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If you were born the same year Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant was released, you would be old enough to vote, drive and drink in most countries. If you were born the same year development started on Grimoire, you wouldn't be able to do most of this, but you would be pretty close. That's because Grimoire is not just an indie game based on the style, ideas and mechanics of Wizardry VII, it is also an indie game that

• has been in development for over 17 years;
• has been designed by someone who owns an actual, operational fallout shelter, and believes we are heading for global thermonuclear war and/or an NWO takeover;
• has been an object of ridicule on RPGCodex so long the vendetta between the author and the community has devoved into a love-hate relationship, which has devolved into a vendetta again. Multiple times. Also, Grimoire
• is apparently one of those immense, complex CRPGs which aren't being made anymore. Maybe there is a reason for that. But that doesn't matter for Grimoire.

I first remember reading about Grimoire shortly after the first time I got on the Internet, in an interview with game designer and survivalist Cleve Blakemore. I was absolutely blown away by the idea of a game that would out-Wizardry Wizardry VII. Larger. More complex. More interactive. More crazy.

It is now something like 15 years later, and Grimoire has an active IndieGoGo campaign (http://www.indiegogo.com/grimoireforever) and a release date.

Oh yeah. And something else.

It has this video pitch, which I think everyone ought to check out for that special brand of crazy only a shunned RPG developer who has worked on a vanity project for the last two decades out of a fallout shelter can provide. It is, by itself, a work of art. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Grimoire:


Yeah. I think I will end up breaking down and buying a copy. Yes, I know it is about as wise as nosediving into a shark tank while holding onto a raw steak. Yes, I understand this thing has blown more deadlines than Duke Nukem Forever. Yes, I understand all your fancy 'risks' and 'challenges'. Yes, I understand the author believes himself to be a highly evolved Neanderthal. Yes, it is fairly possible all the money will go towards the purchase of ammo and canned beans. Still. This is it. This is the game I have always wanted to exist. This shit has got to be real.

I want my dreams, damnit!

Love the Youtube comments

Quote from: chudinho83you say that you'll release this in may 2012 no matter what in this video. well - may 2012 is already passed! :)
its kinda careless to let mistakes like this go in a presentation of the work of your life. if you're lazy enough to bother to re-record the audio, then trust in your ability to release the game suffers,

Quote from: Cleve BlakemoreChudinho83, it is true I did say that accidentally during the pitch. Most people who do not suffer from severe autism would realize that was a mistake. See if you have an adult nearby who can explain it to you without getting you overstimulated.

Oh my goth, that man is a fruit loop.

The pixel art is all right, but what's up with the eyed-mushroom/penis monster on the campaign page?

Quote from: CRKrueger;592161Love the Youtube comments

The man is a gem. Here is him from RPGCodex:

QuoteHyoid bone emerges in throat as a deliberate baritone suppressor. Do a search on the internet for it.

Neanderthal males were designed by nature to have voices that were non threatening to women and children and would carry over long distances for cooporative hunting.

Spear chuckin' one night campfire dancers in Sapiens designed to have deep voice because they will be gone in the morning anyway.

People frequently noticed that both Casey Viator and the Mentzers, three of the strongest people to ever be tested on Nautlius machines (either brother could have killed Arnold with a casual slap) all had peculiar pitched voices that belied their actual strength and size. Very common amongst the breed. Don't believe me, do a search for it on Neanderthals.

QuoteIf you listen here you will notice the peculiar pitch and strange nasal warble of Von Braun, sounds like my immediate brother or a close member of my family. Conrad Zuse, Mike and Robert Mentzer, many, many others with similar pitch and "style" to speech. To be perfectly honest, the astonishing resemblance in all regards would be obvious to anyone not brain dead for past 40,000 years. It's a mystery with the answer in plain sight.

And so on. But then I look at the gameplay videos (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx9XO24DuuEjagFfU4tNnNtqjd3tQAdaz&feature=plcp), and it's still want want WANT.

"In Grimoire... you can ride on turtles"

Best pitch ever. I hope, for Melans sake, that he reaches his 250K goal... maybe even a tad more, so he can either buy a new microfone og close the holes in his shelter, where the heavy wind blows in from.

I saw this. While I have no doubt that he could make a functional Wizardry style game, would he actually release it? He had past versions of Grimmoire that could have been released and for whatever reason, chose not to.

Cleve is the gift which keeps on giving (http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/cleveblakemore/comments). He has discovered John Romero & Co.'s new CRPG Kickstater (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lootdrop/an-old-school-rpg-by-brenda-brathwaite-and-tom-hal), and...

QuoteI don't care if you don't support me on IndieGoGo. If you have already supported this project then you are a very confused person who is easily fooled by appearances. My game is the real deal. It's not a mirage or a bunch of fast talk or some social networking or a lot of smiling followed by ambiguity designed to be disarming. Again, there is a spiritual successor to Wizardry and it is called Grimoire. I don't care if you play it or not because unlike Brenda [Brathwaite] and John [Romero], I am a real game designer. I don't need your permission to be a game designer nor do I need to hear the outcome of your vote on the subject. Brenda and John are fakes. I am the genuine article. I've got more talent in my little finger than these two and everybody they know. So let them go off and get some more testimonials and engage in some more self-referential logic and see if they can post some more celebrity references. Me, I will keep working on games as I have been doing since forever. Also, tell John to pay his child support and leave those 15 year old slavic girls at home with their mothers.

QuoteIn all fairness, I did wait patiently until the Kickstarter was absolutely guaranteed to fail. It's been difficult to listen quietly to this dog'n'pony show but now that it has committed hari-kari with no help from me, I thought a little plain speaking might be appropriate. I am looking forward to Pettington Park II, on the other hand. I have trouble sleeping.

QuoteThis Kickstarter was a job for Dr. Kevorkian ten minutes out of the gate. They take most dogs to the vet before they get this old and tired. @Izzy You got one part right - I have no respect for Loot Drop but it is *them* who have no respect for their backers, as evidenced by their comedy revue "updates." Give us moneez pleeze we will make teh old skool for yoo. Any real game designer would be flabbergasted by these cagliostros.

QuoteI predict this Kickstarter will raise zero dollars.

QuoteI predict you just predicted wrong.

QuoteYou guys appear to suffer from strong truth allergies. I've seen this condition before. Whenever anybody says the truth about anything you break out in terrible hives and get a pronounced swelling in your glands. Even a small dose of truth can send you into anaphylactic shock. I'll quit this field and leave you to your popamole fantasy world in which this kickstarter is not an embarrassment. Remember, if they can't organize a kickstarter, how much less so a game?

QuoteI just thank god I'm not bitter.

QuoteBecause I know who these people really are. I sat six inches away from the woman behind this Kickstarter and listened as she lectured me in front of the other staff at Sir-Tech about how nobody was interested in Sir-Tech's core product, old skool RPGs. She told me I didn't understand the industry. The Siroteks thought she knew what she was doing and they abandoned their core and started to make games like NEMESIS and DRUIDS under her Rasputin-like influence and they ended up with $50 to their names in bankruptcy court. I think Brenda has already done enough damage to old skool RPGs and it is the heighth, the absolute nadir of hypocrisy for her to launch a campaign like this. You couldn't make something this ridiculous up. You could say I seem to have an instinct for truthfulness that goes well beyond my own self-interest or calculated appeal to others. You could say I am one of those people to whom the truth is the most important thing of all. I don't think old skool RPGs are a waste of time and if I did then surely I would not have spent 17 years working on one. There's no cold calculation of outcomes in what I have done. What these people pretend to be for the sake of gain, I really am. They are a caricature of somebody like me. There are other people in this industry and over the years it seems like the good ones give way to the dismal tide of people who are just interested in computer games so they can support a nice middle-class lifestyle or better. I think a lot of these people don't have any respect for the people who play their games at all. Brenda told me the games needed to be dumbed down to appeal to more of the market. Luckily all of these statements by Brenda were repeated many times over and over again at her countless interviews and are part of the public record. They are not debatable.

Quote... and you're right, if this campaign was ever legitimate they would have never let a couple comments by some troll on their forum cause them to quit. Never. I never would have and never will.

That's beautiful. He's got my money, reason be damned.

There is a new Youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHHxIkMYNDE&feature=plcp) showing the game in the recently added 1024x768 resolution (turn up the YT resolution to see the real deal), and an in-depth interview on RPGCodex (http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8575) that mainly covers game mechanics. But also,

QuoteWhen you see the crowds guffawing at "Horse" getting hit in the testicles on America's Got Talent, you could guess that this generation as a rule is not going to be producing great art and culture. It's about the decline. Grimoire is about incline, plain and simple. It's about monocles and lifting standards.

Quote from: Melan;597093There is a new Youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHHxIkMYNDE&feature=plcp) showing the game in the recently added 1024x768 resolution (turn up the YT resolution to see the real deal), and an in-depth interview on RPGCodex (http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8575) that mainly covers game mechanics. But also,

This guy needs to be preserved for posterity, somehow. I don't know how. But it has to be done.

Quote from: Melan;597093There is a new Youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHHxIkMYNDE&feature=plcp) showing the game in the recently added 1024x768 resolution (turn up the YT resolution to see the real deal), and an in-depth interview on RPGCodex (http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8575) that mainly covers game mechanics. But also,

1024x768? Holy shit! I didn't think you'd ever be able to achieve real-time raycasting at that resolution on a consumer-level machine.

Quote from: Imperator;597101This guy needs to be preserved for posterity, somehow. I don't know how. But it has to be done.

My suggestion is amber, or some sort of super-strong industrial resin.

But... but... Lascaux isn't believed to have been painted by Neandertals, is it?

To be honest I was shocked to find that he is currently in the same city as I live. I am terribly tempted to somehow catch up with him and buy him a beer for being some internet awesome crazy .. also for keeping alive my favourite game from yester-year.

There is an updated, lengthier version of that video here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cPrOsNehxsM), in which Cleve comments on godless communism, consoletards and other signs of decline. Worth watching.

Quote from: Planet AlgolBut... but... Lascaux isn't believed to have been painted by Neandertals, is it?

That's what they want you to believe.

Worried about "consoletards" and decline?  Dude is just a bit out of touch.

...At least in a world where League of Legends has a tournament in an arena that the UFC uses and a purse of 2 mil USD (also pretty sure it sold out).

Dude is absolutely batshit.  

Seriously, read up on his shit: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Vault-Co

Or go straight to the source: http://vault-co.blogspot.com/

Although slightly^H^H^H^H^H a bit^H^H rather^H^H^H^H quite late compared to the promised November/early December date, we have got a public demo (http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/grimoire-forever/x/814110?c=home) of this thing and I have played it a few hours! So here are my impressions so far:

• this release (v1.2) doesn't like Windows 7. It crashed on my Win7 PC incessantly. However, trying it on an XP machine, it turned out to be rock solid with not a single bug tomention. It seems the old code has some sort of clash with the way Win7 handles permissions for system access. Otherwise...
• essentially a charming, idiosynchratic take on Wizardry VII (which was strange enough) that feels genuinely nice to play;
• some honestly good writing;
• graphics out of the 90s; not high-res, but handcrafted and colourful in ways rarely seen;
• wandering NPCs;
• Wizardry's complex rules return with classes, spells, skills and multiclassing up the wazoo;
• you can find a lot of different objects even during the demo;
• starting characters are slightly stronger than in W7, but there are some relentlessly brutal battles in there;
• during play, I killed hostile flowers, met a fairy, got one of my characters killed by a fish, explored two dungeons, rode on a boat in a dungeon, and even got to meet the dreaded Shiva-Han-Goromu and his team, who ended up fucking massacring me.

If I wanted to express it in one word, that word would be 'charming'. I'm feeling better about the $100 I spent on this. You, too, can support Neanderthal survivalists who are really good at blowing deadlines, and apparently also making games... in the NEW INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN (http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/grimoire-forever/x/814110?c=home)!

Screenshots:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v198/Melan/grimoire01_zps2d880975.png)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v198/Melan/grimoire02_zps7d301e8f.png)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v198/Melan/grimoire03_zps4636b2d2.png)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v198/Melan/grimoire04_zps14803164.png)

Holy SHIT I just watched Cleveland's pitch on Indiegogo and you were totally not exaggerating. The guy is certifiable! And somehow it's contagious. He's crazy, but you kind of want to be part of this type of crazy. The world needs insane people like this. I'm *this close* from pledging, actually. I must be nuts too. :D

Cleve Blakemore is a racist piece of shit who subscribes to the worst, I mean the worst kind of disproven pseudoscientific "racial genetics" crap since the world was cursed by Josef Mengele.  His apprehension of history is at best laughable and mostly always despicable.   His "enthusiasm" is "contagious" much the same way Syphilis is, and has some of the same late-stage psychological symptoms.  Grimoire has been in development for what, nineteen years now? and is in no way going to be "released" on his "release date".  If any of you are so keen to give money to someone like that, why not just buy a copy of The Turner Diaries?  It's out now, and unlike software, can be burned straight away as soon as it arrives at your home.

Well yeah, he *IS* buttfuck crazy. The contagious enthusiasm I was talking about was relating to the game, and the game alone, let's be clear.

If I selected my entertainment based on whose politics I like and whose I don't, it would be very slim pickings. And it sure wouldn't include anything written by libertarians like Gary Gygax, or the range of extreme lefties and outright fascists who have made a substantial contribution to the arts and hobbies. It would be a dreary selection.

But I am not blaming anyone.