Stonekeep

Its a great game from my childhood, time to prove to my brother that i DON'T need the secret dagger to win!

Stonekeep is a wonderful classic of puzzle solving and dungeon diving. This classic has stuck with me year after year and I was very excited to finally see a digital copy of it had been ported. The atmosphere and world i felt was way ahead of its time. If your looking for a classic rpg that will keep you entertained , this is the game I would choose.

[h1][i]“Bad circumstances have a way of ruining things that would otherwise be pleasant.”[/i] ~Lemony Snicket[/h1] I know, I know, a thumb down to Stonekeep. How dare I? But bear with me, it's an interesting topic to dive into. The story of Stonekeep is the story of that very specific time period when the dungeon crawler genre peaked. In the West at least, because it had a whole different story in Asia, but that's not what we are talking about here. What we are talking about is... well, I guess, it'll be the best to start with the Westwood's Eye of the Beholder. I mean, sure, the whole thing started with FTL's Dungeon Master in 1987. It was Dungeon Master that popularized real-time, first-person, multi-character, tile-based dungeon crawling with smooth movement, physics-like interactions, and an immersive atmosphere. But it was Westwood who brought things on a whole other level. EoB didn't do anything groundbreaking. It just took everything the others did and did it better. All while looking great thanks to the visuals powered by Deluxe Paint (which was a cutting-edge thing back in the 80s). Now, here comes Brian Fargo. Yeah, [i]the[/i] Brian Fargo. The founder of Interplay and the person behind some games you've probably heard of. Like, you know, Fallout? Anyway, Brian Fargo. Also, Todd J. Camasta, Interplay's art director. While having a special place in their hearts for role-playing games, at some point they decided that they wanted to make something like that, too. It was a simple project. Heck, originally it was called just “Dungeon Game” (“Brian's Dungeon” a bit later) and had a budget of only $50,000. Which wasn't a huge sum back in the day. Spoiler alert – it ended up being at least 10x times more, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Like I said, Stonekeep wasn't supposed to be huge. Yet it just happened that Interplay contracted Peter Oliphant. Who just happened to have a Hollywood background (for example, he was Freddie Helper in The ♥♥♥♥ Van ♥♥♥♥ Show). Peter wrote the initial storyline, handled graphics, and programmed the initial prototype. Which impressed Fargo [i]a lot[/i]. And [i]that[/i] was the problem. Except it didn't become obvious until much later. For now, everybody was excited. Fargo greenlit expansions in budget, scope, crew, and timeline. Stonekeep wasn't just “Brian's Dungeon” anymore. It was a high-end thing. With FMV elements, motion capture (they even had that real lab skeleton called Lucy), and system requirements that wanted you to have one of them expensive new Pentium CPUs. Moreover, Interplay went even further and made their game CD-ROM oriented. Nowadays, kids don't even know what a CD-ROM is, but back in the day? It was a revolution. The thing was, though, at the point when Stonekeep was in development, that revolution didn't even start yet. The game that made everybody want to have a CD-ROM was Cyan's MYST. Which didn't come out until Stonekeep was officially announced to the press in 1993. Yet Interplay went all in. All because of Oliphant. Fargo was against it. Oliphant pushed. Oliphant won. And that's just the thing about Stonekeep. Even if you've never played it before, when you launch it today, you can easily feel Oliphant. You instantly get the feeling of something epic (partially because of a very cool movie-like intro), something Hollywood-like. And the fact that everything here is realistic only makes things better. Even the UI (while being smart and even allowing you to enable coordinates on screen) is made in a very realistic way. Like, you'll need to manually flip the pages in order to find the right spell and when you need to equip something, you're supposed to manually drag it from your bag to a very specific part of your character's body. And yes, it involves rings, which you'll need to put on specific fingers. Like I said, this game feels epic and it's very lifelike. Visuals aged well thanks to the Pentium power and CD-ROM storage, while the attention to details... is rather incredible, really. Exploring the world of Stonekeep feels awesome because of how rewarding it is. There are always secrets to find and optional quests to do. I love it how the more you care the more you find out. Like, there are texts written in a foreign language written all over the place. With all sorts of hints and stuff. And you'll need to cast a specific spell in order to be able to read those. Also, there's that mysterious being called Wahooka. Who's pretty much our regular trickster character, but come on. Finding some items for him in order to learn from his wisdom? Or not (you're free to just punch the crap out of him if you feel that way)? It's fun. Stonekeep is a great-looking AAA game that feels [i]alive[/i]. So. Back to that thumb down. What's the problem with all that? The problem is, like many other overly ambitious projects, Stonekeep found itself at the point where its development started to sink. The game was just way too ambitious. Which caused all sorts of troubles. For example, the FMV parts were shot outdoors originally. Guess what? Turned out there's that funny thing outside called the sun. And its light made the footage unusable. Forcing our guys to redo the whole thing professionally in the studio. Also, according to the original plans, players were not supposed to see enemies waist-down. And after the idea of moving during the combat was introduced... yeah. More work came in. Just that one idea forced Interplay to hand-draw the legs (or even do full reshoots) for, like, all the enemies out there. If at this point of the story you smelled development hell, you're absolutely correct. Stonekeep took years to make. And while nowadays it's quite normal, back in the day? It wasn't. For example, at the moment when Interplay announced Stonekeep, Westwood had already dropped their next big thing. A game that was supposed to both continue the Eye of the Beholder tradition and establish their own IP. I'm talking, of course, about Lands of Lore. Which is often considered as one of the very best games in the genre. How long did it take to develop? About 1.5 / 2 years. How long it took Interplay to finish Stonekeep? At least 5. And with the fourth year of development approaching, Oliphant felt that it's enough. That they'll never finish the game. He quit. Leaving Fargo and Co. in a very bad situation. With lots of money invested, Interplay needed to release at least something, but they didn't even have Oliphant anymore. Like, when they were forced to switch from the initial center-to-center movement to edge-to-edge, they needed to redraw lots of his things, but were unable to. Which pretty much ruined backgrounds. It's because of that Stonekeep feels so repetitive. With lots of backgrounds being exactly the same. But OK, we can forgive that. What can't be forgiven, though, is that in the end Stonekeep was released unfinished. At some point they just said “f*ck it, we're releasing it as is”. And with no online distribution... let's just say that they didn't fix it with time. What does it mean to us? It means that the second half of the game is broken. Simple like that. Stonekeep is a game with a strong Hollywood-like beginning. A true Pentium-oriented crawler that wants you to play it without a guide and rewards you for doing that. But in its second half? It kicks you in the bollocks and spits on you when you're down. Visit places in the wrong order? The game gets broken. Visit a certain place without having a very specific item on you? You're softlocked now and can't finish the game without manually editing your save file with the third-party software. It's [i]that[/i] broken. And [i]that's[/i] the reason for my thumb down. I just can't recommend this game to new players. While being a very important part of its time, it just needs a warning. With all that in mind it can still be a lot of fun, but if you'll dive into it expecting it to be a proper experience? You'll end up suffering. Dixi.

This game is not for everyone. I enjoyed playing back in the 90s which brought back a lot of nostalgia. Since I loved the game and I didn't notice any changes I have to give this a positive review. At the same time, I don't understand why the graphics were never updated. Everything is so pixilated and in these modern days it would be nice to have a higher resolution option. I feel like I could have dug up my old CD and ran this with DOS Box getting the same result. I feel all the developer did was utilize DOS Box with this game and turned into a single application then uploaded it on steam. One of the bugs where this NPC appears was also not fixed. I don't see any younger generations or newer gamers liking this as much. If you loved playing this game in the 90s though, or are a fan of old school action adventure fantasy RPGS, I would suggest getting it especially for the low price. Graphics- 3/10 While some of us do enjoy the old school graphics and like to see things unchanged, there really should be an option for better resolution. The layouts are very limited. Everything will look the same in each area. This makes navigation a lot more difficult. Luckily the map is a very handy feature. One cool thing is you can mark anywhere on the map and make your own custom notes. Audio- 4/10 It's okay voice acting but a bit cheesy at times. It gets a low rating because the voice of the fairy is atrocious. They are better off muting the fairy voice and just having subtitles. The music isn't bad but kind of bland. The sound effects I thought were decent enough. Gameplay- 5/10 The entire game is first person. Everything feels very 'squarish'. You move forward or back one square at a time or turn left/right. Most of the game consists or narrow hallways. There are no wide open spaces. Compared to modern games, it's not great but remember this game is about 30 years old. Battle can be challenging at first. For newer players there is a secret hidden powerful dagger early on that can help make up for this. For combat you have to know which types of weapons work best against the different enemies. It can be a little clunky but you get used to it. It doesn't take too long to get magic which can be fun to use. You get a healing spell which makes the game very nice so you can save your healing items. Recharging a staff is as simple as finding and walking into a mana circle. When you get this (i forget the name) recall like spell you can set it by a mana circle making healing and transporting back easy. Eventually NPCs will join and act on their own. You can equip them with weapons and armor pieces. Story- 7/10 It's good but nothing ground breaking. The opening video is awesome but a little sad. This evil being destroys everything before you, while you are just a young boy who has a crush on this maiden. This other mysterious being saves you seconds from death. 10 years later you return to what is now a labrynth in ruins to destroy evil and save the maiden. It's simple but it works. Controls- 6/10 Takes a little bit of getting used to. You use the arrow keys or ASDW to move forward, backward, turn left or right. There is no jumping or dashing. You are in first person mode at all times. Use the mouse to move the cursor. Left and right click represent your left and right hands. You have this mirror which you use to equip items. A large scroll is what holds all your items. There is no limitation on picking up items and a decent variety of weapons. For magic you find staves each with a certain amount of mana. Each staff holds a certain about of spells you inscribe on them. You can change these at any time. When a staff runs out of mana you simply just find a mana circle and walk into it. I really do like this concept of each staff having it's own individual mana. Overall- 5/10 To me so far it seems the exact same as the old game. I did enjoy it minus the bugs but updated version could have been better. As I mentioned before there really should be higher resolutions for a game around 30 yeras old. At the same time the price was so good I could not pass this up. I would say I am for sure satisfied with my purchase, it's just I have higher expectations in these modern times. If you like these types of games I would say for sure get it. If you're more of a modern gamer I would recommend doing more research before buying.

If you like old school dungeon-crawler games, such as Eye of the Beholder or Lands of Lore, you might like Stonekeep. It has a mapping function, so in that respect is better than EOB. The biggest downside, IMO, is that the character cannot walk sideways. When inspecting walls or looking down side paths, being able to walk sideways and looking 90 degrees from the direction your character is walking is a major time saver. In Stonekeep you need to turn right, turn left in order to inspect anything to the side. This slows down the play considerably, I think.

Best Game Ever!

One of my fav childhood games!

It is a cult game from the old DOS times so as it runs with Dosbox, sure a pearl for old RPG game worshipers but considering the aged graphics and complicated gameplay with possible bugs, modern folks are going to similar remakes instead of this one, anyway, near 30 years old and a remnant from the early DOS gaming.

Brings back teenage memories.

it was a mediocre buggy game when it was released, and it is still a mediocre buggy game. The dialogue is juvenile, the voice acting is bad, inventory management is a nightmare, no clue what an item is supposed to do,the leveling system makes no sense, fights lack even basic tactical decisions, and one of the best weapons through the early and mid game can only be found by chance or if you possess a guide. I am at level six at the time of this review and already the runes I inscribed in the book are erased, the item descriptions are either gone or wrong, potions do not have the effect they are supposed to have, and some characters, such as shargas, who are supposed to be fought, get stuck and do not move, just block the path, necessitating a reload. This is the B movie of video games. Sure there are some good ideas here but they are either so few or so poorly designed they fail to lift the game out of the pits of mediocrity where it is so firmly entrenched Baldur's Gate this is not. I paid $9.99 for this game and it was $9.99 too much. Yet still I will finish it for the sake of rose colored nostalgia, but rest assured, this game may be old, but it is no classic.