50 AM on February 7, 2015 [5 favorites]


Neat!
posted by carter at 5:57 AM on February 7, 2015


Free for PS+ Members this month.
posted by fullerine at 6:03 AM on February 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


Also, classical friezes are kind of sidescrolling narratives, right?
posted by carter at 6:21 AM on February 7, 2015 [3 favorites]


Oh man, all that effort on Classical Greek art, then they bust out Trajan on the menu?

Not okay, guys. Not okay at all.
posted by not the fingers, not the fingers at 6:24 AM on February 7, 2015 [12 favorites]


I mean I'm experiencing almost physical pain every time I see it.
posted by not the fingers, not the fingers at 6:25 AM on February 7, 2015 [3 favorites]


aaaaaaa why must they only release on PS4 when the PS3 could SO VERY CLEARLY handle this sort of game
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:42 AM on February 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've played the multiplayer section of this at some indie game events and not only is it gorgeous it's a lot of fun. Especially when you find a sarisa and suddenly have triple the reach of any other weapon.
posted by thecjm at 7:36 AM on February 7, 2015


It turns out that all those ancient greek wall frescos were really playthrough guides.
posted by Skwirl at 8:38 AM on February 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


I pre-ordered this a year ago, finally got the email it was done, tried to download and... no Mac version. Anyone know if Steam games can be played via Wine?
posted by gwint at 8:48 AM on February 7, 2015


Yes, Wine runs Steam, and many non-3D Steam games run under Wine. It doesn't have a compatibility entry on Crossover (yet), but there's a good chance it'll just work.
posted by dylanjames at 8:50 AM on February 7, 2015


You need to set up a new Steam install under Wine. If you have winetricks, you do this at a terminal as winetricks steam
posted by LogicalDash at 9:08 AM on February 7, 2015


I'm a couple bosses in. Quite a lovely game. People either love/hate the combat. I can see how people don't like it, but I enjoy the fast-paced weapon swap mechanic and location based damage. I'd also like it if there was a special move to slow down combat for a brief window focus attack. That'd have really elevated it for me.

Otherwise, I dig the writing, flavour text, and overall aesthetic.

*spoiler, not really, because it's mythology, yo* Dionysus's boner filled mini-game was a hoot.
posted by chainlinkspiral at 9:20 AM on February 7, 2015


If you have winetricks, you do this at a terminal as winetricks steam

"The checksum of a downloaded file did not match. Checksums are updated frequently. Plase try again later."

*sigh*
posted by gwint at 9:32 AM on February 7, 2015


Yeah, winetricks is kind of ... not ... friendly like that. The checksum in question may have been changed in the most recent winetricks (direct dl)
posted by LogicalDash at 9:55 AM on February 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


aaaaaaa why must they only release on PS4 when the PS3 could SO VERY CLEARLY handle this sort of game

Generally there are three reasons people make games for less platforms instead of more platforms:

1) Hardware limitations. Not applicable here.
2) Exclusivity deals. Almost certainly not the case here.
3) It's easier.

This is the first game Alientrap has directly developed for any console (a few years ago, someone else ported their first game to a bunch of platforms for them), the PS3 is notoriously difficult to develop for (and is not a growth market), and I suspect they're a pretty small studio. So I bet they were trying not to bite off more than they could chew.
posted by aubilenon at 11:25 AM on February 7, 2015 [4 favorites]


As for PS4 vs PS3, porting to PS4 is also easier if the original development was for PC. A PS4 is basically plain PC hardware with nothing really funky going on. A PS3 has all sorts of non-PC hardware stuff going on. Also, despite the graphics looking simple and so forth, don't forget that the PS3 only has 512MB of RAM, total and a processor so old it creeks.

Sure, with tight coding and taking advantage of all the specialized hardware the PS3 had, the game could run no problem there. But faster hardware allows for, not exactly sloppier, but loser and quicker and easier coding. It just also takes more resources. I can easily see the game, depending on how it was coded, taking more resources than the PS3 has. Stuff that if you were writing for a PS3 you'd need to spend time developing fancy algorithms to deal with you can solve on a modern PC or the PS4 just by throwing more cycles or RAM at the problem and that makes your job a lot easier.

But mostly, if I were a betting person, I'd bet it was developed for PC and that made porting to PS4 dead easy, and porting to PS3 significantly less easy. Why bother porting to the now supplanted hardware?
posted by sotonohito at 2:19 PM on February 7, 2015


truth be told, PS3 derail-wise, yeah, it seems like most cross-platform devkit API stuff is PS4/Vita only. Where it really bugs me, though, is cases where it's literally even the same engine — the Guacamelee! expansion didn't come out on PS3, and that just feels kind of punitive.
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:46 PM on February 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


I love metroidvanias but don't love boss battles so much (Knytt Stories is my perfect game). Will I like this? (I'm guessing not, but I'm willing to be convinced!) Kram Keep is entertaining so far :)
posted by rivenwanderer at 4:51 PM on February 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


not the fingers- It could be a lot worse. At least they didn’t use Σ for E.

ΔΡΦΓΗΣΦИ

See?
posted by El Mariachi at 5:22 PM on February 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah, happy to see this on the blue!

I'm going out to the release party in about a week, as I'm friends with one of the Alientrap dudes and helped (briefly) with the beta testing.

I'm really hoping this game is big for them - I love the style and the guys are just really swell, you know?
posted by Imperfect at 6:08 PM on February 7, 2015


Oh, and gwint, the Mac version is in beta. Thankfully, you can access that right now:

Apotheon Mac/Linux Open Beta instructions
posted by Imperfect at 6:11 PM on February 7, 2015 [3 favorites]


I'm about five hours into this - it's fantastic. Lots of options for ranged and melee weapons, great secrets to find, unique boss battles. I tried it on a lark and it's way better than I hoped.
posted by mean cheez at 6:12 AM on February 9, 2015


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