The Alphaville Herald

The D&D Game within the Game: Simcast?s Secret Project

by Alphaville Herald on 07/08/04 at 2:50 pm

The other day I checked the events list in SL, and found the usual fare: naked bingo, scripting classes, sales on fetishware. Tired of this action I decided to fly around aimlessly. A couple minutes later I came across a large castle, with what looked like a gigantic spoon out front ? no it was half spoon and half spatula and was resting on a fulcrum. Above the spatula end were gigantic blocks of wood. I flew in closer. Sitting in the spoon end was a twisted little d00d holding a scythe and a severed bleeding garden gnome head. He shouted ?fire?, the blocks dropped and he went sailing into the stratosphere. Turns out this was just a coffee break for the employees of Simcast ? a respite from a hard day’s work on their secret project (well, parts are secret): a Dungeons and Dragons style, PvP Quest Game, soon to be open for business on a private sim in Second Life.


SimCast Dev Team member Grim get’s lauched by the spoon catapult

Since I have a thing for severed garden gnome heads and catapults made of giant spoons, I stopped and talked to the characters out front: Grim, PlaugeBearer, and the CEO of Simcast, Prong Thetan. (Prong it seems, is a refugee from There, who made a name for himself by harvesting countless souls.) The guys explained what they were up to: inside the castle was a game that they were developing where one must collect clues and objects and solve riddles to navigate one?s way through the castle. They offered a tour and let me take some snaps, and while I can?t show you everything I saw (like the combat system armor, and some of the clues) I can offer some visuals of the many twisted delights inside (rivers of blood, more severed heads, etc).

In the fullness of time, when they move their operation to a private sim, they will have a full on combat system operational ? one that includes familiar D&D fare like magic books and healing powers and a system for scoring damage and recovery. On top of this they currently have a 32 channel voice server (possibly going to 64), so that all player interactions will be in voice.

Hamlet Linden has recently reported on two other PvP games in development in SL, although these seems somewhat different in both the aesthetic and technology on offer (the Simcast game seems more medieval in character). I think that the development of these three games and the possibility that they will come online at about the same time can only be good news. It will inject a lot of excitement into the game. Not that I have anything against naked bingo?

My favorite room. The Blood Room!

Gotta have a guillotine!

Runes provide many of the clues. Fortunately, I am fluent in Elvish

CEO Prong Thetan guides me past one bigg-ass skull

Another skull. This one blowing lunch

Sometimes one must take the narrow path

While I was taking the tour PlaugeBearer was building monsters (which will receive some AI scripts, most likely)

Simcast Dev Team member, PlaugeBearer Xevious

Sim Cast Dev Team member Lucifer Luchador