INTRODUCTION
You are Drake, a young man who had to witness the destruction of his Home and just escaped Death by a hair’s length. Years later you return to your old home only to find a mysterious voice calling you out. Apparently, your job here is not done and your presence is needed deep down in the ruins of Stonekeep.
GAMEPLAY
Stonekeep is a first person Dungeon Crawler in the style pf Eye of the Beholder or Dungeon Master.
It is one of the Fathers of Legend Of Grimrock, Vapor and Operencia!
The Story takes place solely in Underground areas that all have their own Biomes.
There is thickly walled keep hallways in the Upper Levels, 100 year old Mineshafts, Ice Caves, Underground Mushroom Forests and more. The Deeper you Venture the greater the Danger and the stronger the Enemies but then again: that also means better Loot!
You can traverse these levels downwards and upwards, so you can always go back to places you visited earlier! Exploration is heavily encouraged; hidden switches and puzzles are available to solve for people with a keen eye, but never required to progress the story. Story is told via scrolls which can be picked up and through some main and side characters you will encounter.
There is Magic (or Magick as it’s called In-Game) you can use to build your own spells (more on that later), a range of weapons (ranged and melee ) potions and jewelry!
The center point of your adventure is your journal, (If you can find it) which will hold any information you gather. The journal contains your (auto)map, your skills, the status and background information on party members, item descriptions of anything you found already, your runes and clues (i.e. you overhear a conversation).
Almost every page allows for own entries. You can switch out the item description of a health potion and write down how many HP it heals.
You can add as many map markers as you can possibly put and they are all tracked in the Map section of your journal.
Another very important item is the Magic Scroll. This Serves as your inventory, and is actually bottomless/infinite. Items stay where you put them and are placed in a List kind of system. You can use Page up and Down to scroll through your scroll (see what I did there?) faster. You will have to sort them on your own though. So, try and find your own order for stuff.
Generally, Weapons, Armor, Ammunition is a good place to start. I put stuff like keys on the end of the scroll and everything else in between
Skills will level like in Elder Scrolls games, so as you do certain things. Attacking with Daggers will raise your strength a bit and your skill with daggers. Running will raise you agility, getting damaged will raise your vitality. Skills have a maximum level of 10 and the levels scale logarithmically.
Controls are pretty simple
Arrow Keys / WASD to move and turn. Doors will open automatically if you unlocked them.
Left klick uses whatever is in the left hand and right click uses whatever is in the right hand.
F2 to Save
F4 to Load
F3 for Subtitles
Weapons and Magic
Stonekeep sports several weapon types. There is throwing weapons, ranged weapons, daggers, swords, two handed swords, and staves. If you have a favorite weapon you will probably be able to use it.
Weapons are separated into three damage categories, but then again every weapon does a little damage in every category, though they have strengths and weaknesses:
Pierce: Daggers, swords, javelins, darts, arrows.
Slash/Cut: Swords, Two Handed Swords, Axes
Bash: Shields, Staves, Hammers,
Throwing: You can throw any item for some added damage. Some items do extra damage when thrown (i.e. throwing weapons like Darts) and all of them can only be thrown at a certain range. You can also throw arrows if you don’t have a bow (these will fly a long way). The items will deal damage based on their normal stats. An item that does bashing damage, like a rock, will do elevated bashing damage when thrown. Thrown Swords will do cutting damage, but since they where not made for throwing their range is low and the damage from throwing is so as well.
Magic:
Magic in Stonekeep works a little bit different compared to other games. Root of it all are Runes. There is also no “Mana” as is. Characters that are able to use magic, lore wise need some kind of amplifier to cast spells. The Mana lies in the Maximum Charge of your Magical Staff. If you deplete it, you need to refill it. As a little help staffs have their own mana pool, so if you find multiple ones you can drain one, and still use the others!
Runes come in three (actually 4) languages. Human, Throgg, Elvish and Meta.
To cast Runes you have to first inscribe them on your magical Staff. (Open the Runes Section of the Journal, klick the rune while holding a staff and then select a slot.
Each Rune language has their own characteristic spells. Human Runes are the standard spells, like fireballs, healing, and some buffs.
Elven Runes are gimmicky. Some make you invisible, some let you float or shrink enemies. And not to forget: a fabled secret Rune ;)
Throgg Runes are for brute forcing stuff. Buffs shield you from physical damage or give strength.
Lightning Bolt serves as ranged Damage.
Meta Runes are special. You can scribble them over existing runes to change their effects.
scribble the double power rune over Fireball and you will cast two fireballs at once.
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
Stonekeep falls in a perfect time period to relive today. Overall Graphics are well saturated with strong colors, magic spells feel and look powerful. Although you can probably count the Pixels, the game still draws atmospheric environments. The narrow Hallways of the Stonekeep castle really feel much narrower than the mineshafts, although all hallways are the same width.
Weapons used in battle keep true to their icons and are nice to look at. So, to sum things up. graphics convey and portray the game world in a believable manner, models and textures are clearly made with love and everything has this bit-y pixely look which is currently having kind of a renaissance. Can’t get any more original.
Music is atmospheric and ads to the feeling of your surroundings, battle Music is a bit weird though.
But hey, for a DOS Game made in 1995 it is the best you can get!
Voice acting is actually very well made (and swallowed lots of the 5 million$ budget, second to the short intro which did cost half a million…) for each character has their own voice and no voice actor got recycled (Think of the typical Dark Elf voice in Elder Scrolls games).
Item sounds are feeling both impactful and sharp. Bottles you put down have a nice glassy sound to them. Same goes for weapon “swooshes” or the impacts of magic spells.
You will also be able to HEAR when your weapon is effective against an enemy. An enemy resistant to a damage type will make a noise that sounds like your weapon just brushed off their armor, yet a weapon that’s effective will leave you with nice and hefty hitting sounds, like a hammers crush, or a swords gory slash.
Overall the Sound is heavily influencing the whole presentation of the game and will greatly add to your experiences even with its few flaws.
CONCLUSION
Stonekeep is a medieval RPG experience that I can only recommend to play through!
If you are new to the game you are in for about 20 hours of Story wrapped into an atmospheric and intricate system of dungeons.
For players with sharp eyes, there is lots of secrets to find and explore, some of them will uncover lore, some will give you very good items that will help a lot.
Fighting feels powerful will have cower in fear when you enter areas, you shouldn’t be in yet.
The Magic system is special and unique to this game, hence its player involvement.
Stonekeep undoubtedly belongs to the Gold Standard Game Titles and deserves a place in your library!
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