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The Lost Stones Chronicles: Kingdom Realms Freewar

Author:

GameFun4U

Submitted:

22nd January, 2008

Favourites:

Genre:

Real Time Strategy

Downloads:

339

Rated:

180th Place

(3.55 / 5)

Edited By GameFun4U on 4/29/2008

Around 300 bc a number of grecians decided to leave greece. Fed up with the ongoing strive and wars they left in search of a better place to live. after weeks of travel the grecians arrived at an island, unknown to them. They lived for many years on the island in peace. Many years later, young man discovered a cave with an ancient tomb in it. besides much treasure a number of fragments of stone with strange inscriptions were found also. A governor of on of the kingdom realms financed a number of expeditions to various ruins and caves on the island to find more of the fragments of what had become known as the lost stones. But.... a passage was also opened to unknown regions under the island, unleashing a number of fierce creatures.

The Lost Stones Chronicles: Kingdom Realms is the first part of the Lost Stones Trilogy. In this freeware game the player needs to govern a provence of the Island and participate in various missions to once again ensure peace and security in the Realm.

Some of the Features:

- 18 different playable units
- 16 technologies
- 8 full missions: defence, rescue, treasure hunting and more.
- Fierce Enemies: spiders, dragons, reptiles and more.
- 1000's of animations, pre-rendered graphics.
- Brief overview of the Island's history.
- Nonlinear Gameplay.
- Heroes.
- World map and detailed town map.

System Requirements: Pentium4 or AMD Duron/Athlon 1400Mhz,
Windows 9.x/ME/2000/XP/Vista, 90MB Hard Disk Space, 512MB RAM, DirectX compatible 64MB 3D Video Card, DirectX 9.0c,
DirectX compatible Sound Card
Please note: Lower specs may work also.

Here's a link to the gameplay video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEpQOgikmw4

Enjoy playing the game!

Updated to change the link for more convenient downloading and added the gameplay video link.

Special thanks goes to Gamesare Studios for hosting the game.

New Version! The game has been updated on 2-2-2008 with a number of suggested improvements.

Update! This will be the only freeware part ever released, I'm quiting freeware game creation to focus on other things in life. If the majority of gamers do not enjoy playing my freeware games, there is no point in going on with it and I do better spent my time on creating things that give enjoyment to others. Creating a freeware game takes time and if people don't want to play the game created, it has been a complete waste of time and I rather not spent my time on such a thing again. So, enjoy the last freeware game I've designed, the only thing to look forward too is the release of the commercial version, which will be announced soon. It will be available online soon and in a number of stores in Europe later this year.

Review This Download

http://gamesare.com/games/kingdom/kingdom.htm (80 mkb )

Posted by Vertigo

23rd January, 2008

Rated :

A pain to download, had to copy the url in the adress bar... anyway the screenshots look cool, downloading it now

Posted by Simon Colmer

23rd January, 2008

omg looks awesome! Downloading...

Posted by Liquixcat

23rd January, 2008

Quite the pretty looking game, I'll download later.

Posted by Jason Orme

23rd January, 2008

Looks nice, if I could make 1 suggestion.

Make a video of the game, add it to YouTube, that way people know what the gameplay is like before they download 80MB (people don't like big games).

Posted by Guru Rinpoche

23rd January, 2008

Rated :

Wow, really good graphics...you've mastered the style. How long did this take you?!
The only thing I'd suggest is possibly removing that "Are you a Good Person" God checksheet. It doesn't really fit with everything else, especially since this is about the Greeks, not monotheists.

Posted by GameFun4U

23rd January, 2008

Thanks for the comments! I've changed the link for better downloading and I'm working on the gameplay video!
Comment edited by GameFun4U on 1/23/2008

Posted by Fadex

23rd January, 2008

Graphics are masterpiece...
Comment edited by Fadex on 1/23/2008

Posted by GameFun4U

23rd January, 2008

Added the gameplay video link!

Posted by danjo

23rd January, 2008

Rated :

it looks like a lot of hard work went into this. i'll certainly take a look.
... & let down by poor game mechanics.
Comment edited by danjo on 1/24/2008

Posted by maVado

25th January, 2008

Rated :

graphics are fine, but the gameplay, is there any gameplay at all ? 3 stars for the effort though ...

Posted by Kazuma

25th January, 2008

Rated :

I'm not impressed with the graphics. They just look like they were rendered with some 3D program and then pasted into MMF2.

I'm giving you two stars because you made me giggle by posting system requirements, then immediately saying "please note: Lower specs may work also".

Posted by

25th January, 2008

Rated :

anyone that can build a strategy engine in MM2 deserves 5 stars
Comment edited by Va1entine on 1/25/2008

Posted by

25th January, 2008

Rated :

Sorry forgot to rate!!!!!

Posted by GameFun4U

25th January, 2008

The lower specs comment was because the lowest specs the game was tested on were the ones mentioned, but it may well work on a lower spec machine it just wasn't tested.

Kazuma, you don't do the graphics any justice at all.
maVado, there's a lot of gameplay in the game, as with any rts game you just glance over it, but need to spent some time in the game.
Va1entine, thanks!

Posted by Kazuma

25th January, 2008

Rated :

I'm just saying. They look like they were rendered, then pasted. If they were hand made, it's a shame all that effort went into something that came out looking as good as something that could be done so easily another way.

Posted by maVado

26th January, 2008

Rated :

Im not saying anything negative on the graphics they work out, well done

Let's talk about the gameplay. The first thing I was facing a wall of text, and it really took me 2 minutes to find out to get it closed. I did not read it because it was way to long for an introduction. I scrolled around the screen and could not find anything to click on, I selected something from the menu below until all was crossed out RED. What I just selected was and is still totally unclear to me. What's the purpose? I mean come one, you want me to play that game what about you show it to me? I don't want to be mean, I used to program user interfaces at work for databases.

I gave up about 10 minutes later and click on the quit button and e voila I just exited the town view? What the hell? I did the first mission, the training course and after that the second one. Terrible path finding and people tend to move through objects. After that I quit, about an hour I played and still I don't have a clue how I can make money, when does a "turn end" how do I find missions besides scrolling a huge screen looking for red flags?

You see my point? From a user perspective this game does not work, for the next time get some beta testers so they can tell you right from the start whats wrong and what works and what not.

"anyone that can build a strategy engine in MM2 deserves 5 stars"

To get 5 stars from me the game should be perfect in all categories not just one or two.

This game has good graphics and good sound / music. The overall presentation works. But it has a terrible interface and not a solid gameplay.

That's just my opinion.

Posted by GameFun4U

26th January, 2008

"The first thing I was facing a wall of text, and it really took me 2 minutes to find out to get it closed."

It would have taken you less then 20 seconds to read the text and then you could have saved yourself 2 minutes of searching.

I'll work on the needed improvements for the game though, but I will not make up for laziness.
Comment edited by GameFun4U on 1/30/2008

Posted by Kazuma

28th January, 2008

Rated :

Gamers don't want to read a novel, though.

Posted by GameFun4U

29th January, 2008

Gamers don't watch movies either.
Comment edited by GameFun4U on 1/30/2008

Posted by danjo

29th January, 2008

Rated :

no point arguing with ben people. he's got an answer for everything. hes like this on every site ive seen.
he doesnt like poor comments, even when they are justified.
ben - when people dont bother looking for buttons or discovering "how" to do something in your game. dont you think theres a problem there if its A> not obvious or B> not worth the effort to puddle around looking for the solution.
Just telling people the must play these games much, or dont read the "20" pages of instructions is a bit of a cop out. ive seen plenty of games which HELP the play get into the game without boring them to pieces or losing interest before anything has happened.
My main problem with this is the really bad movment engine. Its the core part of the game, which is badly implimented and could have been done much better to make it playable or a less frustrating experience - the later being what i found it to be.

Posted by GameFun4U

3rd February, 2008

I've updated the download with a good number of improvements to the game.

Posted by MBK

8th February, 2008

Anyone play this game after he made those improvements ? ... I would like to try it out, but if gameplay is as bad as these fellas say it is ...
then I don't wanna waste the time with an 80 mb download

Posted by GameFun4U

8th February, 2008

It's really not that bad as they say, it seems more like that a number of jealous people have jumped on this thread. If you've tried War of Antarctica (just released by someone else) which had all great remarks, you'll see that it's almost the same engine as this one uses.
Comment edited by GameFun4U on 2/8/2008

Posted by phanto

8th February, 2008

Rated :

I'm not a big fan of the graphic style (I'm more into MMF-drawn pixels

), but there's a lot of effort put into this game, I can see that! Quite confusing gameplay unless you really read up on the game mechanics (or so I thought), but that's nothing negative in a strategy game imo.

Posted by GameFun4U

14th February, 2008

Thanks for the comment. Compared to some RTS games, this one is quite simple. Left click select a person, right click to move it. Left click & hold shift to select multiple units. I don't see what's confusing about that. Then there are some special's like entering a tower, but even that is quite simply. I've seen platform games that were more complicated.

Posted by Johnny Look

14th February, 2008

Rated :

huh well no War of Antarctica is a lot better than this game imo

Posted by -Liam-

19th February, 2008

n/a

Posted by Fredrik Ortmon

20th February, 2008

Looks good

But cannot download right now

Posted by Zezard

21st February, 2008

Rated :

Hmmm. very well...
The story was kind of boring to read, it would have been much better if it had somehow been described to the player in-game. I found the font you used very irritating to read, there is nothing wrong with plain old "Times New Roman" or better yet, "Verdana".

Looking at the screenshots and the video I thought the graphics to be empty and boring, but I was wrong. It is very good, a little more motion and I would even call it potentially proffesional.

The gameplay is much too advanced for me to fully enjoy, but it's not so advanced that you can't get into it. The problem is that the help texts make it seem much more complicated than it really is (something I realized might be the case, and kept on playing, even though my brains felt like running away and hiding under the bed).

The biblic element was kind of exotic and I kinda liked it (I seem to be a potentially good person

.

The interface in the town is a bit disorienting. It's not obvious that all you have to care a bout are those buttons, when there is a entire village going on in the background.

It would be nice if windows were closed using a traditional "x" in addition to the deselection of option-feature (I think it would feel more comfortable with many users to have options they recognize).
The prizes should be included in the pictures of what you buy, instead of roughly described in the, much too complex, help text.

The first mission map is vastly oversized.

The world map seems to be kind of oversized, or there should be buttons to certain hotspots, so you don't have to scroll around as much.

There seem to be some issue with the contol of multiple targets. I had problems getting more than one unit to move at a time.

Some sound effects were just... lol... like some strange sound I heard from the spear thrown by a militia...

Otherwise the game is creative and beautiful. The music is was very much in my liking.
Two stars away for disorienting systems and annoying text help though...

A word about this Antartic War stuff:
Your game lacks the simplicity of that game, and even though none of your movment engines would fit in a (real) good rts, Antartic War's seems to be a bit sharper (then again, its units and battlefields are smaller).

Posted by Zezard

21st February, 2008

Rated :

Oh, I almost forgot....

Don't use smelly install files! They add shit to registry and soul, and has no functionality what so ever (ok, they do but it sounds stronger this way)!

Now, 80 mega"kilo"bytes is not much. It is not a size that should stop any creative mind from making creative things. But the install file is another issue. Only use install files when it is neccessary for the software to know where on the disk it is stored, and this should not be the case for any click-game.

Posted by GameFun4U

23rd February, 2008

Thanks for the lengthy 'review' of the problems in the game. I'll use some of the advice given for the next game, since it applies to that one also. It's not a rts game, this was my final try, too many problems with MMF2 to really get it done better then I've accomplished.

There are 'hotspots' on the main map press the m key to quickly center on a different mission available.

Can you also tell me what you mean by smelly install files? What do you mean with that? It is neccessary for the software to know where on the disk it is stored, sinc it needs to keep track of a saved file.

Posted by Zezard

23rd February, 2008

Rated :

I am a tgf-user, so I'm not super certain of what features there might be in mmf. However (as it is possible in tgf), I'm positive that there is a file directory variable in mmf which can be used to get the current directory from which the exe-file is executed. Use this instead of a static dir, and your software will be more flexible at the same time.

I hadn't played the game too much when I wrote my "lengthy" review (of not only the problems), but now I'd like to add some more thoughts

Many things in the game seem kind of unneccessary, as there is so little of it. Everything in the village could be constructed in a matter of minutes (unless the player didn't first fix the mining and wood production).

That part when you are supposed to walk between two pitholes in the labyrinth mission is too precise for the controls.

The controlling of units is completly chaotic...

I think you should make your environments so that the actual hitboxes are invisible squares on the ground, thus units would be able to walk behind the tower and pass through gates in a more natural way.

Perhaps you should try some radically different controls for the next game in the series. As you have pointed out, mmf isn't very good at handlings this type of game.

I'd suggest that you have keyboard-steared units instead, with the possibility to swap between the units. Perhaps you could even make them follow a group leader or something, to move multiple units at the same time.

Posted by GameFun4U

29th April, 2008

Thanks for all the suggestions! After considering everything carefully, I've decided to quit freeware game creation completely. It's game over for me when it comes to freeware game creations. Enjoy this last freeware game released!
Comment edited by GameFun4U on 4/29/2008

Posted by steve

4th May, 2008

hi! Could you please tell me if this game is Freeware???

Sorry, just had to ask.

GameFun4U - I didn't play the game, I watched the YouTube video instead - it seems to have extremely jerky scrolling either that or was a bad video capture?

Posted by GameFun4U

5th May, 2008

Video capture is a bit jerky and yes, the game is free!
Comment edited by GameFun4U on 5/5/2008

Posted by Mr_Tom

28th July, 2008