T w e n t y S i d e d

Roger Hà¥gensen

How scared shitless were you that you'd run into a game breaking bug that either hosed your save game (and would you take the time to replay it all again?), or worse the game just hate your PC and refuse to go further (which you'd realize on your 2nd playthrough with new savegames). Did you have a backup plan? (like get saves from the net that where hopefully past that point? Or just throw up your hands and give up?

Up until the halfway mark, any serious showstopping glitch I ran into would have meant the end of the series. No hesitation. That’s an explicit decision I came to in the setup phase. That said, when I came to the elevator glitch on level one, I already had enough investment in the series to spend an hour or two goofing around trying to cheese my way down.

At the halfway mark, once I really started committing to the game, I started making save backups. If necessary, I was prepared to install the game on a roommate’s machine and play it there, or start over again from the beginning. After that, I was out of ideas.

Da Mage

Is it possible to point to one, just one, design flaw that caused the most grief in your playthrough, and explain why you think it was that way (aka broken), and how you would have designed it differently.

Obviously looking for game design problems, not technical ones.

Nope. I just don’t think they made a very fun game. The combat’s too industrial and the loot is too opaque to be rewarding, there’s not a lot of interesting leveling options, the puzzles never really connect, and the plot’s too amorphous and distant to provide a meaningful context. I’m not sure the bulk of this game can be redeemed; if you stripped all the bugs out and communicated the player’s goals better, I’d rate it a solid six or seven.

That said, this game does have a cult following. I’m not part of it, but I acknowledge it without rancor. I think it comes down to the idea that back when this game came out, there weren’t a lot of first-person survival-based dungeon crawlers, particularly not with this unique a setting.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Ruts vs. Battlespire: …and Your Questions”

Rutskarn is a writer, author, wordsmith, text producer, article deviser, prose architect, and accredited language-talker. If you enjoy his contributions to this site you could always back his Patreon.

The Battlespire experience is bafflement and molar-popping frustration, but you already know that. I’ve been mining these experiences for comedy for thirty-three posts now. You already know exactly how I feel about the game. What you don’t know, because I haven’t made room to talk about it, is what I actually think about it.

So let’s talk about that. Let me begin by sharing this excerpt from the final pages of the Battlespire manual.

“Julian is fond of paraphrasing one of our mutual heroes, Sandy Petersen (designer-developer of Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Doom, and other light classics), to the effect that the best computer role-playing game experience is far less fun than the weakest pen-and-paper roleplaying game session. Julian has also stated as his Lofty Aim the creation of a computer role-playing game experience as satisfying as a pen-and-paper roleplaying game session. Julian, of course, is mad as a loon, but it is a fine and admirable madness.

Is Battlespire as much fun as a pen-and-paper roleplaying session?

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Ruts vs. Battlespire: In Conclusion”

Rutskarn is a writer, author, wordsmith, text producer, article deviser, prose architect, and accredited language-talker. If you enjoy his contributions to this site you could always back his Patreon.