Deep in the flaming bowels of the Boiling Mine, a mechanized monster grinds its gears…
From now until November 23rd, Stone Story RPG will be running a 2x Loot Event! Complete runs in the Boiling Mine to earn this extra loot (which also includes 2x Lost Item drops)*.
*For the duration of the Loot Event, the Bronze Guardian will drop two treasures. Delta Treasures dropped from the Bronze Guardian have double the chance of dropping Lost Items.
Upon returning to your shelter, you spy a curious note resting atop your Anvil. It would seem your skills have not gone unnoticed! A request for your services has come from the Guild… The Guild of Smack-Hammer!
The Guild of Smack-Hammer
Stone Story RPG adds its newest Legend, “The Guild of Smack-Hammer”!
Having spent some time adventuring in the Dark World, you’ve built up your stores of loot and event taking to making your own gear. Such skills are highly valued, and it would seem this Guild aims to test your worth.
Time to show them just what you can make!
[IMAGE 2]
New Scripts Added
In this content drop, we’re adding more scripts from our community event, StoneJam 4, as official scripts in-game!
Check them out below and try them in your own games~
New Cosmetic: Santa Hat by link2_thepast
To use in-game, add the following line to your Mind Stone: import Cosmetics/Hats/SantaHat
New UI: Record Player by Mind Stone Thief
To use in-game, add the following line to your Mind Stone: import UI/RecordPlayer
New UI: Damage Flash by 10100111001
To use in-game, add the following lines to your Mind Stone: import UI/damageFlash
New UI: Fancy UI by 10100111001
To use in-game, add the following lines to your Mind Stone: var fancyUI = import UI/FancyUI/fancyui fancyUI.Main()
The Quest Update Continues
With “The Guild of Smack-Hammer”, 9 out of 16 planned Legends have been added to the game. We hope you all look forward to more adventures in the Dark World!
Your adventures in the Dark World have been quite fortuitous! Trinkets and baubles fill your tool belt, the spoils of battle and exploration yours for the taking. Ever the industrious individual, you’ve honed your skills and crafted magnificent items.
Upon returning to your shelter, you spy a curious note resting atop your Anvil. It would seem your skills have not gone unnoticed! A request for your services has come from the Guild… The Guild of Smack-Hammer!
Who are you to deny others of your master-works? Get crafting, stonehead!
"The Guild of Smack-Hammer" is the fifth Quest Drop of the update and will be playable in Stone Story RPG beginning November 12th!
The air is calm. The moon is bright. Just another day of farming for loot in the Dark World.
Yet there’s a rumbling from within the Haunted Halls. The great skeleton Pallas has sent for you… But why? Perhaps he means to parley; an offer from the giant God himself, a Titanic Accord.
Titan’s Trial - Reboot
Stone Story RPG adds its newest Legend, “Titanic Accord”! After crashing Pallas’ party in "Mr. Pallas Wild Ride", you find yourself back in the Haunted Halls coming face-to-face with the towering titan himself. He makes a proposition: take his sword and slay the cursed spider that took his skin!
As part of the new Quest, Stone Story RPG will also be running its fifth Challenge Event, Titan’s Trial - Reboot, from November 2nd to November 9th. All players who participate in this event will receive the Blade of the Fallen God, a powerful Lost Item* that further deepens your arsenal.
Complete the quest “Titanic Accord” to obtain the Blade of the Fallen God
At the end of this Challenge Event, participants will receive special loot for completing the event: a shiny treasure with an enchantment**
To proceed with the Challenge, players must complete a series of goals. Each goal completed further improves the loot’s enchantment bonus (up to a +11 enchantment).
There are a total of 5 goals, each one requiring you to use the Blade of the Fallen God in creative ways.
(Note: Events may repeat, and all gameplay-related rewards can still be obtained through normal play. Enchantments can also be removed from the event loot and placed on another item.)
**The loot from this treasure will be uniquely “signed” to signify that it was specially obtained from this event; the effect this has is purely cosmetic
New Scripts Added
In this content drop, we’re adding more scripts from our community event, StoneJam 4, as official scripts in-game!
Check them out below and try them in your own games~
New cosmetic: Pet Cranius by Newominus
To use in-game, add the following line to your Mind Stone: import Cosmetics/PetCranius
New cosmetic: Cozy Cave by link2_thepast
To use in-game, add the following line to your Mind Stone: import Cosmetics/CozyCave
New UI: Calculator by Bl
To use in-game, add the following lines to your Mind Stone: import UI/Calculator
New UI: Steal Meter by Agerak
To use in-game, add the following lines to your Mind Stone: var StealMeter = new UI/StealMeter StealMeter.EXE(x,y,color)
The Quest Update Continues
“Titanic Accord” marks 8 out of 16 planned Legends in the Quest Update. We hope you all look forward to more adventures in the Dark World!
The air is calm. The moon is bright. Just another day of farming for loot in the Dark World.
Yet there’s a rumbling from within the Haunted Halls. The great skeleton Pallas has sent for you… But why? Perhaps he means to parley; an offer from the giant God himself, a Titanic Accord.
[MINI-TRAILER VIDEO]
Wield the magnificent Blade of the Fallen God and take its terrible titanic strength for your own.
The spirits of the Dark World have become most festive!
From now until October 31st Stone Story RPG will be running a 2x Loot Event. Complete runs in the Haunted Halls to earn this extra loot (which also includes 2x Lost Item drops).*
If you already wield Pallas’s imposing weapon, you may find a curious addition during this event…
*For the duration of the Halloween Event, Pallas will drop two treasures. Delta Treasures dropped from Pallas have double the chance of dropping Lost Items.
Though many Pushers found their fates frozen upon the frigid path of the Icy Ridge, one Pusher endured the icy winds. She’s been spotted on the repaired Bridge, staring into the Stream of the Silent.
Could this stranger know what mysteries await at the end? Do they perhaps dream of Ascension?
Ascension
In Stone Story RPG’s newest Legend, "Ascension", players will aid this wayward Pusher in their quest to reach Acropolis, the fabled city among the clouds.
What crazy scheme could they possibly have? And what does it have to do with all these chests?! Guess there’s only one way to find out...
New Scripts Added
In this content drop, we’re adding some scripts from our community event, StoneJam 4, as official scripts in-game!
Check them out below and try them in your own games~
New cosmetic: Pet Snail by Agerak
To use in-game, add the following line to your Mind Stone: import Cosmetics/PetSnail
New mini-game: Digits Puzzle by Okamiroy
To use in-game, add the following line to your Mind Stone: import Games/DigitsPuzzle
New UI: Doom HUD: Dr Abandonment
To use in-game, add the following lines to your Mind Stone: import UI/FaceHUD
The Quest Update Continues
Three Legends in-game, several more yet to come. Look forward to more adventures in the Dark World!
In ignorant servitude, Pushers knew nothing beyond their loop of endless work. With the fall of the Bronze Guardian and the arrival of the player, they quickly gained the impetus and curiosity to discover what lay beyond the Bronze Gate.
They could scarce imagine they might one day achieve Ascension.
Though many Pushers found their fates frozen upon the frigid path of the Icy Ridge, one Pusher endured the icy winds. She’s been spotted on the repaired Bridge, staring into the Stream of the Silent.
Could this stranger know what mysteries await at the end?
This year we're humbled and happy to be part of the lineup for Roguelike Celebration! Until October 19, Stone Story RPG will be on sale at a 20% discount.
40+ years of ASCII-art: From "Rogue" to Now
Though Stone Story RPG isn't a roguelike, it draws from many of its hallmarks. Looking back to the progenitor of the genre, Rogue, our primary inspiration is clear: We love ASCII-art!
Techniques and technology have come a long way from Rogue, the groundbreaking seminal 1980 dungeon crawler. Stone Story RPG sits at the crossroads of new and old, a confluence of retro and modern gaming. Nowhere is this more evident than in the game's animation style.
The stark minimalism of black and white ASCII art strikes just as clearly as when Rogue first released:
In developing Stone Story RPG we wanted to stretch the limits of this style. Using a combination of traditional animation techniques and clever Unity tricks, ASCII art can work just like pixel art!
Much of the process behind ASCII animation is the same as with any other medium:
Find references
Establish keyframes
Determine length of each animation
Go frame by frame and fill the inbetweens
Letters, numbers, and even Unicode symbols all work together to evoke an ethereal feel, something borne out of the era of DOS computers and floppy disks.
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Still curious about the ASCII animation process and wondering how you can incorporate natural-looking ASCII-art in your own work?
Check out this talk from Stone Story RPG's creator, Gabriel Santos, from Roguelike Celebration 2019!
The Council once held dominion over The Dark World, from the lowest Canyons to the highest Ridges. Their influence remains, a presence that tells of the Remnants of Five.
Lootmeister Hans, a former member of The Council of Five, has need of a delivery made to a destination unknown.
Surely a hero like you can handle a simple package… right?
Remnants of Five
In Remnants of Five, players will have a chance to meet Uulaa, the Ember Eye. Once a member of the esteemed Council of Five, the Matron of Flame has not been seen for many cycles. However, some say she’d prefer to keep it that way...
Hans has tasked you with discovering the location of his long-lost friend. Where in the Dark World could someone like Uulaa be hiding?
Along with this Legend, Stone Story RPG will also be adding a new shop, the Hotspring Shop, that uses a resource many of you have already been saving up: Ki Crystals!*
*You can find more details about Ki Crystal economy further down in the post
The Hotspring Shop will stock rare and hard to find items that players can purchase with their crystal currency. The inventory found here is of much higher quality than will be found in the Mushroom Shop; intrepid adventurers can expect to purchase valuable loot like nametags, legendary enchantments, and even Lost Items!
Since the items in the Hotspring Shop will be of greater quality, the way the Ki Crystal economy works will be a bit different. Crystals, however, can be obtained both through playing the game, completing weekly quests, and finding them in Delta treasures.
But that’s not all: this content patch also introduces Weekly Quests! Each week you’ll get a new set of objectives that, upon completion, will provide you with a Crystal Treasure.
New Scripts Added
As part of this content drop, we’re also including a few of our favorite entries from the StoneJam 4 as official scripts in-game!
We hope you give them a try~
New cosmetic: Knight by: Mind Stone Thief, Gergő, XX, standardcombo
To use in-game, add the following line to your Mind Stone: import Cosmetics/Knight
New mini-game: Mystic Sword by: Flan Bi
To use in-game, add the following line to your Mind Stone: import Games/SwordGame
New UI: Free Chest Tracker by: 10100111001
To use in-game, add the following lines to your Mind Stone: var freeChest = import UI/FreeChestTracker freeChest.Main()
The Quest Update Continues
Two down, many more to come. We hope you look forward to more adventures in the Dark World!
Shop Mechanics and Game Economy (design talk ahead!)
While we want to make use of certain idle/mobile mechanics, PC players can rest assured that we have no intentions of adding microtransactions to the desktop client.
We do have a mobile port with monetization in mind further down the line, but we took what was necessary for mobile (e.g. the Ki Crystal shop) and instead of excluding it from the PC, we've reframed it.
Not as a monetization tool, but as an engaging mechanic; formatted for a different purpose, with different balance values, that we hope adds to the game's fun.
As discussed in a previous post, Stone Story RPG is a metrics-driven project. This means that we base many of our design choices around trends and statistics that we notice in how players progress through the game.
Changes are made in order to engage players through the 1st day of playing to the 7th day to the 30th day (the D1 > D7 > D30 funnel).
Major factors in this design are shop mechanics. Functionally, they are a way to give players options: the option to brute force a challenge, the option to farm and stockpile, the option to choose how they progress.
In Stone Story RPG we want players to have room to experiment and play around. The Mushroom Shop does that for the early-mid game; it gives you a way to buy items like runes to overcome a difficult combat encounter that you might not have figured out the optimal solution for yet.
The Ki Crystal shop is a way for us to add this kind of flexibility to the mid-late game, going hand-in-hand with Quests and their respective rewards.
We’re still experimenting with how these systems and mechanics work in tandem with each other, which is where the Quest Update comes into play. Slowly, but surely, we’re filling Stone Story RPG’s design out and bringing it one step closer to the full vision we have in mind.
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As always, thank you for playing. We appreciate your continued support and feedback as we continue to chip away at the game.