Quest Accepted: Costumes, Zombies and Scrolls

Attention adventurers! You have entered the realm of Ryan Moore and his incredibly nerdy love of all RPGs. Quest Accepted is my look at the world of roleplaying games, from the fantastical to the futuristic – if there is an RPG element to it, I'm going be interested in it. This week I start a new adventure in Costume Quest and give a few opinions on recent events involving Mojang and The Indie Stone.

Currently Exploring: Costume Quest

Costume Quest is a charming little RPG from Tim Schaffer's Double Fine Productions. Taking place on Halloween - Costume Quest tells a story of daring heroics, rescue, and trick-or-treating all through the eyes of a child. Starting out the game I choose to play as Reynold, a rebellious young lad who has a love/hate relationship with his twin sister Wren.

Before Reynold can even show off his completely awesome robot costume Wren gets abducted by Grubbins. Whats a Grubbin you ask? Well it depends on who you ask; for the children in Costume Quest Grubbins appear as monsters who are terrorizing the town. To the average citizen they may look like teenagers. The entire game of Costume Quest is told through the eyes of a child, and it is also one of its most appealing features – how the adults react to the children is also pretty great, especially the police.

You may or may not be murdering teenagers

Being a brave robot and also likely to be assigned blame for his missing sister, Reynold must carry on a quest to save Wren, meet friends, and get candy. At its heart Costume Quest has a solid RPG core, complete with turn-based battles, magic, experience, equipment and all the other traditional goodies complete with a child's twist. In a battle that radical robot costume Reynold was wearing makes him appear as an actual giant robot. Each costume has different stats and special abilities; a knight costume may be more defensive than a ninja costume. Effectively each costume works as a different job class, it helps if a squadron of wee adventurers has a balanced party. Throughout each level are hidden different pieces and patterns to assemble new costumes – some are necessary to advance the plot, others just give more variety and new powers.

So far in my quest to save Wren I have managed to gather two new friends in Everett and Lucy. Candy has amassed in bulk for us, and many Grubbins have been defeated by our blade, rocket fist and unicorn horn respectively. Recently I managed to win a costume contest as well as foil an unsavory plot originating in the arcade at the mall. Currently we are exploring a local carnival; gathering candy and costumes whilst remaining vigilant against Grubbins.

Goal: Save A Zomboid

Recently there was a burglary at The Indie Stone; they are developers of zombie survival RPG Project Zomboid. Long story short – two laptops containing a lot of data with no back-ups were stolen. Project Zomboid took a significant hit in its development cycle in a lose-lose situations for fans and developers.

What irks me is the way many so called fans of the project have been reacting to the situation. The general internet consensus (or at the very least the vocal minority) has been to ridicule The Indie Stone at every opportunity. The hatred fueled comments thrown at many staff at The Indie Stone is not something I ever expected from the gaming community; we are better than that. The Indie Stone is receiving more flak than they should for something that could happen to any of us.

Frankly how angry can fans reasonably be over a $7.99 purchase? It is not as if Project Zomboid hasn't put out any content for those who have donated. Those who have purchased the game have access to an early playable version and will receive all future updates for free – yes it sucks those updates may be delayed and yes The Indie Stone deserves some blame, but attacking the developers isn't going to fix anything. One of the greatest things gamers can do is rally around small titles and help them succeed; kicking The Indie Stone when they are down is low.

Encounter: Mojang Vs. Bethesda

In the latest update in the long legal dispute between Mojang and Bethesda over the name of Scrolls, an initial victory has been awarded to Mojang. At an interim junction is was decided that Mojang can use the name Scrolls and this is good news for Mojang, Scrolls, and gaming in general. Bethesda/ZeniMax can appeal the ruling, but for now the victory eludes them.

To many gamers it was considered highly ridiculous when Bethesda sued because Mojang's Scrolls was too similar to The Elder Scrolls series; those gamers were spot on, it was and still is highly ridiculous. For all gamers who could realize how insanely dumb the legal battle was, this ruling is a victory. No one in their right mind would confuse Mojang's Scrolls with Skyrim or Oblivion; the reason is right in front of you, they are referred to by everyone as Skyrim and Oblivion not The Elder Scrolls IV or The Elder Scrolls V.

More importantly, if this ruling stands, the decision may help prevent more future frivolous lawsuits of the same type. How would everyone feel if Square started suing everyone with the word 'fantasy' in the title of their game? If we really wanted to get into it we could point out how many games have words like 'dragon', 'dead' and 'dark in their title (I'm already trademarking Dead Dark Dragons: The Scrolling). Gaming is a competitive industry, but we don't need companies fighting over the ownership of words.

Item of the Week: Dragonslayer Spear (Dark Souls)

Every RPG worth its lick of salt has some incredible items; at the end of every week I'm going to pick an item will always have a special place in my inventory. This week is the Dragonslayer Spear, a uniquely crafted spear from the world of Dark Souls.

Definitely not compensating for anything.

In order to acquire the spear you must first beat a particularly tough boss named Ornstein – he is mostly tough because the boss fight requires you to fight two bosses at once, Ornstein and his partner Smough. Now since nothing in Dark Souls is easy you don't get the spear for simply beating that boss, you have to craft it with his soul! To get Ornstein's soul you have to defeat him second in the fight – if you defeat Ornstein first you will instead get Smough's soul and some lame club, who wants that?

The Dragonslayer Spear is awesome for two reasons in my book. The first is that it is insanely long, and in a game like Dark Souls having that little bit of extra range can make your life a whole lot easier. The second is because it shoots freaking lightning – sure the lighting attack may not be the best or most powerful, but how many spears do you have that can shoot lightning?

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