Secrets of the Crag

Hehe, I might be very biased because I had been playing this a couple of times before it was published. Oh well, if my rantings can convince someone to feature Secrets of the Crag immediately and let it replace dungeon stompage, then it's all fine by me.

What I truly like is that it improves and expands upon the game mechanics of its spiritual site predecessor dungeon stompage while at the same time being a title that improves upon the navigation tools of ruins of Anzar. You can see that from the very beginning.

With stat picking: Crag naturally blends your regular exposition with stat choosing, swatting two goals in one go; introducing the world and your character's goal while at the same time making the player inadvertendly choose their own playstyle for the rest of the game. There is no exposition or explanation really needed.

It knows its selling point.
Dungeon stompage has an amusing, but still a quite slow beginning with you equiping stuff, choosing stats, hearing the story, while all the fun dungeon exploration comes in relatively late. Crag really pushes you right into the action when you are done with the relatively short prologue. Well, they are both dungeon delve games with a heavy focus on exploration, I would say that you want to flaunt it as early as you can right?

The rulebook: man, what I really love is that you can see the rules and game mechanics explanation every time whenever you feel like it (except during combat). So when a player is a little confused they don't have to start from the beginning to reread the tutorial. It's a small addition but it is really convenient.

The narrative flow of fights. While there is also wonderful flavor text in dungeon stompage, Crag does take it to the next level. When your agility stats are high enough, a lot more combat options will open DEPENDING on the enemy you're fighting. For the thief fight you can choose to disarm one, cut one's bowstring and choose to throw sand in their face. For each enemy the tactics and available options can change pretty drastically, making the fights a tad more engaging than usual.

The changing room descriptions. Just like in Anzar, the room description header changes when you have visited the place before. It is such a small detail, but it just makes for a more immersive experience. Of course the character will know what the room is called when he has entered it before haha. It is a pretty huge hassle to code in, but it is still very cool to see.

The full diversity and range of magic. Dungeon stompage did use scrolls as magic, but it was not as diverse in its implementation as Crag. The sheer amount of them and the fact that most of them have multiple occasions where one can use them besides combat (some even unlock secret areas), just says enough about the extensive nature of the magic mechanics. And remember, it is not even necessary to use magic to complete the game and one can fully just decide to never use it and be fine.

Well and the dungeon just feels so much bigger despite the story's smaller wordcount. The sheer size of the rooms and the fact that all of the betatesters couldn't even find all of the locations in one go says more than enough.

You know the only place where dungeon stompage is stronger is that its narrative is a lot more focused than Crag, but that is in my opinion kind of not really relevant in these types of games. Because you know, the exploring in itself is kind of the narrative, it doesn't need an elaborate story to be effective. Rather, adding a longer prologue and epilogues and cutscenes might take away from the quick paced fun and action.

The shrines, the way how one seems to teleport through certain doors, the diverse range of rooms (even an underwater section), just are some extra icing to the cake.

Honestly, I still cannot believe that this game has not received its commendation yet or a featured spot in the fantasy corner. It does what it does well, heck, better than most of such games in the app store and it is free haha. Gryphon, just give me some of your coding gifts, you friggin coding wizard. I admit it, I'm jelly. Here, I give you my 8/8 rating,, friggin show off.

Tldr: Just read it! I swear it's good

This game is fantastic, and is well worth the time to explore all the various aspects of the dungeon. It has a little bit of everything that one would desire from a traditional dungeon crawl. Secret rooms, hidden treasure, puzzling challenges, and combat against various monsters/entities make this an extremely enjoyable game.
There are so many different areas to explore, and it is challenging to figure out the different ways to obtain items and beat the obstacles that appear.

Although the story provides a good backdrop for the adventure, it is not narrative heavy, and leans more into the dungeon exploration. However, it is also not simply a hack and slash dungeon crawl either. It requires some thought, trial and error and the perseverance to find specific items to accomplish certain goals.

I had the privilege of playtesting this game before publication, and found that it replays very well. The algorithms that drive the combat and stats seemed to perform smoothly.

The dungeon itself is a pretty good size, so if you get lost easily, it might aid you to make a map as you progress through the dungeon. Also, I would recommend reading the rules and getting familiar with the stats/manage items commands because this will help a lot in manipulating the necessary items in the game.

Also I definitely recommend playing this game more than once. I don't think I could have found all the secret rooms, items, or endings with just one play. For me, this game was reminiscent of some of the classics of my childhood. Awesome work by Gryphon.

"You pick up your pace, raising your chin slightly.
Whatever you run into, you're confident you can handle
it. You've proven yourself resourceful and determined,
capable of facing any danger thrown your way."

Wow, This dungeon's huge. Even though I got the epilogue 10 I still feel like there was so much I didn't explore. This is my fifth playthrough so I've gone through most of the dungeon and killed most of the monsters.

In the first one, I died of poison, the second one I died to the lizard, in the third playthrough I actually survived and became a rogue, in the fourth run I got petrified, and this one I felt pretty accomplished for making it as far as I did. There are plenty of options and items and your build is pretty customizable. I'd recommend starting with at least one strength or precision so you aren't a little weakling.

You can also build a more mana-focused build but plenty of the weapons were powerful enough to take down the monsters so I mainly used the Unlock and Phasing spells to access more of the dungeon. You can do whatever, but I felt like the combat was a lot easier after I got some armor and decent weapons.

As far as navigating the dungeon goes my only minor gripe is that it was hard to find my way back to a room I wanted to visit again when I found something just due to the massive size of the whole thing. There was some trial and error involved in testing different ability scores to see which one worked the best for me and going to the rooms where I knew the good items were after several playthroughs.

If you've got a few hours to kill and want to play a difficult dungeon crawl game this is for you. Comparing this to Dungeon Stompage which is another dungeon crawl game on the site this one felt way bigger. I felt like I was in a Zelda dungeon minus the dungeon map they give you to help you navigate easier. If there's a big boss fight in the crag I haven't found it yet. Like I said I've missed at least 7 remaining rooms.

Overall there are some good story elements in here with the gods and their shrines and the roguelike elements of the game were a big plus. The only thing I wanted was a map item to explore the dungeon easier, though I don't know if that would make the game too easy or not. Also, I'd consider adding a boss room if there isn't one already that I missed. As far as the title goes the only thing I could think of is to add an adjective before Crag. for example, the title could be Secrets of the Haunted Crag or Secrets of the Burning Crag, but if the author wants to leave the title like it is that's ok too. There was a lot of scripting and effort put into this that's beyond my knowledge so big kudos to the author for sharing this!

I can't help but feel that I screwed myself over and made a character that had negative stats in strength, agility and precision.

Since the process of choosing stats was narrative based, I tried to make my character similar to myself. What I learned was that I would not survive in a dungeon. I would try (and fail) to run away from all enemies and eventually die to a trap door that my level 3 perception didn't see.

In any case, I feel like the starter weapon should change based on your stat loadout. Got a high precision stat? Your character decided to bring a bow. Got a high intelligence stat and nothing else? Your character realized that farming isn't such a bad vocation after all.

Maybe I'm just salty, I don't know. I didn't have much fun sadly.

Neat mechanics, just overall good. If you're looking for just a fun dungeon crawl experience without any story this is perfect.

Spent hours grinding trying to unlock Paladin, Dark Disciple or the wizard endings and only got to the first step for Paladin and Dark Disciple, but I did end up with

Visited 50 of 52 locations.

Killed 31 of 18 monsters.

Learned 20 of 17 spells.

Found 17 of 8 treasures.

A walkthrough would be incredible for those elusive endings, because I think I've used up my patience blindly trying but would happily play again if I knew how to achieve them.

Excellent. This reminds me of Dungeon Stompage, I like the way that health is earnt at the beginning of the story and the dungeon adventure lay-out was as good as any I've read in fantasy fiction. There was a huge amount of effort put into this and it shows: the writing is consistently good throughout and I thoroughly enjoyed trying one or two different adventure paths, highly recommended and a sort of exemplification of a good Fantasy gamebook adventure.

Love it

Recommendation: PLAY THIS. It’s incredibly fun and even slightly addicting.

This is by far my (second because of Eternal) favorite game on this site. The game mechanics, the intricacy, just all of it is wonderful.

**spoilers below, kinda**

I love how you choose your beginning stats in a story-like fashion instead of simply allotting certain points to certain places. I also love how deeply each of these state affects the story, prohibiting certain actions while making other things incredibly easy.
It takes SO long to complete all the rooms, and it even has to be in a certain order. I haven’t yet found a way to do absolutely everything in one run, but I’m searching. After a few tries, I managed to form a complete map of the dungeon by using the provided pictures and Notability.
Simply the complexity (note: not complexicity this time) of the map is amazing. The effort you put into creating it and then making sure every option in the story stuck with that map, without one case of deviance, is amazing. It really shows the effort you put into this.
Another thing I liked is the battle mechanics. There are several different options in every single combat encounter, and all are realistically simulated with many different possible outcomes. So many.
This story has really a lot of branching. It’s nearly a whole open world RPG game. If you gave me visuals and sound effects I would pay to play this on my Xbox. Not only are there quite a handful of available endings, but there’s also countless methods of reaching each of them. Truly inspiring.
There are literally NO typos in the entire thing, which is impressive in a story of any size, let alone one with a 6/8 play length.
There’s not a lot of character development, but that’s because this is much more game than story. I wouldn’t count that as a flaw at all.
As for coding and such, there’s SO MUCH of it, and NO broken links or little mistakes (that I know of) anywhere in it. There’s just so much polish in this it’s breathtaking. Truly a masterpiece, I am in awe.
So, overall: Wow, Gryphon. Just wow.

Just here to finally get this game fully rated. I didn't play TOO much, but these were my stats.

Gameplay stats:
Visited 34 of 52 locations.
Killed 13 of 18 monsters.
Learned 3 of 17 spells.
Found 2 of 8 treasures.

Anyway, this is not exactly my type of game but I still enjoyed it, and incredible effort must have been put into it, so I'm giving this an 8.

Just as an aside, I've noticed a fair number of spelling mistakes.

I wonder if there is a walkthrough somewhere? I'd certainly like to read up on the conditions for all these other endings.

Either way, nice job Gryphon :)