When Durante announced the CRPG renaissance, he mentioned Might & Magic X: Legacy and Legend of Grimrock, two grid-based dungeon crawlers. While a handful of games have followed in their footsteps, such as Operencia: The Stolen Sun and StarCrawlers, the vast majority of CRPGs have been pseudoisometric since then. They have looked down on their miniaturized heroes from a distance instead of getting close to their portraits. It is a renaissance with many Bruegels, but few Botticellis.
Dungeons of the Amber Griffin wants to solve that. It’s a blobber, that is, a game where you look at things from the perspective of your entire party of adventurers – melee fighters in the front, wizards and archers safely hidden in the back – who are all in the same square and move together in a single bulb. They are also called gridders or DRPGs (the D stands for Dungeon). They deserve a second chance, whatever you call them.
“To me they’re just Dungeon Crawlers,” says Tomasz Rożyński, who describes himself as the “CEO, game design, 2d/3d graphics, animation, level design, marketing, social media, VJ artist” of Frozengem Studio and is basically a solo artist. developer.
“I’m aware that our title, which is based on moving around a grid and rotating 90 degrees, may not appeal to everyone,” he says. However, using such classic movement mechanics means that the game is not just a hack and slasher. It is true that attempts are made to create dynamic and flashy battles, but after beating the monsters, players have the option to pick up the pace. slow down the game. They can take their time to traverse the terrain, find hidden passages and solve puzzles.”
In the large family tree of grid-based dungeon crawlers, one branch contains games where encountering enemies means switching to a turn-based combat battle screen. This branch leads from the Wizardry series to games like Operencia, while the other branch, which spreads from the 1987 Dungeon Master through Legend of Grimrock, allows real-time battles to take place in the same UI as exploration. Dungeons of the Amber Griffin grows from the last branch, so while Tomasz emphasizes the need to survey your environment between battles – right-click to free yourself from 90-degree turns so you can mouse around for hidden food or buttons to find those that open secret doors – the fight can get hectic. I mis-clicked while trying to cast a spell and got poisoned more than once by a giant bug.
There’s even a “music mode,” where you fight through levels designed to match songs like Percival Schuttenbach’s folk-metal, unlocking items for use in other modes if you kill enough enemies. “Don’t jump straight into the game’s music mode,” Tomasz warns, “because that’s where you get chewed.”
A few things highlight Dungeons of the Amber Griffin from its subgenre. The most obvious is what it looks like. There are sweet weather effects (opens in new tab) like pouring rain and snow, dense forests blocking your path and smoke coming from a mushroom picker’s chimney. As much as I like Dungeon Master’s goofy illustrations, it’s a definite improvement. (If you want to see what it looked like, you can download a free Windows version of Dungeon Master’s expansion Chaos Strikes Back (opens in new tab).)
The current version of Dungeons of the Amber Griffin was created in Unreal Engine 4, explains Tomasz, which was “critical for us to implement the weather system, which has a huge impact on the gameplay. We also started working on VR helmet controls and trust me, exploring in VR will be a very enjoyable experience. In the future we will migrate the game design to Unreal Engine 5. We’ve already done testing and the game looks much better in full ray tracing,” says he.
That’s impressive for a developer who does almost everything on his own, although he has a little help from an unlikely source: the Midjourney AI, which he used to create background art for the in-game bestiary. New items in the book are unlocked when you defeat monsters like the mutated boars called szarganor the demonic fludinwho look like hairless bears with no eyes. Rather than being blank, the pages for creatures you haven’t encountered yet are covered in faded pseudoscientific scribbles of larvae, leaves, and beakers based on art produced by giving directions to Midjourney.
“Midjourney AI is a great tool because it gives solo developers the ability to achieve great visuals at a low cost,” explains Tomasz. “I can’t imagine explaining to an illustrator what my vision is to create the devilish organic devices that could be in the bestiary. In my opinion it is an excellent combination to combine the work of illustrators with the work that was created by AI. Of course, it’s not like these blank pages in the bestiary are ready-made – all the images had to be cut, processed, cleaned, modified. It’s a bit like buying stock images.”
Would Tomasz consider using AI-generated art for other graphical elements of his game? “Yes, I’d love to use images created by AI,” he says, “but in collaboration with illustrators. I think it’s unethical to completely replace people because the same way someone will replace me one day. There are things who can just do better with AI. Usually it’s about the budget to produce the game anyway. Another problematic issue is the licensing of images based on Midjourney AI. I use the license in private mode and show images in the game that all have been processed heavily by me. I know there is a lot of arguing about this. Until the situation on the legal side is fully resolved, I use the AI in such a way that when the funds for the production of the game are raised, the AI images can be easily replaced with images created by illustrators.”
The second thing that features Dungeons of the Amber Griffin is its base in the real people and locations of Kashubia, a part of East Pomerania in what is now Poland. “The Kashubian culture is distinguished by its language. It is a Slavic language spoken by more than 150,000 people,” says Tomasz. That’s why in his game you choose from classes like the underworld priests called magacried the hunters hunting orzand the knightly warriors cried ricerz. “Unfortunately,” he continues, “it is a language in danger of extinction – it is being supplanted by the Polish language.”
Kashubian words and places are all over Dungeons of the Amber Griffin, preserved as if in amber itself. The imaginative setting includes a version of the city of Gdansk, as well as “place names that are somewhat forgotten, such as names of lakes, hamlets and small villages”. The scenery above the dungeons, complete with traditional forking paths through the forest, is also inspired by real-life locations. “We have tried to faithfully represent the diverse landscape of Kashubia – dense forests, hills, hills, valley gorges, numerous rivers and lakes. There is a lot of forest, especially because the area was once densely forested.”
Although Tomasz says that Slavic mythology in general has not been well researched, “because of the small number of historical sources”, demonology is an aspect of it that is well known and especially useful if you are filling a fantasy bestiary. . “[D]Emonic figures, whose names and descriptions have survived in legends, fairy tales, proverbs and curses, are quite well researched and described. This is also the case with Kashubian demonology. Interestingly, in Kashubian demonology, the world is not unequivocally black and white; there are characters who have both bad and good qualities. There are also many figures who were probably some kind of idols or ghosts in pagan times, but were relegated to the role of devils under the influence of Christianity.”
Making a game in Poland, especially a fantasy RPG influenced by Slavic folklore, means having the grim face of The Witcher over your shoulder. Watch the first 30 seconds of the announcement trailer (opens in new tab) for Dungeons of the Amber Griffin, and you’d be forgiven for expecting anything like CD Projekt’s games.
But, explains Tomasz, both are simply part of a broader development scene in Poland, albeit at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of budget, scope and profile. “I’m glad there are so many developers, because there’s someone to learn from,” he says, “and when I look at the effects of my fellow countrymen’s work, I’m really proud. I don’t feel like I in anyone’s shadow. We go our separate ways and we don’t try to compete with anyone in any way. CD Projekt is light years ahead of us, so there’s no comparison. All we can do is learn with humility, but keep our feet on the ground. In short, we are a small team armed to the teeth with poor quality swords and wooden, crumbling shields…”
And, presumably, wizards and archers stashed safely in the back.
Dungeons of the Amber Griffin is slated for a 2023 release on Steam (opens in new tab). You can download a demo there during Steam Next Fest, which ends on October 10.
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