2019-03-21 13:18:25 (edited by Dark 2019-03-21 19:27:54)

Occasionally, I still have a poke around google to see what I can find, especially in terms of rpgs and such (and even more especially while my trimps are busy).
So I ran across this series of games called Crypt Shyfter which are much as you might expect from a developer calling himself Kung fu Space barbarian, light hearted, easy going fantasy adventures, replete with references to anime, barbarians and pizza.
The games were created with twine like Inheritance so have a very standard html interface, but aren't erotic in nature, they're just good old fashioned monster slaying heroic fantasy.

The first few games are fairly short and easy, but they increase in complexity as things go on. I'm up to the sixth, and where the first three were pretty short and fairly simple they're getting more complex as they go on, indeed the fifth was quite an epic affair with side quests, character interaction and so on, apparently they get to be full on rpgs towards the end, but I've not got that far yet.

Gameplay wise they're similar to the delight games, but with actual combat, stat tracking, items etc, and a few tactical choices thrown in, they even have cheat codes and extra goodies in a few games too, as  as character classes and races and such.

Not exactly what one would call complex games, but great for a bit of fun, though serious and interesting enough not to read as simply stupid for the sake of stupid.

They're available to Play online here on newgrounds, though I downloaded them  from the author's itch.io page, where they're all free.

You can download them here

Have fun.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-03-21 14:26:06

What is the order of these? I want to play them in release order, just to get a feel for the progression.

Take care, it's a desert out there.

2019-03-21 14:50:11 (edited by Dark 2019-03-21 14:52:42)

The files are actually numbered which helps, and yes several do follow on from each other, indeed silly and rather random though these are, they do have continuity which is nice. So frostfall is the first, then moon bright, then mon magma etc.

The only slightly disconcerting thing is I get that a few of the earlier ones have been rejiggered a bit (, so I noticed  dip in quality between mon magma and vortex, though dreadnoughts was pretty good and the quality goes up from there.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-03-21 14:53:32 (edited by KenshiraTheTrinity 2019-03-21 15:21:46)

Wow what a treasure trove! Gonna grab these now. Thanks!

2019-03-21 17:19:20

They're surprisingly addictive, though some are longer than others, and I do like the way alternate characters come back.
The final game in the series, legend of Azmar is a jrpg, meaning more on the grinding for gold and fights and less on the making choices, but the choice adventures are fun tooo, I was surprised myself how much I enjoyed limeric, though of course that might be at least partly because of the amusing Stephen king references big_smile.

I've just finished silver wolf which is a  prequel to dreadnoughts and does a good job with the setup.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-03-21 19:10:29

Well, I played the JRPG first, so a lot of the references were lost on me, but I still had a ton of fun with it.

Take care, it's a desert out there.

2019-03-21 19:13:08

For the record, the newgrounds versions work with Safari on iOS, which is great news for me since I have no computer. tongue


For anyone else that wants them, here is a link:
https://www.newgrounds.com/collection/cryptshyfter

2019-03-21 19:30:12

@David I actually realised I was looking at the wrong page with newgrounds, since I thought the games were displaying in that wierd pannel at the top and not reading, but once I actually clicked on each title they worked, so I've edited my first post, though I think I still prefer downloading them, since the less crap on the site to have to waid through the better.
They are rather silly and as with any series some are better than others, but they're also row locking good fun!

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-03-22 06:08:50

Hi,
These are really fun and adictive only, I started with the last first in trying to find the first lol
Only when I was done playing half way through the book I realised that it was not the first but the last one in the series...
big_smile
Thank you dark for these, I have spent hours and hours playing through just one so the rest of them ought to be fun.
Grryf

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, β€˜It might have been.
Follow me on twitter

2019-03-22 08:46:32

Glad you like them Grryf. I will say only the last one, legend of Azmar is an rpg in the  of lots of combat and such, most of the rest are rather silly gamebooks, though still with combat etc.

I've only got the last one and the rpg to go myself then I'll have finished them all.
One thing I will say is the author apparently was trying a "!one game a week" challenge for a while, and that shows, since while number 12-20  are fun, they're not imho as fun as some of the previous games, or as complex.

It'll be interesting to see if Kung Fu space dragon makes anymore of these in the future, and in the  mean time I'm quite looking forward to that rpg.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-03-22 12:06:52

Hi,
What sort of gameplay time/duration do you think we could be looking at here for this series?

2019-03-22 12:07:45

cool, will try out them. BTW: are there even more gamebooks, maybe from other developers, wich are written in Twain and are downloadable as well? Maybe you know some other. I ask because a lot of such games are just online. Maybe there are even more on itch.io?

2019-03-22 12:23:12

@Aaron not too long, anything from ten minutes to half an hour. Bare in mind from number 12 onwards the author was trying to write one a week which made them both shorter, and tending to have less by way of interesting mechanics, likely why he took a break and wrote the jrpg version.

The jrpg will necessarily take longer, but I'm going to finish the gamebook series before I get to that.

As to other twine books, I don't know, again, access on these seems a bit iffy, and even if you limit your search to text based material there's no guarantee you won't get something done with unity canvasing or some other screen reader unfriendly version.

I recently had a sad experience with a potentially awesome sounding space colonization game.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-03-22 12:48:08

ah okay. But this series here is already a good found and Looks like a lot to Play. That is cool.

2019-03-22 13:10:38

Just a heads up, it seems there's even more to go around!
There's also a cartoon series on newgrounds with the same name by the same guy, but I don't know if the games are a version of that or what's going on here.

2019-03-23 04:29:58 (edited by Dark 2019-03-23 04:30:18)

Okay I'll warn everyone about some miner inconveniences in the jrpg which annoyingly have stopped me from finishing the game.

The problem is the final end game features five different bosses to defeat which is okay, however the only place you can find monsters that drop enough cash or give you enough xp to grind to fight those bosses is in the boss dungeons, and once you knock a boss off, bye bye monsters.

The game glitched on me and I killed the same boss twice whilst trying to grind extra cash and xp, this means I got to the final vboss with lower defence than I should've done, and even if I parcel out my  letting him get me to  point that one more hit will kill me and then use full heal,  run out of magic before he runs out of hp. I can't use items since healing potions don't recover more than the boss is doing with each attack.

My choices are then to either try and grind  seven hundred k gold with monsters dropping at most two thousand a pop (since all the areas with monsters who drop more are inaccessible now), to gain the super secret special item, or to restart the game.

So, as a hint if anyone is getting to the end, and the same boss pops up twice, don't kill it, indeed the only way of grinding is to go to the boss area, fight five monsters, get a reward and then teleport during the boss fight itself.

As regards the series generally, I will say I've really enjoyed the jrpg. The last few gamebooks were losing steam and less interesting in terms of mechanics, so this has been a breath of fresh air, apart from the fact its nice to get the appearance by bosses from previous games.

I really hope we see more of these, and especially more games with rpg like mechanics for this, since while it just does what it says on the tin, what it does it does rather well despite the annoying end of the game glitch that means I'll have to restart.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-03-23 07:04:26

Yep I am following him now in case there are more down the line.

2019-03-23 18:26:34

Huh. I didn't see a super secret special item, darn. Might be worth a replay. I actually managed to avoid the endgame thing because I was determined to get everything so I just fought at sunrise peak to get early stuff, defeated all the shyfters and then finished at Sunrise Peak.

2019-03-25 16:08:34

Hi,
I'm wondering if there's a way to contact the guy about the jrpg glitches?

2019-03-27 04:29:14

You can always leave feedback, that's how I saw a lot of them get reported. Also, apparently I got the special item in my first playthrough, but I thought it was just part of gameplay since it didn't seem hard to get, haha.

2019-03-29 00:28:53

@david_solomon1: How can I get the secret special item? Spoilers welcome! Enjoying the game so far though.

2019-03-29 03:59:53

Potential spoilers:

I don't know exactly, since like I said I got it by accident. By reading feedback though I get the idea it has something to do with getting a lot of HP. I got it by defeating Skag as the last shyfter before the final battle. I also ground enough gold for the barbarian king's crown.

2019-03-29 04:50:46

Ok will keep that in mind and see what I find out.  Thanks!

2019-03-30 15:15:54

spoilers ahoy, I did mean! the barbarian king's crown when I said special secret item.

if I play again I'll probably just grind sunrise peak until I have all the items, actually it was a bit irritating that I got essentially punished for being able to kill off the sunrise peak boss earlier than I should've done through spamming healing potions and using magic in the right place.

Really its a shame the developer didn't let you run at least one boss dungeon so you don't get completely %100 stuck.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-03-30 16:01:27

Ah ok, I thought you meant:

Spoilers.

Shattershard. There was apparently a glitch where you could get it twice in the game for a while. But yeah the barbarian King's crown would be ridiculous to grind for without one of the good dungeons.