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Grimoire Heralds of the Winged Exemplar, a game in development for 20 years, releases

I have experience playing projects that are more the maddened desires of a coder trying to make the Perfect Game than something designed as a shippable product (hello, Dwarf Fortress) so I took my time with this game, watched some videos and streams of people playing it, and then decided to bite the bullet myself and have a go.

(I also avoided buying it day one, because I'm not dumb enough to buy aforementioned Perfect Games without letting one or two versions go by to iron out the inevitable showstoppers)

It's an unbalanced thing - NPCs are far, far too good compared to your stock party. The sound design is frequently bonkers. Yet I struggle to call the game unfair.

It's a messy thing but a really interesting game.

It's a fun thing. And it's a lot of fun to watch streams of too, especially at the moment given nobody's beaten the game yet.

It's also a very well written game. Its humour is usually quite wry.
 
The writing and puzzle design is especially stellar. You find clues and people tell you things and you ACTUALLY HAVE TO READ THEM, and think about them, and realize what you need to do based on that. A story is being built up that you need to assemble from its disparate pieces.

Now, it is necessary to be able to Detect Secrets because sometimes the only path forward is through an illusory wall, or the one item or clue you need is sitting in some hidden alcove somewhere. But that becomes really obvious really quickly. It's kind of unfortunate any time a single game element becomes a rote necessity rather than optional, but that's the nature of the game. Just one of those things where it's like...yeah maybe this game would be better if you just always sensed these things, because you have to do it anyway, and putting the puzzles together can be hard enough.
 
So he wants to make another Katawa Shoujo?

thatsthejoke.jpg

The writing and puzzle design is especially stellar. You find clues and people tell you things and you ACTUALLY HAVE TO READ THEM, and think about them, and realize what you need to do based on that. A story is being built up that you need to assemble from its disparate pieces.

Now, it is necessary to be able to Detect Secrets because sometimes the only path forward is through an illusory wall, or the one item or clue you need is sitting in some hidden alcove somewhere. But that becomes really obvious really quickly. It's kind of unfortunate any time a single game element becomes a rote necessity rather than optional, but that's the nature of the game. Just one of those things where it's like...yeah maybe this game would be better if you just always sensed these things, because you have to do it anyway, and putting the puzzles together can be hard enough.

Agreed on all this, but bear in mind that there is already a skill in the game that mimics Detect Secret - Scout.

Frankly the worst thing about the game having "required" stuff right now is that it feels like you need Mindread to get the most out of NPCs.

But TBH: this is the sort of game that defines what "secret Steam gem" means - it's like games such as The Sea Will Claim Everything in that it's impossibly weird and personal to the developer. It's a very unusual experience and it's hard to directly fault it because of that.
 
Agreed on all this, but bear in mind that there is already a skill in the game that mimics Detect Secret - Scout.

I feel like it's too unreliable. I'm not to 100 points in it yet but I doubt it will work 100% of the time even then, and all it takes is not working once at a crucial moment for me to be lost for hours. I can't rewalk an entire dungeon just in case something wasn't revealed the first time, especially not when every class is eventually a caster, they can all learn Detect Secret, and it's cheap to cast.

Actually I'm not sure what good True Seeing is at this point. All I can think of would be a puzzle involving a remote wall you can see but can't stand next to.
 
I have experience playing projects that are more the maddened desires of a coder trying to make the Perfect Game than something designed as a shippable product (hello, Dwarf Fortress) so I took my time with this game, watched some videos and streams of people playing it, and then decided to bite the bullet myself and have a go.

(I also avoided buying it day one, because I'm not dumb enough to buy aforementioned Perfect Games without letting one or two versions go by to iron out the inevitable showstoppers)

It's an unbalanced thing - NPCs are far, far too good compared to your stock party. The sound design is frequently bonkers. Yet I struggle to call the game unfair.

It's a messy thing but a really interesting game.

It's a fun thing. And it's a lot of fun to watch streams of too, especially at the moment given nobody's beaten the game yet.

It's also a very well written game. Its humour is usually quite wry.

Yeah, Wizardry (and hence its descendants) got to wry humour very early on, I suspect if I checked I'd find some of the D&D modules of a similar nature came out in the 5 or so years before Wizardry.
 

SubjectNineteen

Neo Member
EDIT: This ended up being a false alarm. This proved to be a false positive from Kaspersky. This is apparently a common problem Kaspersky has with some games from Steam, and because I had not encountered it before, I assumed it was a legitimate threat. I apologize immensely for my mistake.

WARNING:

I just want to mention that I just reset my computer, and Kaspersky launched by itself, warning me that it flagged Grimoire for adware. Here's the text of the warning:

13.08.2017 02.45.18 Detected object (file) deleted E:\My Programs\steamapps\common\Grimoire_Heralds_of_the_Winged_Exemplar\Grimoire.exe File: E:\My Programs\steamapps\common\Grimoire_Heralds_of_the_Winged_Exemplar\Grimoire.exe Object name: not-a-virus:HEUR:AdWare.Win32.Generic Object type: Adware Time: 8/13/2017 2:45 AM

Sorry it's all condensed like that. I don't have a word processor on this PC, since it's my dedicated gaming computer, and so I used WordPad.

Apparently this is a nasty piece of code, and it can potentially cause huge problems. Kaspersky was able to remove it, but I'm running a full system scan now to make sure there aren't any further infections. I also uninstalled Grimoire via Steam for good measure. If this was legitimately put into the game by Cleve, then this is NOT OKAY!

Here are some pages I could find online talking about the trojan, for that's what it apparently is:

[Edit: I removed the links, since this was a false positive and it was brought to my attention by Popstar that the sites were probably fake malware sites, anyway.]

I have never had anything like this happen with Steam or any game from it, and it seems like it was linked specifically with the Grimoire .exe, so I doubt it must have been introduced via an auto-update.

I don't download from shady sites and I always have Kaspersky Total Security running, which has always caught potential threats before they can infect my PC. This is the first time any malware has been detected on my PC, and I've used it extensively and almost exclusively since September of 2016. So, my only thought is that the Grimore .exe is infected with malware.

ANYONE who has installed this game should run a scan for malware immediately. I'd had Grimoire on my PC for days, and it was only flagged for malware within the last half hour, after I reset my computer. So, it may have only recently been introduced via an update.

I am going to contact Steam support and warn them of this situation.

Should I make a post on the community page, too? Chances are Cleve would just deny it and my post would get deleted. I've never posted on the Steam community before, so I have no idea how that works. I will report to Steam customer support immediately, though.

Hopefully this can be isolated and the game pulled from Steam, or whatever Steam does with infected software, before it causes sweeping damage to anyone unfortunate to have downloaded this game.

Edit:

Okay, so apparently there's no way to contact anyone at Steam itself to inform them that Kaspersky flagged this game's .exe as adware. I can only contact the developer, being Cleve himself. How would it be best to proceed?
 
WARNING:

I just want to mention that I just reset my computer, and Kaspersky launched by itself, warning me that it flagged Grimoire for adware. Here's the text of the warning:

13.08.2017 02.45.18 Detected object (file) deleted E:\My Programs\steamapps\common\Grimoire_Heralds_of_the_Winged_Exemplar\Grimoire. exe File: E:\My Programs\steamapps\common\Grimoire_Heralds_of_the_Winged_Exemplar\Grimoire. exe Object name: not-a-virus:HEUR:AdWare.Win32.Generic Object type: Adware Time: 8/13/2017 2:45 AM

It has previously been reported on the Steam forum, but it looks like it is just a false positive. Most AV software does not flag the executable:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/650670/discussions/0/1471967615858136897/

The presence of the "HEUR" flag in the object name indicates that this item was detected using a heuristic approach, which is more error prone than exact matching:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:steamcommunity.com+Kaspersky+HEUR
 

SubjectNineteen

Neo Member
Ucchedavāda;246034504 said:
It has previously been reported on the Steam forum, but it looks like it is just a false positive. Most AV software does not flag the executable:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/650670/discussions/0/1471967615858136897/

The presence of the "HEUR" flag in the object name indicates that this item was detected using a heuristic approach, which is more error prone than exact matching:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:steamcommunity.com+Kaspersky+HEUR

Really? Phew! That's good news then.

I'm relatively clueless when it comes to malware and how software detects it, so I had no idea whether or not it could have been a false positive or the real deal. I thought I'd make mention of it, in the event it was a new development.

I'm glad that this has been discussed, though, and what's more that it's apparently a false positive. This would be only the second false positive I've ever had from Kaspersky, the other being GeDoSaTo, which I have to use to render Final Fantasy XIII at anything over 720p to prevent the text from glitching out of existence in the enemy bio screens. I had researched that one explicitly, though, so I knew it was a false positive. With this game, on the other hand, I had no idea.

Since it's been discussed, I won't do anything further. I'll let my current scan finish, and likely reinstall Grimoire. I do want to play this game.

Thank you so much for the info, Ucchedavāda! I even Googled the name of the supposed virus plus Grimoire's title, and didn't find the discussion you linked to. Thank you again!
 

Wok

Member
Since it's been discussed, I won't do anything further. I'll let my current scan finish, and likely reinstall Grimoire. I do want to play this game.

I would like to add that, unless a lot of games, Grimoire does not "phone home", which is nice. Indeed, my firewall is currently set so that every software has to ask to connect, and it happens that some offline games try to connect to their developpers when they are launched, but it is not the case with Grimoire. It is a real offline game.
 

SubjectNineteen

Neo Member
Cleve's Neanderthal coding skills were just too much for Kaspersky, lol.

Ha ha! Yeah, seems like! If it were any other game, I probably would have recognized it was a false positive, but considering the lengthy gestation period of Grimore, it's already rocky update history, and the fact that Cleve has threatened to put DRM in the game, it made alarm bells ring loudly.

I am sorry if I jumped the gun on this one. Like I said, I have little experience with this sort of thing, tried to search for it, and have not ran into this on Steam before. I hope I don't come across as having been a boy who cried wolf.

Also, I was going to edit my post to say this, but may as well say it here since Sad Affleck (I love the name, BTW!) posted before I could:

Holy crap, it seems Kaspersky has a bad habit of flagging .exe's of games from Steam as malware, based on the second link Ucchedavāda provided. Damn! That is a lot of topics on Kaspersky finding HEUR:Trojan.Win32.Generic in games. I'm surprised I haven't ran into this, despite having... *checks Steam for installed game count* ...69 (*snicker*) games installed on my computer. I guess Cleve's game is special after all!

I would like to add that, unless a lot of games, Grimoire does not "phone home", which is nice. Indeed, my firewall is currently set so that every software has to ask to connect, and it happens that some offline games try to connect to their developpers when they are launched, but it is not the case with Grimoire. It is a real offline game.

Awesome! Thank you for that information. That's great to know, Wok. (Tangentially, I just ate at a restaurant called "Wok in the Park" on Thursday.) I'll give the game another go tomorrow.
 
I am sorry if I jumped the gun on this one. Like I said, I have little experience with this sort of thing, tried to search for it, and have not ran into this on Steam before. I hope I don't come across as having been a boy who cried wolf.

Nah, better safe than sorry. A false positive causes no harm, a real threat could have messed up people's files.
 
I would like to add that, unless a lot of games, Grimoire does not "phone home", which is nice. Indeed, my firewall is currently set so that every software has to ask to connect, and it happens that some offline games try to connect to their developpers when they are launched, but it is not the case with Grimoire. It is a real offline game.

It would be pretty easy to tell if Grimoire was phoning home.
 

SubjectNineteen

Neo Member
Nah, better safe than sorry. A false positive causes no harm, a real threat could have messed up people's files.

Okay, that's good to hear. I was beginning to feel ashamed for causing a stir.

Popstar:
I deleted the links from my original post. Thank you for pointing out that they were probably fake malware websites. After reading them again, I agree with your consensus. I was too blinded by anxiety (which I suffer from anyway; that's not supposed to be an excuse, just context) to realize that. Thank you again.

Ucchedavāda;246035616 said:
It would be pretty easy to tell if Grimoire was phoning home.
Oh my god, that's brilliant! That made me laugh hard!! I needed that. Thank you again, Ucchedavāda.

Now, I need to get some sleep. It's after 4 AM here.

Thanks again, all. Sorry again for making a fuss over nothing. I did not mean for that. I just don't have much experience with this sort of thing and went into panic mode. I appreciate the understanding.
 
Ha ha! Yeah, seems like! If it were any other game, I probably would have recognized it was a false positive, but considering the lengthy gestation period of Grimore, it's already rocky update history, and the fact that Cleve has threatened to put DRM in the game, it made alarm bells ring loudly.

I am sorry if I jumped the gun on this one. Like I said, I have little experience with this sort of thing, tried to search for it, and have not ran into this on Steam before. I hope I don't come across as having been a boy who cried wolf.

Also, I was going to edit my post to say this, but may as well say it here since Sad Affleck (I love the name, BTW!) posted before I could:

Holy crap, it seems Kaspersky has a bad habit of flagging .exe's of games from Steam as malware, based on the second link Ucchedavāda provided. Damn! That is a lot of topics on Kaspersky finding HEUR:Trojan.Win32.Generic in games. I'm surprised I haven't ran into this, despite having... *checks Steam for installed game count* ...69 (*snicker*) games installed on my computer. I guess Cleve's game is special after all!



Awesome! Thank you for that information. That's great to know, Wok. (Tangentially, I just ate at a restaurant called "Wok in the Park" on Thursday.) I'll give the game another go tomorrow.

Heuristic scans matching Generics ( Gen ) is pretty common because data compression and legitimate software acrivities often look like potential viruses without context. But don't disregard them unless you trust the developer, most AVs let you report potential false positives for verification too.
 

SubjectNineteen

Neo Member
you may want to put an 'EDIT: False Alarm' at the top of your post

Done and done. Thank you for the suggestion. I'm glad I caught this before going to bed after deciding to check the topic one more time.

Have a good night...well, morning now...everyone. I appreciate all the help. I learned a lot from this unfortunate experience. Thank you again, everyone.
 

Wok

Member
And gaming magazines? As if those are still relevant at all?

Gaming magazines are still a thing, although they try to go online in parallel as the paper version:
https://www.canardpc.com/

Speaking of which:
https://www.canardpc.com/364/linvention-de-la-machine-vaporware-grimoire

This is an article, which is free for a week, about GRIMOIRE published in a French magazine.

This is not a review, as the magazine was published prior to the release of the game.
 

spad3

Member
600 hours of play possible in a single game
Lush Colorful 2D Hand Drawn Artwork
Retro style MIDI music and 8 bit sound effects
244+ Maps in the game to explore!
Turn-Based strategic combat
Multiple Beginnings, Multiple Endings
144 context sensitive magic spells
14 races, 15 professions, 50 skills
64 intelligent NPCs with 8000+ Words in Vocabulary
Full Sentence Communication with NPCs
240+ monsters each with special powers and defenses
1000+ items, Carry Containers, Global Party Inventory
30 conditions, from Confusion to Disease & Lycanthropy
Automapping, Autowalking, Autohealing
Global Map Atlas With Position Marker
Quest Journal, Hint Prompting, Help Facility, Mini-Quests
Complex LockPicking Interfaces for Doors & Chests
Challenging Puzzles and Rich Interactive Dungeons
Browsable Character Library for up to 100 characters
Up to 12 Commented Postage Stamped Savegames
Multi-themed GUI and customizable screen layouts

Back to the grave with this one.
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
600 hours of play possible in a single game
Lush Colorful 2D Hand Drawn Artwork
Retro style MIDI music and 8 bit sound effects
244+ Maps in the game to explore!
Turn-Based strategic combat
Multiple Beginnings, Multiple Endings
144 context sensitive magic spells
14 races, 15 professions, 50 skills
64 intelligent NPCs with 8000+ Words in Vocabulary
Full Sentence Communication with NPCs
240+ monsters each with special powers and defenses
1000+ items, Carry Containers, Global Party Inventory
30 conditions, from Confusion to Disease & Lycanthropy
Automapping, Autowalking, Autohealing
Global Map Atlas With Position Marker
Quest Journal, Hint Prompting, Help Facility, Mini-Quests
Complex LockPicking Interfaces for Doors & Chests
Challenging Puzzles and Rich Interactive Dungeons
Browsable Character Library for up to 100 characters
Up to 12 Commented Postage Stamped Savegames
Multi-themed GUI and customizable screen layouts

Back to the grave with this one.

get a load of this sape

the game turned out really, really good
 

1upsuper

Member
600 hours of play possible in a single game
Lush Colorful 2D Hand Drawn Artwork
Retro style MIDI music and 8 bit sound effects
244+ Maps in the game to explore!
Turn-Based strategic combat
Multiple Beginnings, Multiple Endings
144 context sensitive magic spells
14 races, 15 professions, 50 skills
64 intelligent NPCs with 8000+ Words in Vocabulary
Full Sentence Communication with NPCs
240+ monsters each with special powers and defenses
1000+ items, Carry Containers, Global Party Inventory
30 conditions, from Confusion to Disease & Lycanthropy
Automapping, Autowalking, Autohealing
Global Map Atlas With Position Marker
Quest Journal, Hint Prompting, Help Facility, Mini-Quests
Complex LockPicking Interfaces for Doors & Chests
Challenging Puzzles and Rich Interactive Dungeons
Browsable Character Library for up to 100 characters
Up to 12 Commented Postage Stamped Savegames
Multi-themed GUI and customizable screen layouts

Back to the grave with this one.

Out of everything going on with this game and its creator, those are what you take issue with?
 

loganclaws

Plane Escape Torment
600 hours of play possible in a single game
Lush Colorful 2D Hand Drawn Artwork
Retro style MIDI music and 8 bit sound effects
244+ Maps in the game to explore!
Turn-Based strategic combat
Multiple Beginnings, Multiple Endings
144 context sensitive magic spells
14 races, 15 professions, 50 skills
64 intelligent NPCs with 8000+ Words in Vocabulary
Full Sentence Communication with NPCs
240+ monsters each with special powers and defenses
1000+ items, Carry Containers, Global Party Inventory
30 conditions, from Confusion to Disease & Lycanthropy
Automapping, Autowalking, Autohealing
Global Map Atlas With Position Marker
Quest Journal, Hint Prompting, Help Facility, Mini-Quests
Complex LockPicking Interfaces for Doors & Chests
Challenging Puzzles and Rich Interactive Dungeons
Browsable Character Library for up to 100 characters
Up to 12 Commented Postage Stamped Savegames
Multi-themed GUI and customizable screen layouts

Back to the grave with this one.

What a weird fucking post.
 

mbpm1

Member
All those seem like great things to me

You don't want a global map with marker?You don't want full sentences?
 
And it's not like the full sentences are even required, just keywords.

I guess an aversion to having to type? Wants to be able to just click on key words, or not have them at all and just have every NPC spell everything out?
 
600 hours of play possible in a single game
Lush Colorful 2D Hand Drawn Artwork
Retro style MIDI music and 8 bit sound effects
244+ Maps in the game to explore!
Turn-Based strategic combat
Multiple Beginnings, Multiple Endings
144 context sensitive magic spells
14 races, 15 professions, 50 skills
64 intelligent NPCs with 8000+ Words in Vocabulary
Full Sentence Communication with NPCs
240+ monsters each with special powers and defenses
1000+ items, Carry Containers, Global Party Inventory
30 conditions, from Confusion to Disease & Lycanthropy
Automapping, Autowalking, Autohealing
Global Map Atlas With Position Marker
Quest Journal, Hint Prompting, Help Facility, Mini-Quests
Complex LockPicking Interfaces for Doors & Chests
Challenging Puzzles and Rich Interactive Dungeons
Browsable Character Library for up to 100 characters
Up to 12 Commented Postage Stamped Savegames
Multi-themed GUI and customizable screen layouts

Back to the grave with this one.

Did you not play PC dungeon games from the 80's and early 90's?
 
Did you not play PC dungeon games from the 80's and early 90's?

For real...the game has some issues but overall it's really great. For those of us who played games like this during the DRPG golden era, Grimoire hits all the right notes and definitely has some QOL improvements over wizardry 7, the Eye of the Beholder games, etc. Personally, I'm having a lot of fun with it despite some interface issues and bugs(which actually haven't really affected me yet).
 
So uh I bought it and played it for a couple of hours.

It was... surprisingly good (if you're into the genre that is. As a Wizardry 7 fan, I'm impressed. Still not sure if I'm feeling the 8 characters. 6 has been the sweet spot for me.)
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
So someone beat this (Felipepe from the codex), took him 80 hours and he had 92% completion rate on the world map.

Not quite 600.
 

Wok

Member
So someone beat this (Felipepe from the codex), took him 80 hours and he had 92% completion rate on the world map.

Not quite 600.

Maybe reloading after dying does not increase the playtime. Was it 80 hours on Steam, or 80 hours registered in his save?
 

Wok

Member

It looks like true 80 hours.

lli2ngT.png
 
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