The Official Aldorlea Games Forum

THE GRINDSTONE

$19.99



This is the latest game by Wolfs Moon Studios, already behind Angel Made, Verdungo and the latest Seventh Star.



SUMMARY:

To begin your adventure in The Grindstone you need to form a team of 4. You first pick your race from human, elf, dark-elf, amzar, lizard-folk and other various monsters.

You then decide a class varying from a heavy armor wearing Warrior, a magic throwing Wizard, a Ranger covering the battle field with arrows and much more!

You set off into the world with the freedom to take things how you please. You can help towns, or ignore all of them and just go work on your fishing abilities.

There's a wide world to explore that's absolutely packed with monsters, treasure, and quests.

FEATURES:

Over 30 hours of game play
Crafting/Alchemy/Fishing/Mining available
Veteran Experience System
Bosses respawn
Dynamic Battle system

SCREENSHOTS:


















Lost in the game? Please feel free to use this thread to ask your questions!
ENJOY!

Hey all- hope we've been doing well.
I know a lot of you REALLY enjoyed Seventh Star and Barry of Wrath-
The Grindstone is a very different feel- but it really has a special place in my heart.

If you played dungeons and dragons as a kid (or still do) I think it will resonate a bit in that you make your party and go out on an adventure and take the game how you want.
There are a LOT of towns- with a ton of quests and things to do.

I hope you enjoy it.

Shane

There are a LOT of towns- with a ton of quests and things to do.

Sounds like the kind of stuff people here would love!

Wow 2.6gb demo download. Biggest game on aldorlea yet? And i checked the files, only 500mb is sfx/music so guess it has a ton of graphics indeed

Just took a quick glance but looks super promising. An actual big mega customizable RPG from a developer other than Indi is very rare to see here indeed.

Too bad no difficulty settings, maybe ill mod some in though heh. These games usually way too easy for me so always nice to have difficulty settings.

Just some feedback on the first few mins in the tutorial area:
Very nice the games widescreen, but the default fullscreen function (F4) still results in an ugly looking black pillarbox. Probably because your not using a regular 16x9 rez. Easy fix to set it to 1280x720.

You should probably inform the player on the title screen or maybe tutorial that F4 is the fullscreen key too, since its very non standard in MV games. And/or fullscreen option added to option menu's good too. (Though the popular plugin u may find for it, doesn't save that settings, so not a fan of it, just knowing a quick F4 is better.. But perhaps you can find a plugin that saves its, code it urself or hire someone too.

Speaking of plugins, there's an easy one to add a quit function to the game you should add. As yea that will confuse players new to this engine too not having a quit function (was really dumb of the devs ot leave out such a normal function in the first place but oh well at least a fix exists)..
Plus there is a rare bug on my system where alt + F4'ing the game, results it 3 game.exe processes still stuck running (since the engines spawns 4 by default, and the process to tell all child/parent ones to close doesn't seem fully reliable ). The proper quit function may or may not be more reliable to prevent that bug.

-First screen looks a bit bad with the cat stacked on stop of the dude in the same tile. It even has a line saying the cat is in front, yet he isn't.. he's clipping thru the dude.
-Seems you tried to space out some of the tutorial text with ----- , but it's quite misaligned and looks bad.
-Tutorial is rather uninformative. Why be vague about the details? It's a highly customizable RPG where the player would really like to know the mechanics to help them succeed.. So would be nice to see "regen heals 5% life per round" instead of a vague ?% . I do like you listed the amount of rounds and that which status' are removed by damage since tho.
Same with the skills. Just vague descriptions. Much bigger fan of Indinera's style of fully spelling out how the skills formula works in the description. If you want the player to work for that info, should at least use key words like "deals minor damage, deals moderate / massive / etc, so one can compare skills across classes more easily and perhaps get a hint that they will learn a more powerful version of this skill later.

cant download demo. error message after clicking demo link
Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

blumyst wrote:cant download demo. error message after clicking demo link
Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Have you tried to right click with the mouse and pick 'Save as'?

Indinera wrote:

blumyst wrote:cant download demo. error message after clicking demo link
Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Have you tried to right click with the mouse and pick 'Save as'?

Failed-No File

Lady JJ wrote:

Indinera wrote:

blumyst wrote:cant download demo. error message after clicking demo link
Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Have you tried to right click with the mouse and pick 'Save as'?

Failed-No File

Demo? I can definitely download it on my side.
Which browser are you using?

Demo. Tried in both Edge and Chrome. If I R-click and select 'Copy Link' I get
https://www.aldorlea.org/Games_Affiliat ... e_Demo.exe

which is strange because The Last Vampire demo downloads just fine and when I R-click and select 'Copy Link' I get
https://www.aldorlea.org/Games_Affiliated/TLVH-DEMO.exe

so the path seems to be just fine. Maybe there's a problem with the Grindstone's title? Aha! It's Grindstone_Demo.zip NOT .exe

there are some real fun party dynamics you can create.

I really enjoy

lizard warrior (prob my fav)
dark elf wizard
human bard
ogre chieftain

The link on the email works, and the on the aldorlea store.

Just not the one embedded here in the forum, it's pointing to .exe, but this games demo doesn't have a installer so it's a zip.

I bought the game since I couldnt download the demo from here. No I didnt
do a right click and save as. I know his games are good so I went ahead and
paid for it. That linkstill is having troublesat least for me it is but thats ok.
I dont need it. Thankyou

It's fixed now, enjoy!
And thanks for pointing that out, Lady JJ!

Hello again Shane,

I just went ahead a bought the game without trying the demo as I know I REALLY like your games - did not have any of the issues with the Full version that was apparently happening with the demo download. I did play D&D many years ago so it's been a while. I am a bit worried I am going to miss having a story and dialogue (except with NPCs) and it was a bit tense picking out a team I could get behind for 30+ hours!

I chose -
Warrior Lizard - Braz
Cleric Dark Elf - Charis
Wizard Human - Anda
Ranger Elf - Dolan

Currently about 5.5 hours in and levelled to 13 - and still on first island!! I'm trying to keep track of the quests/tasks but it's not easy Have Crafting, Mining and Fishing going up but Alchemy is stagnating
Really liking the Cleric, Wizard, Ranger combo - seem to work well together (Particularly once I got their levels up a little and they got some useful magic skills like Explosion, Smite, and Multi-shot. Not so sure about the Lizard Warrior - he's still a bit slow...we'll see how he shakes down.

I'll keep you posted

MerryX

Hey Merry! was hoping i'd hear from you

that's a fun dynamic! Wizard/cleric/Ranger! YOu'll enjoy them
The lizard may seem slow going at first-- but you're going to need his durability later when everything hits harder... his ability to NOT DIE becomes very useful hahahaha

Not having a story line could make you tentative at first--- but once you dive in it's easy to get pulled into the small quests and factions in the game

i played over 40 hours myself on one playthrough lol
(and i had many playthroughs)

still on the first island? Have you been to the Castle yet and found a certain boss that respawns.... Zantetsuken anyone?