I bought and played this on GOG. It was pretty good but it was hard for me to remember where I was/had been. I ended up downloading a program that mapped the level as I played it and that helped a lot.
For a modern take on this style of gameplay I'd look at Legend of Grimrock 1 & 2. They are great games
Note that at least one EOB game (probably all of them) involve teleportation traps that you're supposed to have to catch by watching your compass as you move - an automapper would instantly reveal that you'd been teleported, spoiling the effect.
It's definitely a different experience playing with an automapper. I played the game with grid paper as a kid, sometimes memorizing the easier levels and sometimes laboriously mapping out the levels as I went. I played EOB2 with the maps in the official clue book, only referencing them when I was stuck.
When I played again with ASE, I found that I was mostly staring at the map the whole time - literally playing the game on the map itself. A lot of the magic was gone.
> When I played again with ASE, I found that I was mostly staring at the map the whole time - literally playing the game on the map itself. A lot of the magic was gone.
I find that with modern games a lot - I spend my time looking at the map and not the world in front of me.
There's also a non-free program called Grid Cartographer which is aimed mostly at tabletop game developers, I think, but it can also be used for playing old RPGs. It supports EOB and EOB2 and a few other games.
Grimrock 2 was probably too hard, I have the same problem with a lot of these games I eventually get to a point where I am aimlessly doing things that may work or things I've missed and after several hours I either give up or check on-line for a cheat. It would be good if there was some code looking for this or a timed thing which drops a hint in-game to make the task more obvious to get to the next step
It was not easy, though I didn't find it too hard. Possibly only the desert and a place with lots of walking mushrooms were challenging. I think it was still possible to find a quiet corner to rest in both. Running away also worked :)
It was hard for me too. I remember spending hours drawing immense maps... on the other hand a gifted friend of mind had no problem finding his way through the mazes.
I have fond memories of playing this with a friend - taking turns mapping and controlling the game. So much grid paper :) That, and cleaning up the maps when you ended up walking off the edge of the paper (most levels would fit on one to two sheets of a4 grid paper IIRC - but only if properly centered).
There were also maps floating around on usenet(?) and walk-through published in magazines.
I loved Grimrock. Have there been any similar games of comparable quality released since Legend of Grimrock 2 in 2014? I haven't found any that I could get into.
I can't quite get over how good this looks....on a C64! This is one hell of an accomplishment. Honestly I expected to barely recognize the game, but instead it looks and feels exactly like the original VGA version I played as a kid - just with what looks like a dither filter over the original graphics (which look amazing I might add). Wow, seriously impressed. How is this possible in 64K of RAM?
Not familiar enough with the C64 to know what this means, but I'm assuming it means it "needs a little something extra" than a stock C64?
> The C64 version has been in development for 16 years. The primary developer is Andreas Larsson along with a handful of other developers and people from the demo scene.
Wow, the stamina here is amazing... 16 years? I have a hard time keeping side projects going for 1-2 years.
The stock C64 came with an extension slot that allows you to plug in extra hardware - some games, for instance, you could buy as a cartridge (instead of a disk or tape) that got plugged into that slot.
At first I did not understand if and how they managed to fit a running game into 64K. My original thoughts were that a memory expansion would be required.
But now that the source and release are available it makes sense - the game runs on/as a cartridge, which means that static data can be pulled almost as fast as if it was in memory.
It is nevertheless an outstanding achievement, the graphics are simply stunning, and the automapping feature is a nice addition. And it still all fits into 1 MB (IIRC the original PC game came on two disks)!
The engine was completely reverse-engineered for the C64 (after first gaining expertise by creating an iOS version), and the project seems to have been in progress in some form or another since 2006.
Based on the news I've read in Indie Retro News, it actually sounds like the art is completely done from scratch. (which makes some sense, given C64 graphics quirks/limitations). Though the exact art process hasn't been revealed, art duties were split amongst a few notable C64 pixel artists who have explicit credit for their contribution.
A link to a review/video would be much more informative:
"Now, after sixteen years, the finished version is finally coming out later this month. "
https://www.timeextension.com/news/2022/10/new-eye-of-the-be...
Developer YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVWhB_u3PeFPjLJywyDTcOA/vid...
@dang