Maze of the Lost 1.10 Stable
A downloadable game for Windows
Maze of the Lost is a Hybrid of Old-School Dungeon Crawlers and Traditional Japanese RPG's with a splash of the likes of Shadow Gate/Uninvited/Deja Vu and Metroidvanias that may also serve to satisfy that palette as well if you're into those. By Old School Dungeon Crawler I am talking about the likes of Dungeon Crawlers or "Blobbers" from the 1980's. If you are a newer gamer then you might not "get it" when you play the game and may not know why things are a certain way but the older gamers probably will. I have also incorporated some modern and traditional RPG tropes and certain quality of life settings that will also hopefully make the game likeable by newer gamers as well.
This game will not hold your hand and if you are a gamer that wants constant direction, guidance, and tutorials, then this game is probably not for you. Back in the 80's (yes I'm old) most games that you played it was up to the player to figure everything out on their own and they were given minimal guidance and some things like talking to NPC's to get information, navigating your menus to see what you can do, exploring and looking for things, etc, were just common sense to us. Just keep in mind that when you play you may have to figure things out, critically think, and you may even get a game over. Just want people to be aware of this before they play.
Maze of the Lost is a little on the harder side like the Old School Dungeon Crawlers but not frustratingly so like they were. The game in its finished form will be between 25-30+ hours of play time and will feature 12 full levels and a secret 13th level and a few dozen smaller areas in the levels themselves.
The story isn't anything grandiose at the start but will develop as the game goes and small pieces of the story will come out as you play and beat more levels and collect more items. The story will start simple enough and then after each Level there will be some cutscenes that will answer some questions but also leave more questions to be answered and on and on until the story is complete so it is kind of like a slow drip story feed with cliffhangers after each level that are answered later in the game.
The story starts that the Kingdom of Fardonia is in trouble when a mysterious cave appears in the middle of forest that wasn't there before. Out of curiosity the subjects have gone in or around to see what is going on but the ones that go never return. The King sends his scholars and soldiers to see what the fuss is about and none of them return either. The King starts to call for adventurers to try to see what is going on and he offers them the Kingdom if they can figure out what is going on and report back. Suddenly the King is visited by 4 would be heroes who have a look of promise...
Features...
-Character Creation and character stat distribution (through the class system) that lets you take control on how you want to develop your characters.
-Dungeon Crawling with mostly randomized loot but some static persistent loot so no playthrough will yield the same treasures.
-Steal gold and items from enemies, this may be the only way to get certain items.
-Puzzles and riddles a plenty to solve and figure out as well as mysteries to unravel.
-Randomized enemy encounters so no encounter will be the same.
-Quests and Sidequests.
-Deep and robust class and skill learning system with many different builds and possibilities.
-Each type of weapon and armor has strengths and weaknesses where no weapon or armor could be considered useless. Anyone can equip anything but a variety is strongly recommended.
-Crafting system to get rare items and equipment but not crafting dependent.
-Finished game will be 25-30+ hours long.
-Gem System to further fine tune stats and elemental and status properties.
-A cast of supporting characters that have a variety of different personalities, some quirky, some serious, some violent, and several more in between.
-Note system keeps track of important info found in the dungeons so you don't have to write them down like in the 80's crawlers, maps can also be acquired instead of having to draw your own, a minimap skill can also be learned.
-Monster graphics by the very talented @Thalzon to give some life to the dungeons. (seriously check out his monsters, they are awesome.)
-Some animations by the talented animation artist Dreams Circle, who can be found here on itch.io.
-Music by a variety of talented artists like Dibur.
-Title Screen and Splash Screen by the very talented artist 'dufiant' Links to his stuff below.
www.patreon.com/dufiant
www.instagram.com/dufiant
www.youtube.com/timelsen
Download
Development log
- Just checking in. I'm not dead.3 days ago
- Progress report #6 for v 1.1160 days ago
- Progress report #5 for v1.1180 days ago
- Progress report #4 for v1.1187 days ago
- Progress report #3 for v1.11Jan 21, 2024
- Progress report #2 for v1.11Jan 14, 2024
- Progress report #1 for v1.11Jan 06, 2024
- v1.10 finally released and Happy New Year!Dec 31, 2023
Comments
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[Leers at the first encounter after carrying over the save]
Did you add a new cobra, or did you get rid of the old one? I got a message that the cobra picture couldn't be loaded... :/
(Happened on the first floor)
Since I made the switch from frontview battle to sideview battle all of the monster graphics have been replaced to make sense visually and the sideview battlers Thalzon did are of higher quality. Since it's now pulling from the 'sv_enemies' folder for encounters it doesn't play nice with old saves that were pulling from the 'enemies' folder which is a different folder it pulled frontview battlers from. Since it was a big change structurally within the program itself it won't work with old saves unfortunately. I should have noted this in the last update, sorry for my oversight on that, I'll edit to add that in.
I ended up starting a new game when I made the switch for my personal Level 2 playthrough so I could try some different class builds and weapon/armor combos so I didn't catch that it wouldn't work with old saves right off.
Going forward I don't intend to make any structural changes that will break old saves. Thanks for the post and I apologize for the inconvenience.
So have played trough the first floor.
That bird sage/cleric birdo was not that strong, though it helped i was level 5 lol
Anyways some things I do want to add:
Sage feels weak. Maybe move the missile spell earlier and the first buff later. Additionally, maybe add in the description what stat a class favors.(I was playing a sage/elementalist with scholar training as the main char sage was only once useful in combat and i only deciphered one thing)
Now lets go to elementalist. Its a good class, but it does have too many abilities, which should be spread out more. Or make it obvious, how they gain spells only at level xxx. Maybe some book about that somewhere? Just for the earliest stages.
The second was a healer/warden deal. Wasn't all that useful.
The third was a warrior/soldier/adventurer cross. Fighter and warrior seemed really weak. (Adventurers light ability tough.... godly. Useful. :D )
The fourth was a hunter/and i think saboteur. Ngl for a "melee" class this early one of the best options when you have a decent sage cause it synergizes with the speed up very well during the boss fight.
Now i like that we encounter merchants and wandering cleric troops. If possible, more such encounters would be nice. Maybe even bandits that are slightly stronger, which you can avoid fighting if say pay with gold, and so on.
Have a good one.
Edit: Not aware on how far this counts as "i dont want to change anything" but i put this out anyways. lol I will certainly say that that is already far better fleshed out than previous deals. xD
Thanks for giving it a go! I do still appreciate comments and feedback so you can always say how you feel about it even if I don't end up changing much. That being said though...I'm still tweaking things as I go along and each time I play through it I change a little here and there to tighten things up. so there will still be minor changes here and there throughout but nothing major will be changed (with MAYBE the exception of the battle system.)
Keep in mind this is just the first floor so some of the classes that seem weak now will "blossom" and be useful later on, especially when enemies get to use more area control attacks, debuffs, and ailments. There will also be more 'checks' for Decryption in further Levels. The way it's "weighted" is that the beginning skills will be weaker overall and it builds to stronger and better skills over time. That does remind me that I need to make a Skill Tree text file so people can plan their classes out. I wanted to include one in game and I might still do that and put it in the 'Lore' Book.
It's kind of subtle but in general the first 3 classes are considered 'Warrior' types, the next 3 are considered 'Rogue' types, the next 3 are considered 'Mystic' types, and the last 3 are considered 'Scholar' types. I do agree with your assessment that there can be better explanations for the way things work for the classes. I'll likely add some more information in the 'Lore' Book about these things along with maybe a full Skill Tree for each class. Not sure when that part will be done but maybe with the next update or the update after.
I still do need to finish making hybrid skills as I'm not done with those yet but will make sure they are by the time Level 3 is done so people can go the paths to get the hybrid skills they want.
Elementalist was a little tricky to work with because he uses the 6 'natural' elements, so in order to make sure it's understood that they are on equal footing I had to have the option where they can learn all 6 in one 'chunk.' If I spaced them out, but they have the same power, then it wouldn't make sense to have one take longer to learn than another. I just left it open to where the player can choose which elements they want to learn first and last. I could make it where some are stronger than others but with enemies having elemental weaknesses it would mess with that balance quite a bit.
The way it's balanced now, although one can't tell from just playing Level 1 and not having access to the database, is that if a character focuses on one tree they will learn all the skills for that tree by the time they get to about Experience Level 28-32. If they want to 'multiclass' then IF they get all the possible ways to get bonus LP throughout the game then they can learn all skills for 2 skill trees by the time they are about experience Level 48-50. Level 50 is the max Experience Level in this game so it's theoretically possible to master 2 classes by the end of the game. This does not take into account 'hybrid skills' yet so that will vary a bit as well and will likely need retweaked some later on.
Yeah, I like the wandering merchants and knight/clerics too! There will definitely be more types of those, and a neat one in store for Level 2 if you encounter it. There will also be, like you stated, bandits (Syndicate heavies), that go through a process like what you envisioned. They will be more saturated in the mid levels and there will be some story that explains why in a cutscene after Level 2.
As of now Level 2 is about 75% (re)done so I'm hoping that Level 2 and the next update will be released within a week. It SHOULDN'T break old saves but I'll know for sure when I play through it when it's complete.
Thanks for playing and the feedback. Take care. and have a good day
Hello there.
It certainly seems like a promising dungeon crawler.
Had hoped to be able to "master" at least 3 classes but i can live with 2 =P
Will check in than and now. Maybe not for every little update but yeah.
Also might I ask if you plan to add more training methods for "mixed" class users? Like for an example trainings you can unlock if you say have x2 scholar and x2 mystic? For people that want to cross such paths?
Yeah i love wandering troops that aren't just the boring same deal. The Merchant mid battle was cool especially... (Though robbing him could be even cooler. Albeit bad if done too often....)
Have a good one.
Thanks again for the support. It motivates me to work on this more often and to try to make it the best I can.
The idea for mixed class characters for your example is that you can place that 1 point in any of those each level. So the mixing can already occur with those 4. For instance I have a "Paladin" type character in one of my playthroughs and he alternates between Warrior Training and Mystic Training every other level so he can still be kind of tanky but also adept at healing using the SPI stat bonus that the Mystic Training gives him. That's one example of a mix. but there are many other combinations possible.
During some of my "blind" work that was never published I had experimented with just sticking all the stat gains to the 12 classes but it became very convoluted and most of them overlapped or some had to have too OP stat gains that the balance was terrible so I had to narrow it down and then had to devise a way to get stats to characters but to do it in a way that still gave them some freedom and not too rigid or not too "free" like the old way where you could break the game by distributing stats a certain way. Long story short...the end result was this so I don't plan on adding more of the "trainings" as mixing those can still get the desired effect you're looking for like my Paladin example above. When you start getting access to crafting "seeds" that will give you a more fine tuning options if you want to tighten things further.
During my experiments I wanted to make the game as "Western" RPG as possible kind of like Pathfinder and games like that where you COULD steal from NPC's and such and have reputations with the different factions and key people but ultimately decided against it as it was a lot of extra eventing and plugin work and not to mention the insane amount of dialogue trees and in the end I wanted the game to be a little simpler overall but it definitely was considered at one point.
Thanks again.
Maze of the Lost MZ Rework 1.00 released!
Many audios missing like jingle one, whatever plays when you encounter the knights etc.
Investing points doesn't seem to grant skills, etc....
The missing bgm 's is embarrassing, sorry about that. It's now fixed and a new version is up (or at least it will be in about 5 minutes from the time of this post.)
As far as skills....you start with 5 LP for each character and I purposely made it to where if you put 4 LP in any class it will automatically open up a skill that can be learned below it which also costs 1 LP so each character can learn 1 skill at the start of the game. It won't give the skill to you automatically you have to learn it with the same process as putting points in it. For instance if you put 4 LP in 'Soldier' class you'll notice that it opens up the skill "Power Strike" right below the +Soldier class/skill. You would then put that last point on that skill to learn it.
Thank you for playing and for the report.
v1.05 released (04/03/22)
-Changed a few texts around the whole game in general including some database descriptions, NPC texts, and fixed a few typos and text formatting.
-Re-inserted the "Special Random Battles" that occur at about a 5% ratio for each level and these range from random encounter shops, random encounter ambushes, and random encounter that heal the party or give items. This was in a previous version (1.00 and 1.01 I believe) but was removed afterwards due to a discrepency but has been modified and improved and placed back in.
-Changed the way "Special Shops" work (and Lorelite and Medals in those shops.) Should be better overall.
-The next small area after Level 6 (Mid-Camp) is now explorable and the cut off is now trying to descend to Level 7 from Mid-Camp.
-Fixed some inconsistencies in database in the enemies tab.
-Found a better workaround for a previous issue with having Medals and Lorelites not updating properly, I ended up removing the ability to get them from certain random encounters and stealing them from enemies but now they do update properly and will revert to also being able to get them from some random enemies and stealing them.
-The random but rare soft locks that were occuring in battle should now be fixed after a recent VS update. Apparently it was an issue with the CTB system.
-Replaced the skill "Counter Break" with "Victory Aid."
-I know I'm forgetting a couple other small things.
Sorry it took so long for this update. I was working a little bit on the sequel because I wanted to get a good base for it and I was also playing around with a Tactical Battle System I purchased from Synrec and I'm a sucker for TBS so that ate up some time, but now that I'm done working on the base for the sequel and I will now focus much more of the free time I have to finishing this as I want it out sometime this year.
Level 7 is an eventing nightmare and I wanted to be done with it by now but it will not be done till next update. My goal is to get 1 Level done per month till the game is done. So about 6 months is my goal to get this completed.
For the small handful of people who enjoy this game....thank you for playing, it means a lot to me!
v1.04 released (12/19/21)...
-Fixed 2 small bugs on Level 5 that had to do with a Wall Notice and changed the Icon for 3 Notes in the Notebook to Paper Pages instead of Shovels.
-Changed the way that special 'Guards' behave and turned them into regular user only skills with a cooldown instead of having them replace other 'guards,' as that tended to cause issues in battle and in function altogether. This shouldn't cause any crashes with save games but there's a small chance it might.
-Removed 'stealable' Lorelite and Medals from certain enemies to avoid number discrepencies in what amount of each were reflected in menus. The numbers likely won't be corrected on save games but on new games it will be fixed.
Thanks for anyone who plays and supports the game!
Released v1.03 (12/07/21)
-Fixed Minimap skill use crash.
-Fixed 'createLinearGradient' canvassing issue that would trigger trying to Level up past Level 30.
-Fixed Nectar of Life failing to load SE.
-Fixed dialog of old lady quest in the Inn.
-Added drops and 'steals' to Level 6 enemies (for some reason I totally missed this!)
Released v 1.01 (11/17/21) and v 1.02 (11/18/21)
-Added options for Instant Text and Auto-Dash.
-Removed Teleportation bug to maps not in use.
-Fixed crash associated with viewing Perks.
-Fixed (probably) crash associated with Minimap Skill.
-Fixed (probably) crash associated with a Level 3 enemy.
-May have fixed Stun Lock issue but will likely need further testing to be sure.
Hello Knightmare, been a while! Look forward to seeing how the game is coming along! Game had a lot of potential! Let you know what I think!
Hey Celestrium! Yeah, it has been a while. I still learned a lot and got a lot of good ideas due to your beta-testing so your efforts are in this as well. Most stuff will be the same from when you last played but I know I did change a few things after your time with it. It's still a WIP so not everything is set in stone for the first half but it will mostly stay as is. I decided to go freeware on this instead afterall so I don't have to sweat too many details making this a commercial product. Glad to hear from you. Thanks for reaching out and I do hope you enjoy playing!
This is still a WIP and some things may change and be updated before the 2nd half is released. Please let me know what you think. Thanks to anyone who plays.
Title Screen by @DufianT, please look him up on Social Media, he does commissions and has and does a variety of artwork.