Ghostlore

"Ghostlore has been selling, slowly and steadily. But it would take a pretty strong resurgence of interest, let's say hitting 1000 reviews, to make it so that coming back to implement online multiplayer would be worth our time. " Lets make it happen. Solid isometric arpg, very unique skill and stat system. Online multi pls.

Ghostlore is a 2023 indie ARPG that punches above its weight, with a fresh setting, responsive gameplay, and lean mechanics that support variety and depth with minimal gating. The setting is a slightly fantastic version of South East Asia in the 80s, primarily Singapore before it became a metropolis, with local spirits and monsters infesting the nearby islands, jungles, and caves. There’s a merlion statue in town, and you can cook hawker cuisine that gives you stat bonuses. There’s also a bestiary that gives some backstory about the monsters you encounter. The graphics are a lush colorful pixel style, with plenty of detail in terrain and backgrounds. I usually avoid ARPGs with pixel art but Ghostlore’s art is quality and won me over. The town area is a city square filled with stalls in the heartlands of Singapore, and the post-campaign town is styled after the Jewel waterfall fountain at Singapore airport. One issue is that foreground objects like walls and tree canopies can obscure sprites behind them; silhouettes are shown but that may not be enough to figure out what’s going on. Ghostlore supports both click-to-move and WASD controls (the latter requiring explicit enabling in settings). Most functions can be remapped, except for the basic attack and dash on the mouse, which resulted in me accidentally dashing into crowds of enemies a couple of times. There’s also a loot filter but I didn’t use it. The campaign is 10 levels in a mix of urban, rural, and wilderness settings appropriate to South East Asia of 50 years ago, including a burning village, haunted hospital, graveyards, and so on. It’s interesting to see modern elements like scooters and sleek motorized boats alongside mystical seals, demons, and ghosts bound to spooky trees. Campaign maps are straightforward and can be completed without much annoyance; there are few ground degens, on-death effects, projectiles can be avoided pretty easily, and you can die with little penalty. There was a forced loss late in the campaign that confused me, and the final level is lengthy with multiple boss encounters, including multiple bosses at once. There are two types of post-campaign activities: running maps with lots of enemy buffs that earn you tickets for a dungeon with ramping difficulty that kicks you out if you die. I completed the campaign around level 40; post-campaign activities are set at level 60 but I was able to do the maps without trouble, the other dungeon killed me pretty quickly. You can find Balance Shrines to donate items to random players and simultaneously receive whatever someone else put in. There’s also Spirit Shrines that summon an AI-controlled copy of someone else’s character to help you clear the map. You also upload your own character at the same time, and once I managed to summon a past version of my own character to help me. Aside from picking hawker food for stat bonuses, there are three other components to a character build: the class and skills, equipment (which is not restricted at all by class or stats), and glyphs. Aside from classes, all of these can be reconfigured at any time at no cost (you have to buy an item to reselect classes). There are 10 equipment slots (main-hand, off-hand, amulet, ring, hat, scarf, body, waist, legs, boots) with no class or stat prerequisites. Equipment can be upgraded for more affixes and have gems socketed into them Diablo-style. The biggest issue is that the stats aren’t explained, and the defensive stats in particular are non-obvious but important to understand: absorption is flat damage reduction, dodge is a chance to cancel critical hits and divide damage by 4, and blocking is a chance to completely negate damage but has a cooldown. There are 9 weapons that have different behaviors: parang (machete), kukri (knife), kris (dagger), spear, quiver (includes bow), talismans (the rectangular seals that Asian exorcists use), axe, staff, and gauntlets. Any class can equip and use them. There are six classes in this setting: monk, Taoist-style exorcist, an elemental magic-user, assassin, feral berserker, and animal summoner. Each has 4 class-specific active skills, 6 passive skills, and 6 modifier skills that can be selected by placing them on to a 7x7 skill grid that unlocks as you level. Passive and modifier abilities give support effects to active abilities on the same row or column as them, if not blocked by other active abilities. As you level, you can select a second and a third class to mix in freely, leading to a huge variety of builds, which you can adjust and change at any time. Each active ability can also transform into another skill if paired with certain active abilities from other classes. Glyphs are little symbols (from the Toki Pona constructed language) with stat bonuses, which you find and place into a big grid that unlocks as you level. Compound glyphs have a 4-square aura that gives additional stat boosts for each different type of simple glyph within. Basic weapon attacks and active skills cast quickly, and the active skills each store up several charges, making combat fast-paced. Each class has at least one “trigger” passive (for example cast on minion attack), so you can very easily set up explosive bursts of skills - for example dumping 4 abilities when you attack, and 4 more abilities when you dash. You only need to have the skills and enough space on your skill grid to set it up, and the charges and mana when they activate. You can also get a pet that picks things for you, and - unseen since Torchlight - you can send it back to town to sell items.