Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar is now available on GOG and is currently 25% off.

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THE ULTIMATE CLASSIC STYLE TURN-BASED FANTASY ROLEPLAYING GAME!

After more than 20 years of development, the greatest roleplaying game of them all is finally ready for release! Grimoire is an homage to the classic dungeon blobbers and is inspired by Wizardry, Might & Magic, Lands of Lore, Anvil of Dawn, DungeonMaster and the Eye of the Beholder games!

• 600 hours of play possible in a single game
• Lush Colorful 2D Hand Drawn Artwork
• Retro style MIDI music and 8 bit sound effects
• 244+ Maps in the game to explore!
• Turn-Based strategic combat
• Multiple Beginnings, Multiple Endings
• 144 context sensitive magic spells
• 14 races, 15 professions, 50 skills
• 64 intelligent NPCs with 8000+ Words in Vocabulary
• Full Sentence Communication with NPCs
• 240+ monsters each with special powers and defenses
• 1000+ items, Carry Containers, Global Party Inventory
• 30 conditions, from Confusion to Disease & Lycanthropy
• Automapping, Autowalking, Autohealing
• Global Map Atlas With Position Marker
• Quest Journal, Hint Prompting, Help Facility, Mini-Quests
• Complex LockPicking Interfaces for Doors & Chests
• Challenging Puzzles and Rich Interactive Dungeons
• Browsable Character Library for up to 100 characters
• Multiple Crafting Workshops for all items
• Up to 12 Commented Postage Stamped Savegames
• Multi-themed GUI and customizable screen layouts

Gamebanshee reviewed Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar.

Beating a game. This expression doesn't hold a lot of meaning these days. Even the tough and challenging games are usually fairly straightforward and follow the same widely accepted tenets of game design. They exist to provide you with fun. Grimoire isn't like that. It doesn't want to be beaten. It challenges you to use your brain, and it's very good at doing so.

And while this can make the game feel quite inelegant at times, it's what makes it such a great adventure. You never know what to expect, how things work, what mysteries, foes or horrors await you around the corner, and what bits and pieces of information you may need later.

[...]

The manual for Grimoire is now available. Also the game is currently 50% off.

Grimoire Manual V1.0 Available Online Now !!! (FINALLY!)

25 Jan @ 8:21pm - GOLDEN ERA GAMES

The manual is online hosted at the Golden Era Games site :

Grimoire Manual Version 1.0[goldeneragames.com]

This is convenient until the permanent copy for printing is ready. The online manual will be updated regularly until it reflects any detail remaining to enjoy playing the game.

Some of the tables are formatted oddly but revisions to these layouts will correct them so they print off correctly for hard copies.

The manual is currently around 100 pages, will probably be 200 pages when it is ready to ship as a hardback.

There is an "Australia Day Sale" on presently for Grimoire at 50% off until the 29th of January.

The latest update to V2 will be available soon with numerous further enhancements to gameplay.

Grimoire version 2 has been released and is 50% off on Steam.

Version 2 Now Live!

24 December - GOLDEN ERA GAMES

Version 2 of Grimoire is now live on the Steam Store with a 50% sale through to the New Year! The most incredible old fashioned computer roleplaying game just got a little more awesome!

CURRENT WISHLISTS # : 39,812 (combined)

Huge amounts of tweaks, fixes, adjustments and new content is found in this version, including the crafting workshop and all the item enhancements!

You can see all the items in your inventory, sort them on a variety of attributes like type and value, assay them, poison them, forge them, enchant them and merge them into new items! There is now a forge, alchemy bench, shrine and hearth in the game where different classes acquire various crafting arts they can apply to items to modify them or greatly improve them in combat!

The manual is being output to .PDF shortly and will be made available on the store from the main page freely so it can be examined by players who have not yet purchased the game to get a good feel for the mechanics. It is extremely extensive and explains all facets of gameplay with detailed explanations of all modes including combat, NPC interaction, character creation, level up, character review and the many mini interfaces like lockpicking and door forcing. It is suitable for printing and formatted for A4 output.

Beginning a new game from the classic game start will reveal new monster graphics and additional features have been added to the original maps. None of this should affect existing save games but players who have completed these areas may not see some of the new events. This will not affect the new regions at all which constitute brand new areas in the game.

Henriquejr spottet this announcement for Grimoire:

V2 Due Next Two Weeks, Turns Display Even Better!

I did quite a bit of work on the turns to make them a little more intelligent after doing buffer compares of views and found a way to make them a lot smoother than they were. They now more closely resemble the "swivels" in LANDS OF LORE except ours are a little more even. I had to get rid of the configuration for steps in turns in order to assure this happens at the right speed with the right perspective.

Version Two of Grimoire is really looking SPECTACULAR! The new regions are awesome and all integrated into the existing story! Working together with the new crafting system you have added dimensions to game play mechanics that did not even exist in the first version.

Inventory workshop needs a little more tweaking, one thing I was working on today was highlighting all possible merge candidates for an item when you click on the "MERGE" button to show you what you might be able to successfully merge given the current party member's vocation and skill levels.

Extensive trials of poisoned items tested in combat, forged items, sharpened blades and enchanted weapons. All of them degrade with use in combat until they wear off. The enchanted weapons lose their aura if you kill a monster with them. All of these play mechanics have been balanced in order to make the crafts useful but not exploits.

The wishlist had now climbed to a level that I am pretty confident will justify a $9.95 price discount when V2 comes out. After that the game will likely run a regular price of $19.95 including when it goes to GOG. If you purchase on Steam and Grimoire releases on GOG, you can be assured that your purchase on Steam will be transferred to allow you access on GOG as well - and you will have gotten it at half the price on GOG.

The RPG Codex checked out Grimoire, again:

RPG Codex Review: Grimoire - The Real Official Review

[Review by Dorateen]

There and Back Again: A Barrower’s Journey through Hyperborea

On page six of the Wizardry 8 Game Manual, under the section Importing Characters, it reads the following: If you’re interested in this option, then you’ve been waiting a long time for this moment.

It is a reference of course, to the game’s highly acclaimed predecessor, Crusaders of the Dark Savant. Released in 1992, that adventure had reached a cliffhanger climax, and it would be nigh ten years before players could experience a satisfying conclusion. However, this sentiment is equally applicable to Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar. Not just for its laborious development cycle, but also in the context of the latter Wizardry series of computer role-playing games.

To appreciate the historical significance of Grimoire, one must consider that Wizardry 8 was the numeric and literary sequel to Wizardry 7, ending the story arc of the Dark Savant and the Cosmic Forge trilogy.
One year earlier, in the autumn of 2000, another title called Wizards & Warriors was published, designed by D.W. Bradley, the author of Wizardry 7. Wizards & Warriors could also be treated as a successor, in writing style and fundamental design. However, both of these at the turn of the millennium represented a move to 3D graphics, introducing real time elements and generally embracing advancements in software technology.
At last, in Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar we have a sequel that has hewed to the traditions of Crusaders of the Dark Savant, and to a good degree Bane of the Cosmic Forge, in both presentation and seizing that intangible quality, the spirit of the game.

It is with this understanding that one should approach Grimoire. To state it plainly, this is a cRPG belonging to the early 1990’s, and places value on many design principles of that period. The game is viewed through an adventuring window, turn-based and grid-based, unapologetically opaque in delivery of its mechanics as much as narrative; a behemoth in scope allowing multiple hundreds of hours of playing time for a player who is given just enough rope to hang their party as they explore Hyperborea. All this, as well as the chance to rise in exultation with each triumph, whether in combat or deciphering the mysteries of the richly developed game world.

It is not to say there aren’t some concessions made for a modern audience. Features of comfort are present such as the automap, an encyclopedic journal, and a quick fix method to heal characters in the party post combat. Yet even these do not detract from the overarching classical agency of the game, setting the player loose in the world with little direction, until they search around following their own instinct and volition, for the threads from which the tapestry of Grimoire is weaved.

[...]

IMPRESSIONS

The adventuring landscape of Grimoire is vast, and a large swath of time will be spent in the hunting of cuneiform tablets that are pieces necessary to the central quest. Often these are only found locked away in deep dungeons, and claimed by conquering some tyrannical guardian. As I looked back at the culmination of our party’s progress in the game, I realized it was not just about traveling from one dungeon to the other, but rather the fashion in which these locations are rooted in Hyperborea and attached to surrounding environments, which created a sense of separate modular adventures. Taken together, these episodes form a much broader campaign, with individual tales like streams that feed a river’s current pressing toward an unforgettable crescendo. More than any other role-playing game in a long time, Grimoire kept me in suspense all the way up to its multiple endings.

For what it’s worth, the story of the Heralds of the Winged Exemplar is a heroic romance, filled with tragedy and flawed characters as well as a realistic desire to set things right again. To return the world to what it once was. The party of characters thus answer the call to do the deed at hand, whatever the cost.

While the writing in the game is humorous and can at times be as fourth wall breaking as the Might & Magic series, nevertheless it touches upon serious subjects such as war, the nature of totalitarian state, and marketing media corruption. One of the lasting themes of the narrative is the transcendent power of music.

Computer role-playing games of this style and magnitude are not being produced in our present age. Not like Wizardry 6, not like Wizardry 7, or the classic party and turned-based dungeon crawlers of yesteryear. But the independent developer of Grimoire took it upon himself to craft such a title. For good or bad, like it or not, Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar stands as a once in a generation contribution to the hobby.

Grimoire will get an update:

WISHLIST DRIVE FOR V2 GRIMOIRE SALE PRICE!!

The second release of Grimoire at the one year anniversary of the game's release is progressing well! Brand new inventory workshop (see and sort all items, now apply all special crafts for classes) is done and extremely helpful during gameplay, almost changes the whole experience! In addition to new regions, new NPCs, new story lines, new enhancements to gameplay and two new title screens!

Many players have complained about the high initial price of Grimoire compared to other roleplaying games on Steam. We are considering a major price discount at the release of V2 and you can help decide what it will be!

Before we release V2, we will set the sale price according to the wishlist volume on Steam according to the figures below!

Permanent & Sale price reductions at launch of V2 :

• 10K Wishlist = $29.95, Sale Price $24.95
• 25K Wishlist = $24.95, Sale Price $19.95
• 50K Wishlist = $19.95, Sale Price $9.95
• 100K Wishlist = $9.95, Permanent & Sale Price

-> WISHLIST COUNT as of 25/08/2018 : 36224

If you want lower the price permanently on the Steam store both for V2 and any future updates, you can help by getting your friends to wishlist the game and encouraging other Steam users to wishlist it. This is a chance to make the game affordable permanently for diehard fans of turn-based old skool roleplaying games!

Keep watching this page for further updates on our progress on V2, it is going to be even more awesome than the first release of Grimoire - if that can be imagined !!!

Thanks henriquejr!

Matt checked out Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar in Matt Chat #387:

Matt Chat 387: Grimoire Heralds of the Winged Exemplar

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Check out the CRPG we've all been waiting for, Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar!

Grimoire got some fixes:

Grimoire 1.2.0.26-R Maintenance Update

This update was released before the official manual goes out just to address many issues fixed over the past two weeks.

Critical bugs that cause asserts and glitches involving items and monsters are repaired here as well as some bugs that just cause mildly aberrant behaviour.

Many issues with balance have been addressed in monster XP and in leveling up for players. Game exploits tapered down. I am not sure any of these were really bugs or unintended but feedback has resulted in them being modified somewhat resulting in many combats, particularly boss combats, becoming much harder to insta-kill and insta-win. Monster and player saving throws against all kinds of effects are more likely in the new tables and combat may be more difficult in general.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun tried out Grimoire and the reviewer liked it for what it sets out to do, but isn't likely to play it any further.

I admire the size of this thing, the vision of it, the dedication. The labour of love is clear, and I have no doubt that it is going to absolutely delight those who have flown the flag of The Olden Days Did It Best for decades. But I think of 600, 300, 100, even 20 more hours of my life spent this way, this glacial churn, and I cannot accept such a fate.

I’m glad Grimoire’s real after all this time, I’m glad it’s done what it set out to do 20 years ago, and I acknowledge entirely that its development began in a very different age of game design, that it has all been handled by just one man and, as such, certain expectations are entirely unfair.

Neither that or my curiosity about what it will throw at me next means that I can abide the grind, the desperately cumbersome user interface or the sound that makes me want to throw my speakers into the sea. I like Grimoire in many ways, but again, I would need to truly, madly, deeply love it in order to endure all that. I’m afraid that I do not.

After loads of missed launch dates, today is a date where the game is launched. Grimoire is available on Steam with a 10% discount, which still makes it an expensive game. 

The game is live on the Steam Store now. Time to rest for a couple of minutes before going to work on my next game. I'm going to take a 30 minute break, get a Whopper and come back. I am thinking of some kind of Japanese romancing sim that takes place in a boarding school with girls who are disfigured but have great inner beauty. I actually wanted to start on that game in 1994 but I got sidetracked onto this Grimwhatchamacallit thingy.

Grimoire has a Steam page. Yes for real. It lists a release date of July 7th.

THE ULTIMATE CLASSIC STYLE TURN-BASED FANTASY ROLEPLAYING GAME!

After more than 20 years of development, the greatest roleplaying game of them all is finally ready for release! Grimoire is an homage to the classic dungeon blobbers and is inspired by Wizardry, Might & Magic, Lands of Lore, Anvil of Dawn, DungeonMaster and the Eye of the Beholder games!

• 600 hours of play possible in a single game
• Lush Colorful 2D Hand Drawn Artwork
• Retro style MIDI music and 8 bit sound effects
• 244+ Maps in the game to explore!
• Turn-Based strategic combat
• Multiple Beginnings, Multiple Endings
• 144 context sensitive magic spells
• 14 races, 15 professions, 50 skills
• 64 intelligent NPCs with 8000+ Words in Vocabulary
• Full Sentence Communication with NPCs
• 240+ monsters each with special powers and defenses
• 1000+ items, Carry Containers, Global Party Inventory
• 30 conditions, from Confusion to Disease & Lycanthropy
• Automapping, Autowalking, Autohealing
• Global Map Atlas With Position Marker
• Quest Journal, Hint Prompting, Help Facility, Mini-Quests
• Complex LockPicking Interfaces for Doors & Chests
• Challenging Puzzles and Rich Interactive Dungeons
• Browsable Character Library for up to 100 characters
• Up to 12 Commented Postage Stamped Savegames
• Multi-themed GUI and customizable screen layouts

Cleve shares with us some highly expected news today, which is that it is very unlikely that the released date of Grimoire for the 29th of May is going to be kept.

I wanted to tell all those asking that these delays have nothing to do with Valve, which is merely going through their usual channels to verify all financial information. They are currently waiting for the U.S. to clear our tax identity number before they can promote us to our "pending" page on the Steam store. I regret to say it is not likely we will make the 29th the way things are progressing. The instant our page goes up we will have a date set in stone and it is likely to be very soon, within a small window after getting approved. I am making maximum use of this time to polish any and all details of the game which is ready to release right now. If I released it today in the next 60 minutes gamers would find it completely playable end-to-end and far denser than most of the RPGs they have ever played, but would be likely to still notice certain regions seemingly sparse or not quite populated. Luckily I have a waist-high stack of notes gathered over 20 years that specify in enormous detail what should go into those areas and I am adding these remaining touches now. I am also adding small fixes recommended by recent testing and feedback. As many of these as is possible will go in before and after our launch of the game. We are not selling the game as "Early Access" because the only person on the planet who would describe Grimoire as "incomplete" would be me ... and I obviously have a problem defining what that is when I almost always have some small new feature I'd like to add whenever I play it.

Who knows, next thing we might hear is that because of the last minute changes to the game the game is broken and needs some fixing, causing some extra delay....

Grimoire has been greenlit by Valve:

GRIMOIRE GREENLIGHTED BY VALVE ON STEAM!

3640+ YES VOTES, #28TH PLACE IN TOP 100 FINAL TALLY!

Pretty good for the game that never stood a chance.

Thank you for the info, luj1!

Grimoire is climbing higher on the Steam Greenlight list:

GRIMOIRE MUDWRESTLING AT #34 IN THE TOP 100 ON STEAM GREENLIGHT!

Our old fashioned ultra retro old skool game is fighting with next generation graphics games, megacorporate blockbusters and extremely well financed and staffed greenlight games in the top 30 slots to get even higher! We got this far with no mainstream game media covering this herculean struggle, imagine how many votes we could get with just a couple of mentions in the right place! Please insist your favorite gamer 'zine carry the news of this battle of titans and help our little indie classic climb right to the top! It will send shockwaves through the game industry if Grimoire makes it any higher than it is now! Shock the pundits and help put Grimoire on the summit!!

Grimoire has arrived on Steam Greenlight, with a modified video.

The ultimate classic style turn-based fantasy roleplaying game is now up in the workshop for Steam Greenlight! Try to stay calm! This may in fact be a harbinger of the apocalypse and the possible end of civilization as we know it! However, you will be able to play Grimoire soon no matter what happens, so no need to worry about anything ever again!!!

@Gamebanshee Grimoire is complete and even has a video to announce it. Also the game will be heading to Steam greenlight in the near future.

With Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar officially complete and headed to Steam Greenlight in the near future, Cleve has put together two separate promotional videos for the two-decades-old CRPG. The first of the two has been released via the latest update to the game's IndieGoGo campaign, with the second, less "cerebral" version slated for the Steam debut. The result is the strangest promotional video for a video game that I've ever watched, but at least it bears good news and contains some actual gameplay footage:

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Cleve Blakemore - Grimoire update:

Working on completing the final touches for the game, including this baby poster found in various locations all over Hyperborea.

I am down to roughly 7 issues that have emerged mainly from searching for notes in the code commented as "//*TODO" and "//*FIX". As far as I can tell I have not been able to produce an in-game exception from doing anything.

The goal is to submit to Steam Greenlight as soon as all final graphics are in, including this poster. Placeholders for monsters in some places are being replaced with super high quality graphics and the animated magic and spell effects are also being finished off. Game is looking pretty good considering only one person has been working on it the past three years.

All pledges will receive instant early access to the complete version of the game in Steam Greenlight when it becomes available. I completed a full walkthrough last month and only encountered one exception crash generated by an in-game assert which I fixed on the spot.

While the third campaign for Grmoire is still on the horizon, Clive brings us news about the game being close to receiving a release date. Deja vu anyone?

The game is late. It is over a year past due. Of course all people who pledged would already know this.

I have reached a stage where I can say the game is in final form. I have incorporated monsters, special effects, ambient animations and additional required graphics that have been sitting on my hard drive for many years awaiting integration into the game. I have been testing and verifying correct animation and appearance of all these graphics and their attachment to monster data.

You can imagine how ridiculous it would be to have worked this long on the game and then chuck it out there because it is technically complete but untested. I am engaged in rigorous testing to verify all bugs and issues are fixed and all areas are flawless. Strictly speaking there are 69 bugs remaining out of over 3400+ altogether when I began eliminating them during the second IndieGoGo campaign. These often involve issues that can consume several hours to fix at a minimum.

We are getting very close to setting a proper release date which will be accurate this time. Rest assured that all pledges will be the first people to get instructions for digital download of the game when it is up.

I appreciate your patience and I continue to apologise for delays. I don't like to go on about it but believe me when I say it has been a lot of work for one person alone. Most people would not be able to comprehend how much. If I had considered the scope of what I was working on very early on I would have never started on something of this magnitude.

As Cleve has made a new announcement on the release date of Grimoire I thought I'll share this bit of news with you. This new date is now set on the last day of May (this year). I'll leave it to you all to determine the value of this new date.

Furthermore there will be a new IndieGoGo campaign to allow those who missed out on the previous 2 to participate in this third one. Perhaps this one will raise more money as the previous 2 were below expectation.

And Cleve also mentions that there will most likely be a Kickstarter campaign when he starts working on the Grimoire sequel. It is mind-boggling to think of what the release date of that game would be.

News of a new update for Grimoire was sent to us by e-mail. You can find more details on the Grimoire blog. 

Game is looking good. Getting out those nasty bugs. Many bugs reported by players of the super demo have been fixed.

And we’ve gotten alternate hand attacks working. Finally!

Planning on releasing an updated version of the super demo soon. After that, total game completion looks to be in reach.

My super demo play-through has been put on indefinite hiatus because my videos get little views and there is no point now that people can play the game for themselves. If you’re unfamiliar with it, you can see my last video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOu0YIoSsjo

I know most of you told Mythros no more posts about the game, but the promised Super Demo is now avaiable for Grimoire.

The Super Demo is now accessible for pledged campaign contributors only at :

Grimoire Super Demo Download Link 

Please note that after installation, the super demo activates your onboard webcam and then attempts to match your likeness to the NSA archives at the Echelon facility here in Australia. Failing to find a match to our list of contributors will mean you will immediately be invoiced for a million dollars worth of Amway merchandise that will be dumped on your door, most of it worthless garbage you will never even be able to sell to your own relatives like oversize cans of Crisco and huge bags of yarn fragments. Crawling through waist deep piles of greasy yarn in your living room that become increasingly tangled over the years you will rue the day you downloaded the Grimoire Super Demo without being a contributor. You have been warned.

I'll slink back to the darkness to avoid the pitchforks.

Once upon a time not too long ago Cleve told us that Grimoire would be released in May. Who would have thought that he would be unable to make that moment in time to release his game. Instead he now promises us that it will be released in the future.

First of all, I want to apologize for my game being late. I knew at the start of May there was too much piling up to finish it by the end of this month. I could tell you about the work I have had to do this month, including relocating my entire family … but I don’t want you to think that I believe that is any reason for it not to be completed as quickly as possible .

I am now working on it every night, usually until midnight. I have tooltips working pretty well and have worked my way through a hundred bugs and glitches. There isn’t much left to do in terms of bug fixing but there still remains a lot of testing and walkthrough.

I will promise a new update video in early June, a superdemo for the pledges only (which I am trying to make compatible for any saved games in the final version) and a new target date for the release.

Again, I apologize. The game is looking good enough to fulfill most of the expectations for it but there still remains some work to get it into a release state. I also promise at this time to do far more regular updating until the game is out and the pledges are met. I have early draft versions of the manual and the hint guide which still need some editing to complete.

Thanks,
Cleve Blakemore

As promised I'll try and refrain from updating on this until there is an actual release date.

The second campaign for Grimoire is over, taking in only $6,805 out of the asked $25K (the first did a bit over $10K of an asked $250K). As it is a flexible campaign the money goes to Cleve all the same. So unfortunately for Cleve, like before there was no soaring past any number like it was not there, so I hope he isn't stuck with a barn full of crow.

on the bright side it is almost May and he did mention the game would be released in that month.

Thus ends the greatest crowd funding campaign in human history that did not actually meet any of it’s funding goals. I have been filled with renewed vigor by this failure to raise any significant sums of money and am more determined than ever to get Grimoire out as soon as I possibly can.

My original plan to flee with the money to a 3rd world country with weak extradition laws has fallen through after the local dictator has nationalized all foreign accounts. He was particularly outraged to discover my secret Grimoire deposit box only contained a free drink voucher for Chuck E. Cheese and some broken Pez dispensers.

In coming weeks we have three goals :

1. Finish game for release
2. Implement all consolidated pledges from both this and prior campaigns.
3. Start writing manual and hint guide with help of automated tools.
4. Put Grimoire up on Project Greenlight to see if we can get it distributed on Steam.
5. Seek other digital distribution channels for final product. We may consider GOG after the product has been on Steam for a while.

Thanks for all your support and rest assured the overthrow of the forces of decline and fail is close at hand. I am sure many of you know this is shaping up to be a great year for RPGs, possibly the best year they have had since 1992. It is fitting Grimoire will be released in the same year as sequels to classics like Wastelands, Planescape Torment, Might & Magic and many others.

Crowd funding has changed everything in the past 12 months and it has made two things obvious :

1. People like me whining constantly about decline were correct the past 17 years. It was an era of decline.
2. The way things are shaping up, constant decline may become a thing of the past with the creative power shifting into the hands of creators. Incline may once again become a dominant force in the universe. That means you will be able to regularly play computer games that are not a blow to the basic dignity of mankind.

I look forward to the coming years and I expect my fledgling company Golden Era Enterprise to become a real force in the future for quality creative output. I hope you are all going to get at least half of the enjoyment I have been promising from Grimoire when it is released and from the games I still have inside me trying to get out.

Once again, thank you for your support.

Cleve has made a new demo available for Grimoire:

Grimoire Version 1.31 is now available for download at:

http://www.filedropper.com/grimoiredemov131

Please report any problems with a description of how to reproduce them so we can fix them. This version has been tested on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7 in 32/64 bit flavors with no bugs found in the public demo. Running pretty solid. Please keep in mind there are still many placeholder graphics in the game that will be replaced with better versions in the final release.

Tooltips were disabled in this version but they have been implemented, time was not available to test them thoroughly yet. They will certainly appear in the next version in some form.

Certain modifications to various parts of the demo and full game have resulted from feedback, one of the most notable is a means to recover dismissed party members in the game.

Please note that it is a good idea to UN-INSTALL any old versions of the demo before installing this new one.

A new updated demo for Grimoire that is intended to be be stable on all Windows platforms is planned to be available at the end of the week, or something like that.

I don’t want to jinx it, but things are going really well. The test machine I could duplicate all the reported problems on the demo with has become error free since I got a new free upgraded version of the Fastgraph library from Ted Gruber software. Ted has provided the best support you could imagine since the day I first bought I license from him for Fastgraph.

Since the new library was compiled in I have almost played to the 1/4 mark of the entire game using cheat codes. I have fought at least 322+ combats without a crash. The one error I encountered (a real error flagged by the built-in logger) was a small bug in some NPC logic which I have since fixed.

At the end of the week or thereabouts I will release a new demo intended to be stable on all Windows platforms including 64 bit Win 7 and the extended demo will be released for all people who have pledged. Please keep in mind the extended demo is still a game in progress and is still a beta version. This means it shouldn’t freeze or lock up on you, ever, but you might still get the occasional Grimoire assertion on some bad data.

The last time I played through the first area I got all the way to the end with no crashes but of course being the developer it is likely I won’t try half the things that will be played with in a public extended demo. So just don’t flip out if the beta extended demo doesn’t look like a totally polished and complete game yet.

Version 1.2 of the Grimoire demo has been released today and can be found here: http://www.filedropper.com/grimoiredemov12.

Roq, also mentions the following when running on Windows 7:

1. Download the latest version
2. Install it normally
3. Right Click on the game icon, choose properties and then select the compatibility tab.
4. Tick: run this program in compatibility mode and choose Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
5. Check the: Run this program as an administrator tick box.

As reported before dear Cleve has a new campaign up on IndieGogo. His last campaign achieved to collect about 10K of pledges out of an asked 250K. This time he asks for just 10% of that and probably assumes the pledges are not 10% of the previous campaign.

Again Cleve makes clear that the money is not needed to finish the game. That will be released anyway in May (I'm sure you can place bets on that happening somewhere). The pledges are used to enhance the game. Given the current feedback on the demo I think the first thing to do would be to create a stable game that doesn't crash and worry about any enhancements after that, but he surprised us with actually releasing a demo, so he might surprise us with a stable release as well.

Having self-funded the entire development of the game over the past 17 years out of our own pockets we are now turning to crowdfunding to put the final polish on the game before delivering it to fans worldwide who have been waiting on the game for more than a decade. A pledge to the game will secure you a one-of-a-kind collector's edition of the resulting masterpiece and a guarantee that the completed product will be artistically perfect. Only pledges will get DRM-free copies of Grimoire once it is completed.

The Grimoire demo is finally available at Filedropper. This is version 1.1 of the demo as version 1.0 had quite a lot of issues. Then again rumour has it this demo isn't without it's flaws either and there are already reports of crashes with this version too. One of the solutions being not to use the installer at all.

The IndieGoGo campaign for Grimoire is over ending at $10.598 of an asked $250.000. The demo is still not done, so we have that to look forward to as we can look forward to the new campaign.

Well, the IndieGoGo campaign has come to an end. Thanks to all the people who pledged.

I have quite a few things to do. As a minimum I have to put the URL into the new demo of where our new campaign is running so I have to package up the demo this weekend for installation.

When the new site is ready I will put the link to it up on this one and will mail it out to all who have previously pledged, just so they will know where it is.

All pledgers will be getting the super demo by private email. The public demo will be available to everybody but only those who pledged at least $25 will get the super demo which will be roughly equivalent in size to the original demo released in 1997.

Sometime in February I will see if I can get stuck into implementing the pledges. As of this time it is no big deal, less than a day or two of work if I have them all in front of me. The biggest problem is corresponding with pledgers to get the specs on their contribution to game content.

In his latest update Cleve explains that the money pledged on IndieGoGo wasn't needed to finish the game, but was an incentive to get him to finish it....
He now has raised almost 4% of the asked 250K, which will be used to pay for the pledges. As there is only 21 hours left in this campaign it is a safe bet that this is about it, but with the launch of the demo we will see a launch of a new campaign as well. I suppose this is needed as Cleve is running out of incentive to finish the game.

In any case there is a promise of a demo being released in the coming week. Maybe he will surprise us and delivers on this promise.

A few days left in this campaign, ironic the demo will be out shortly, along with the launch of the all new campaign inclusive of the pledges that have been made so far.

There will be a new pitch video, new footage of the game and much improved overview of what the finished product plays and feels like.

Please remember, anybody that pledged to this campaign, that the release of this game was never contingent upon making any goals to raise money. The game was in a 98% completed state when the campaign started. This campaign was all about giving me the incentive to get off my ass and finish it and it has succeeded admirably. Any money that came in through this campaign was intended first to fulfill all pledges to it and then if we made more it was to be used to enhance the graphics, sound and music wherever possible.

I think I would have never discovered there was a glitch in the Fastgraph library or other problems with the code if I had not had that pressure to investigate and eliminate them.

I have a couple more mandatory things to include in the demo (like a shortcuts/help screen) and I expect it will be packaged up very shortly and released in the coming week.

Cleve shares some more info on the Grimoire beta, stating that it will be coming soon.

I have spent today cleaning up a few UI issues, implementing a grayscale dream shader for the view when the party is “resting” and testing the demo versions some more for general stability.

There will be no manual issued with the demo to assist in gameplay so I have spent some time working on a brief tabbed cheatsheet that pops up when the player presses “F1” that will help identify keyboard controls and basic gameplay instructions.

Very soon the demo. I have to fix a little timing bug that only appears on Win 7 64 bit related to the screen refresh.

Clive has updated his IndieGoGo campaign with information on the Grimore demo.

There is going to be a two-tier demo. Backers of the project will get the entire first region of the game in the demo, the general public will five areas in the first part of the game. Both demos will feature character creation, allow saves/loads and will otherwise not be feature-crippled in any other way. For both the public demo and the backer demo there will be a return to main menu when you try to access the first region outside of your allotment.

The backer demo is expected to be a kind of abbreviated beta test of sorts and should give pledges an adequate look at almost any aspect of gameplay. This “demo” will be a full experience with a climax, boss and denouement. Unfortunately at this time we cannot guarantee that any savegame will be carried forward, it is likely changes to the savegame format will occur between now and the official release in May 2013. Sorry but it would be even crueler to promise this sort of thing and have people planning to import that saved file where they left off.

For those of you wondering when we are going to begin implementing your pledges, here is the schedule over the next few weeks :

1. We will release the demo(s) shortly.

2. We will relaunch a new IndieGoGo Campaign for Grimoire of 120 days duration minus the pledge responsibilities we have already taken onboard. Before we set this up we have to consult with IndieGoGo to determine what extent we can continue to run a pledge drive from the same campaign after it has concluded it’s original run.

3. There will be a new video pitch released after the demo is out, this one the grandest and most magnificent of all. Amongst other things I will avoid heavy breathing into the microphone.

4. I will begin implementing pledges starting with items and tombs and leave magic spells and NPCs until the month following. You will be mailed pledge guidelines that will tell you how to describe your item or tomb so they can be included in the game. Note that in some cases you may have to take a tomb in an area we recommend but you can then customize this with text and gameplay to your heart’s content. We will describe a couple common easter eggs you will be able to plant in your custom tomb to make it unique and memorable during gameplay.

With gathering $8,478 out of a $250.000 goal and just 10 days left in the campaign, it is a save bet that he is not going to reach that goal. Still, it is IndieGogo, so he at least gets what is pledged.

It is never to late to jump on the bandwagon that is called Grimoire, so with 99 days to go and at 2.3% of it's goal we can tell you that Cleve added a few updates to his campaign. The most important one being that there are videos showing the new resolution, brought to you in that very special way.

Cleve got annoyed enough at our forums to never visit us again (so he says), but the folks at RPGCodex are much nicer so they got him to talk and share some screenies of Grimoire.

In your Indiegogo pitch, you speak of your perfectionist trait that you ascribe to your "Neanderthal genes". Do you see this kind of perfectionism as a threat to the target release date of May 2013? How do you make sure the game does not end up being delayed again? And most importantly, how would you convince people that it is for real this time?

If you get a chance, ask your scienmagists about the lovingly drawn ‘thal cave paintings of the spotted horses. Ask them how wild horses could have those spots when that is a recessive trait specifically associated with domestication. Horses with spots are night blind which is a great trait if you are in a stable after sundown. Ask your scienmagists, tell them your crazy Neanderthal buddy is an inquiring mind and the rodeo clown wants to know. I reckon the spotted horse alone blows apart 400 years of Sapiens scienmajistics in five seconds. Stupid Enkidu, always peeing in the scienmajistic punch bowl.

No new features. No improvisational ideas. No added work. In several places, I have cut the Gordian Knot and just made it work. The miniquests had been this nightmarish complexity for a while with three game editors involved. I slashed all that a couple weeks ago and had miniquests working in ten minutes in a far more simplified form.

I think most reasonable people would realize that after a long acquiescence the game has entered a phase now where the target has become clarified and bounded by a deadline to simply complete it and ship it. I am certain the people pledging have realized this may be a long bet with a pretty big payoff if they end up with exclusive copies of physical media for one of the biggest vaporware RPGs in human history that we know of at this time.

Do you have any plans to release a trial or demo version of the game? If you do, then at what point?

I will be releasing a demo of the basic starter region with four maps before end of December, possibly at the end of November. Right now the biggest hurdle has been adapting to the new resolution of 1024x768, our first goal on IndieGoGo which we achieved. This demo will be public and should end anyone’s doubts the game exists for good.

Jack writes in to point out Cleve Blakemore has launched a crowdfunding campaign at indiegogo. Cleve is seeking $250k to finish Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar, which is a new title to my knowledge.

It's worth noting this indiegogo campaign is a little different to Kickstarter - it runs for 120 days, for starters, and all money pledged is paid at the end - even if the goal isn't met; be warned if this bothers you. On to the game:

Having self-funded the entire development of the game over the past 17 years out of our own pockets we are now turning to crowdfunding to put the final polish on the game before delivering it to fans worldwide who have been waiting on the game for more than a decade. A pledge to the game will secure you a one-of-a-kind collector's edition of the resulting masterpiece and a guarantee that the completed product will be artistically perfect. Only pledges will get DRM-free copies of Grimoire once it is completed.

Grimoire is a turn-based, 3D, first person perspective roleplaying adventure in 1024x768 256 Color graphics. The 3D step-based engine is pixel perfect and smooth scrolling with zero distortion handcrafted images.

The style of play is very similar to that of CRPGS during the golden age of computer roleplaying before 1992 like Eye of the Beholder, Bane of the Cosmic Forge, Crusaders of the Dark Savant, Might & Magic, The Bard's Tale, Stonekeep and other classic games.

The emphasis in the game is on the story, exploration, discovery, character advancement, puzzle solving, strategic phased combat, treasure hunting, inventory management and interaction with the non-player characters encountered during play. [...]

Enhancements Planned During Next Six Months :

1. Increase screen resolution to 1024x768 and viewport size to 720x600
2. All new title screen with animated logo
3. New animated intro, cutscenes and in-game animation sequences
4. Integration of additional monster and magic spell animations
5. Improvements to animation engine and transitions
6. Detailed improvements to user interface and icon presentation

Achievement of Funding Goals :

1. New music score & sound effects
2. Additional animation sequences to enhance all aspects of gameplay
3. Possible ports to IOS, Linux, IPad and Android platforms
4. Work begins immediately on sequel after release

It's not a big news day, so why not. An update on all the bugs found playing through 25% of the latest Grimoire build does make some interesting reading, especially since some appear to be new ones which weren't in the last version I played. I guess where's there's news, there's still hope for an eventual release.

Thanks for the tip Von Paulus

Cleve has updated his site with the latest on Grimoire. It's not too long, so here's the full text:

Cleve has posted a further update now that he has completed 94% of his walkthru. However, his thoughts on including level scaling might be a cause for concern. Here's the entire update:

For all of the hoards eagerly awaiting the latest news on this legendary game here's what's happening straight from the top.

I made a spot fix to the spell casting engine and it fixed a bug that kept cropping up in cloud effects, chest traps and grab attacks all at once. It was two lines of code I added innocently about a year ago to keep the PC’s combat orders updated according to the outcome of a magic spell.

Found some more places that needed work, a bit barren, also found a few logical glitches that could prevent the player from completing an area if not repaired.

Otherwise, looking solid. Playable but not finished yet. I am already realistically accepting I will need at least two months to address everything I have discovered during the walkthrough, particularly in filling areas out using my notes. Some of the things can be patched very quickly, other areas will take several hours to complete. Things like empty barrels and crates can be fixed in a single day’s work with the right data.

I was looking for more notes related to Grimoire and found a folder filled with maybe 800 pages of ideas I wanted to put into the game … things like a magic chest that fills a room with water when it is opened. Bits and pieces like that.

I stopped watching the Grimoire site years ago, so I'm not sure exactly how new this is but Sigmarsson writes about a new release date claim on the Grimoire site.  Head over if you are interested.

I don't normally go near Grimoire but Sandy sends word the site has been updated with a "July 2008" banner.

Don't shoot the messenger, please...

I'm just the messenger, OK?  For those that don't follow our forums, Cleve Blakemore has posted on the current status of Grimoire:

No, it's not done yet. Coming along nicely, though. I think Corwin's suggestion it be released on April 1st is still a good idea.

I've been working on it every single day for five months. It's come a long ways since I put the new scripting engine in for the NPCs and had the formidable task of redoing all NPC logic in the new script language.

Doing all the game logic for NPCs as scripts according to the original scenario has been a lot of work for one person. About 32 out of the 64 NPCs in the game have more than a thousand lines of scripting now. From complex quests to training they can give us, wishes they grant, context dependent behaviours, etc.

The scripting language has been working great with few qualifiers. It's better than my original byte-code engine, better than Simkin, best thing I have used to do the NPCs.

All the critical logic involved with NPCs is done and the critical bugs involving lost inventory have been fixed. I broke critical and non-critical items into two separate inventories to make sure there is a good separation between the two at all times. The only way a critical item can come out of NPC inventory is if script logic takes it out or it is stolen by one of the thieves in the party.

I have a lot of talk controlled by Charm or Beholden factors, conduct that relies on our amity shared with NPC, Mindread keywords that reveal other branches of discussion, things like that.

So completing it soon is not a hoax.

The original DOS beta has been widely distributed on the internet in the past few months and people seem to enjoy playing that, so I think they'll have a pleasant surprise when they see this current version. Much that was a problem in 1998 is fixed now. Obviously. Including huge things like ... all the artwork, for example. A pretty big "bug" to fix.

I've been rendering a few monsters myself with a cartoonish look to them to fill out a couple of creatures still lacking. They look okay despite being renders.

At GREAT risk to my personal health and sanity, I offer this Link.

 Thanks Sandy.