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Stone Story is a name I've not heard for a while, after posting about it myself way back in 2017 it's one I completely lost track of. This rather different RPG is animated entirely using ASCII symbols!

As it turns out, the release is quickly approaching, with it planning to be live on Steam in Early Access on August 8th. They also have a fancy new trailer:

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Features:

  • Stunning ASCII animation and gorgeous music
  • Robust player A.I. that combines with other game systems to offer a unique experience for gamers of all types
  • 8 unique Locations, each with their own meticulously detailed environments and intense boss fights
  • Simple, but deep crafting system
  • Dozens of items that can be combined to facilitate new strategies
  • A rich fantasy world with eccentric enemies, amusing NPC encounters and engaging lore
  • 8+ hours of main story gameplay, in addition to procedurally generated content
  • Plenty of secrets!

Since it's not graphically intensive, the system requirements did make me laugh a bit with it being "Potatoware friendly" so it should run on pretty much anything.

The developer has already provided a key, so I shall be taking a look around the release. I won't spoil anything right now, but I can confirm it runs without issues on Manjaro KDE.

You can wishlist/follow it on Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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8 comments

Shmerl Jul 26, 2019
Good candidate for itch.io release! Also, if it's ascii only, shouldn't it run in the terminal? ;)


Last edited by Shmerl on 26 July 2019 at 6:01 pm UTC
OneSubtractOne Jul 26, 2019
My love for the terminal, and thereby ascii art, knows no limits. So. Color me excited.
kaiman Jul 26, 2019
Requiring 370MB RAM, it sadly will not run on my old Laptop ;-). Given that it requires less disk space than RAM, one wonders what the technology behind it is. Must be something bloated like Unity.
Eike Jul 26, 2019
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Quoting: kaimanRequiring 370MB RAM, it sadly will not run on my old Laptop ;-). Given that it requires less disk space than RAM, one wonders what the technology behind it is. Must be something bloated like Unity.

Compression?
Scoopta Jul 27, 2019
Quoting: ShmerlGood candidate for itch.io release! Also, if it's ascii only, shouldn't it run in the terminal? ;)
I actually hope they've developed a terminal backend for this. I'd love that so much...even though my terminal of choice is Kitty which is OpenGL based lol. Actually if it had a terminal backend I could play it in a vt for the ultimate experience lol. That would be a really cool feature but I'd be surprised if it were there =(.
ageres Jul 27, 2019
Quoting: kaimanMust be something bloated like Unity.
It is Unity indeed: https://steamcommunity.com/app/603390/discussions/0/1474221865198212654/
kaiman Jul 27, 2019
Quoting: ageres
Quoting: kaimanMust be something bloated like Unity.
It is Unity indeed: https://steamcommunity.com/app/603390/discussions/0/1474221865198212654/
Ha! Though given the rather brilliant effects on display in the trailer, it was pretty clear that it wasn't based on something like ncurses or aa-lib. So definitely not running in the terminal ;-).

Also mind you, I'm not so much opposed to general-purpose game engines that save people from having to re-invent the wheel for every game they write. But I am a bit sensitive to the waste of resources due to sloppy programming. Sometimes I'm under the impression that software (be that OS, productivity software or games) is gobbling up the advances in computing power faster than that power is indeed advancing.
Nanobang Jul 27, 2019
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Brill. Yent. The irony here for me is that if this had almost any other kind of graphics, I'd probably not be at all interested, sniffing, "Ah, another side scroller," and tossing it aside. But the ASCII graphics had me mesmerized and wanting to play it just to see more of them! Wishlisted!
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