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 I'm next, looks like. The king's guard is coming and there's nowhere to run... Except into the storm. Teslagrad is an indie 2D puzzle-platformer by Rain Games about a boy running from corruption and discovering the almighty power of magnets. The game controls a lot like Spelunky with the way you move, climb ledges and look around. It is loaded with fluid animations and lovely hand-drawn art assets. The puzzles, generally based around magnetism & physics, are all different enough from each other to stay interesting throughout and the bosses are surprisingly challenging. The soundtrack is excellent, the gameplay is fun and the plot pulls you in. If I had one complaint, it's that the game ended before I got my fill of it. This is a 100% LP, but even that will be done in 10 short episodes, unfortunately. But hey, a sequel is in the works!     The storyline is nearly entirely visual, we will not get any narration or scripts to tell us what's going on. We'll have to see what's happening and work it out for ourselves. We can piece together the missing bits by collecting the scrolls hidden off the beaten path (essentially collector cards). A lot of information is gathered from things like murals, childish paintings and propaganda posters. That another statue of the king props up every 50 feet within the city of Teslagrad is also telling. The game rarely uses any words and when it does, it isn't English. The Teslagradian written language is variations on mostly Latin or English letters, which usually translate into Norwegian words. In any case, we'll do our best to translate these texts as we come across them (Thanks to Asme for help with this).                [img]http://lpix.org/1747195/10%20with%20text.png][/img]Bonus: The Teslacat (spoilers!) Bonus: Various Concept & Promo Artworks, etc.  Psychedelic Eyeball did a blind stream of the game as well, here it is! 
Smite fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Sep 11, 2014 |
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Jul 18, 2014 07:48
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There are 36 cards throughout the game in hidden areas. They are all pieces of a large backstory. We will be collecting all 36, and adding each one here as we get them. They're arranged in a 3x12 grid in-game (every 3 cards is a set period of time as shown by the dawn/noon/night symbols), but we'll just make a 6x6 grid here to save some space.                                   
Smite fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Aug 26, 2014 |
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Jul 18, 2014 07:49
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This is such a beautiful game. I really love the style and just overall feel. Really love that animated banner you made. Perfectly fits the game.
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Jul 18, 2014 07:50
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Still have no idea on what this game is about!
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Jul 18, 2014 08:01
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Man, I was highly interested in this game during steam sales but I opted out for other games. Looks fantastic though.
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Jul 18, 2014 08:18
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My first impression is that the kid is Ayn Rand and shes running away from the Bolsheviks for being a dirty capitalist. I don't know how magnets and towers fit into this theory but we will see.
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Jul 18, 2014 09:43
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Here's a game that got practically no coverage when it came out. My guess is that coming out on the 13th December isn't the best time for media outlets to notice your game. The king doesn't seem like such a bad guy, we don't know why those guards were after you. The kid could have been a prolific thief or a filthy wizard.
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Jul 18, 2014 11:39
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Tangentially related: Teslagrad was a part of The Indie Box, a project to keep physical media alive. You pay a monthly fee, they package a different indie game each month up in a box with a USB "cartridge", a manual, some bonus goodies and sick-rear end box art, and mail it to you. Delivers worldwide and is pretty cheap; you should check it out. Anyway, haven't played much of this; when I was visiting some friends, one of them was playing through the late game. I played back through a couple of areas that he'd already cleared and then killed the final boss for him. All the powers you end up with are pretty sweet.
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Jul 18, 2014 12:08
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frozentreasure posted:Tangentially related: Teslagrad was a part of The Indie Box, a project to keep physical media alive. You pay a monthly fee, they package a different indie game each month up in a box with a USB "cartridge", a manual, some bonus goodies and sick-rear end box art, and mail it to you. Delivers worldwide and is pretty cheap; you should check it out. I saw that a bit too late to get Teslagrad's (I guess they don't keep a large stock) but I was interested in all those collectable goodies that they were providing with it, physical copy aside. 
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Jul 18, 2014 15:38
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I started playing through this game, and then get stuck on a puzzle and didn't have the motivation to finish it. Was a really good while I was playing through it! I'll probably watch up until where I got stuck and then finish the rest of my game myself.
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Jul 18, 2014 15:55
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I am liking this direction this is going.
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Jul 18, 2014 19:29
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Smite posted:(I guess they don't keep a large stock) I think that was the first box that they did, and they definitely weren't expecting the demand that they had; I think supply is a bit better for boxes now.
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Jul 18, 2014 23:28
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Wow, I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting this. Consider me hooked!
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Jul 19, 2014 14:46
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Beautiful game that I had no idea existed. I'll tag along.
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Jul 19, 2014 14:59
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The problem with indieretropuzzleplatforming these days is that Steam is so cluttered with the things you really can't tell what's good and what isn't. I remember considering getting this but eventually deciding against it simply on lack of trust, seems like it was a shame.
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Jul 19, 2014 16:46
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That kid is rather impervious to head trauma. Thicker skull than an rear end in a top hat guard.
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Jul 19, 2014 20:37
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 This one is also kind of short so I figured I'd go ahead and throw in another update. Going to slow down to about 2 a week from here on. About the cards, once we have a few more I'll start putting all of the collected ones in the OP so we can track our progress with them and piece together the plot.
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Jul 20, 2014 03:02
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I wish real life magnets would be repelled in such predictable directions. It's hard to make magnets levitate without something keeping them from moving aside.
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Jul 20, 2014 06:31
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A friend of mine gifted me this for my birthday and I love him for it, it's a great game. Couple of the bosses are dicks though, but we'll get to that.
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Jul 20, 2014 17:52
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Carbon dioxide posted:I wish real life magnets would be repelled in such predictable directions. It's hard to make magnets levitate without something keeping them from moving aside. Wizards. Justin_Brett posted:Couple of the bosses are dicks though, but we'll get to that. Yeah, staying away from spoilers for now but I'm looking forward to discussing how awesome some of the upcoming battles are after we've reach them. Might have to do some bonus footage of a few with some different conditions because they are a lot of fun. I definitely think the bosses are well-designed and was surprised by that; you don't usually get awesome fights out of games where you don't have any attack to speak of. The first platformer that comes to mind for comparison is Super Meat Boy, and some of those bosses are pretty uninspired. I'm not going to give too much away but some of Teslagrad's bosses feel like they're straight out of Castlevania. Fernus is definitely the least interesting one since he's so relaxed. Some of the others are my favorite parts of the game. But the '1 hit and you're dead' element makes some of them extremely tough and, of course, dying to them restarts the whole battle.
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Jul 21, 2014 17:15
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I feel like there's an interesting element to Fernus' design that wasn't really exploited as well as maybe it could have been. The whole thing is definitely framed as a fight, but... Fernus is just sort of THERE. It's actions seem to imply that dealing with the boxes is just part of its intended function, which is in turn fairly mystifying. Where the gently caress are all these boxes coming from? Why is a giant mechanical overseer necessary to chucking them in an incinerator? I almost feel like it would make sense to make Fernus appear less antagonistic, because as it is they don't seem to make any sense as some sort of gatekeeper or baddie. They look like malfunctioning machinery more than anything else, which I think would have been the more interesting angle to emphasize. Of course, I dunno, maybe their design will fit in better once more of the tower is revealed.
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Jul 22, 2014 00:30
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 From here on, I'll be replacing the blank spots in the 6x6 grid I've placed under the OP with the cards we've collected up to the current update. The cards are all part of a continuous story and I figure it is better to show them this way than looking at them constantly in videos.
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Jul 24, 2014 02:47
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Wow, that puzzle/level design is really solid and tight, and the movement looks so fluid and intuitive. I'm impressed.
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Jul 24, 2014 03:05
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That cutscene theater was probably my favorite part so far - seems like a really nicely polished little game.
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Jul 24, 2014 03:58
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Man this game has so much charm to it. I feel kinda bad for not buying it during the steam sales. Is the next boss a clockwork vulture or something?
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Jul 24, 2014 06:15
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So does the game call them grues or is it you? Either way, it's a nice reference.
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Jul 24, 2014 06:59
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Interesting stuff, I like the aesthetics. Are the controls intuitive or is it more of a struggle to learn them?
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Jul 24, 2014 13:46
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This is a very pretty game with well thought out mechanics. I'm impressed.
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Jul 24, 2014 14:12
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anilEhilated posted:So does the game call them grues or is it you? Either way, it's a nice reference. With as little text and as few names as the game employs, I'm going to guess it's just them. Given the emphasis the signs place on staying in the light, though, it seems to be a natural conflation to make. They're pretty cute, in a big, dumb, murderous, wouldn't-want-to-pet-one-I-found-in-the-wild sort of way.
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Jul 24, 2014 15:43
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anilEhilated posted:So does the game call them grues or is it you? Either way, it's a nice reference. They're really called Grues. All the names I'm dropping on these enemies and areas I've either pulled from steam cards or by saving the game and checking the name of the area on the save. That dark room is called 'magnetflies' for example.  Also I mentioned it back when in Episode 1, but now that we've seen them is a good time to go back to it; there's a few statues of the King shoving a sword into one 
Smite fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jul 24, 2014 |
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Jul 24, 2014 16:13
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Kind of a strange bump, but BundleStars has a sale on Teslagrad for like $5 if anyone's interest in this game was piqued by the LP. The sale is for 5 days so its a fair window of opportunity.
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Jul 26, 2014 07:22
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Accidentally had Firefox muted for some reason, thought the audio was missing, deleted and re-uploaded the video for no reason! Oh well, here it is again. Teslagrad #4 - The Garden Smite fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Aug 9, 2014 |
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Jul 27, 2014 01:13
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^^^^^ You done goofed!
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Jul 27, 2014 02:41
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Next time on Teslagrad: the kid gets a shiny hood and a robot buddy. I like it.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:22
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The hood makes me suspect that the whole tower thing is some sort of a wizard training course.
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Jul 27, 2014 09:09
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There is some really interesting storytelling happening here, in the murals and paintings and weird little puppet theaters. Incidentally, I hope you find another one of those soon!
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Jul 28, 2014 01:47
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I really like the way the puzzle solving mechanics feature into the boss fights. It's clever.
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Jul 28, 2014 02:45
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Does anyone besides me feel bad about killing the bosses?
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Jul 28, 2014 03:54
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Oh, this game is out already? Cool! Looking forward to this! Rain Games is a Norwegian developer, that's why the game uses a made-up alphabet that looks similar to Futhark runes.  This one says: "Leve despoten" meaning "long live the despot", rather than "long live the king". The Norwegian word for king is "konge".  
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Jul 28, 2014 04:26
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Fanzay posted:Oh, this game is out already? Cool! Looking forward to this! Yeah we debated using despot but given that it seemed to be another of his posters, I went with king because it made more sense. Had to make a few calls like that so far, but we've figured out what just about all the text seems to want to say. Some things are really tiny.
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Jul 28, 2014 06:05
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