How crappy is Auroch Digital's rendition of OGRE?

[tiriss]

I've tried to complain about bugs. I've heard no response from either Auroch Digital nor SJ Games.

The game was released in 2017 but is so buggy, it's nearly unplayable. COMPLETE SILENCE! FROM BOTH AUROCH DIGITAL AND STEVE JACKSON GAMES!

Is this the legacy of Steve Jackson Games? Either release or royalty the intellectual property or just retire.

The 2017 release that hasn't been updated in many years is so buggy it's nearly unplayable. What a great game that could be awesome, but just sucks right now.

I'm reserving a bad review on Steam, hoping to hear anything SJGAMES or AUROCH DIGITAL, but despite reporting many bugs... have heard NO RESPONSE

A terrible support issue from either... and a sad support from both.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by tiriss

I've tried to complain about bugs. I've heard no response from either Auroch Digital nor SJ Games.

Well you likely aren't going to get one from SJ Games, who generally don't comment on errata in the first place and are not responsible for them in this case anyway, since it's a licensed product.

But yeah, the game was generally considered pretty bad as a video game (it was rather better as a faithful adaptation of the board game, but that's not a big market niche) five years ago. I dunno why you consider it buggy, at the time it worked OK, it just wasn't very entertaining, among other things because the AI wasn't a very good player.

Also why would you expect anybody to be putting a lot of support into a five year old video game that wasn't all that successful put out by a small company on a license from another small company? I'd hazard a guess that neither company has anybody whose full time is devoted to it.

[tiriss]

Thanks for the response. The main reason I'm curious about it is that Auroch Digital is actually releasing it for all the latest consoles, PS4&5 and Xbox X.

I've always been a big fan of the game and its add-ons, and I bought the boxed 6th Edition and loved it but can't really play it with my brother in CT. We saw it on sale for $4.95 on Steam and said hey why not?

While the AI isn't terrible compared to many games, like all AI's it cheats like most renditions or games that don't know how to design decent play. All versions of Sid Meier's Civilization always cheated, all versions of Galactic Civilizations, but as turn based games you could alleviate that somewhat by the autosave.

This game is so bug-ridden, the autosaves rarely reload properly and when they do, they put you back into the broken game you were playing. The 1988 or so version on the Commodore 64 was more stable, but had little content other than the basic game and 2 or 3 scenarios and no GEV or expanded rules.

Overruns work correctly only when ogres win, if you have infantry remaining alive it gives you no option to keep fighting until only one side owns the hex. Otherwise, it destroys your autosave and leaves you zoomed into the hex that was overrun. It may allow advance of phases, but what is the point, if you can't see the map, and move your pieces?

Treads are destroyed when rolling a 5 or 6... but the dice are so loaded that you'll be lucky if you see 1 in 6 rolls actually roll a 5 or 6. I've now documented hundreds of rolls and you get nowhere near a 33 1/3% rate. The actual rate is below 10% on a 6 sided die.

Infantry riding tanks or other vehicles doesn't appear to be implemented at all. Multiplayer has even more issues. It doesn't even keep each player in synch. My brother and I played this weekend and each client rolls its own results... so he had phantom GEV's running about, and I had a phantom tank. Only the person that hosted the game results matter as we finished the game. You'd think it would synchronize every turn... but it doesn't.

The third game we started remained in synchronization... and we saw the same results in the log, but that was after an immediate failure on the first (no moves but I WON!), and then the out of synch game was the second.

My concern is this and for Steve Jackson Games. While pretty and renditioned well graphically, Auroch Digital is going to give bad branding by such an atrocious implementation, that has obvious game play issues, and shouldn't be hard to fix. Munchkins Online I guess is in Beta invitation.

If they continue to license to such a poorly supported product aren't they going to lose audience and fans? I saw a really good rendition of GEV about 10-15 years ago from a student doing his senior project. He admitted the IP was the same and I don't blame SJGames protecting their Intellectual Property. But rather than setting up a licensing or royalty with this Computer Science student, they pulled a Microsoft ploy and threatened to sue him into obliteration.

What is SJGames thinking? I hope they don't make a similar mistake with Munchkins. And who do I need to bribe to get a decent, playable version of Ogre/GEV over the internet? I don't know why they don't use Tabletop Simulator to create DLC and license their IP, and gather royalties and/or subscriptions from there!

I realize this a very small market. Alienating those that are still in it is not a route they should pursue. My two cents and worth the same.

[43Supporter]

I managed to break the opening scenario.

Destroy the bridges. Knock out the OGRE's weapons. Reduce the OGRE to 3 treads or fewer. When it reaches the destroyed bridges, surround it with Armor.

Result: It can't ram; it can't overrun; it can't move through the enemy. The game then sits there forever, as there is no action the OGRE can take; which means the human player can't take his final turn to finish the OGRE off.

A human being would have surrendered.

[tiriss]

Originally Posted by 43Supporter

I managed to break the opening scenario.

Destroy the bridges. Knock out the OGRE's weapons. Reduce the OGRE to 3 treads or fewer. When it reaches the destroyed bridges, surround it with Armor.

Result: It can't ram; it can't overrun; it can't move through the enemy. The game then sits there forever, as there is no action the OGRE can take; which means the human player can't take his final turn to finish the OGRE off.

A human being would have surrendered.

The game is fairly consistently graphically pretty, but also consistently broken when applying much of the 6th edition rules. Who doesn't want to actually ram an OGRE with a bunch of GEVs loaded with infantry?

You can't do it. It is what it is. Until SJGames takes control of their quality licensing... we're stuck in limbo.

I hope they're listening, I can probably fix Auroch Digital's problems in 6 months... but unlikely either company is willing to RFP as they are releasing a substandard rendition to PS4/5 Xbox AND Switch!!!

I will say they did attempt to use the overrun rules from section 8 of the 6th edition of the rules... but failed! Broken games and just what you have seen as well.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by tiriss

I hope they're listening

You'd probably have a lot more chance of that if you sent a professional and polite email to them instead of posting insults about the game in the forums. Just saying.

[corwyn]

They do read the steam forums, btw.

[GranitePenguin]

Originally Posted by tiriss

I've tried to complain about bugs. I've heard no response from either Auroch Digital nor SJ Games.

The game was released in 2017 but is so buggy, it's nearly unplayable. COMPLETE SILENCE! FROM BOTH AUROCH DIGITAL AND STEVE JACKSON GAMES!

Is this the legacy of Steve Jackson Games? Either release or royalty the intellectual property or just retire.

The 2017 release that hasn't been updated in many years is so buggy it's nearly unplayable. What a great game that could be awesome, but just sucks right now.

I'm reserving a bad review on Steam, hoping to hear anything SJGAMES or AUROCH DIGITAL, but despite reporting many bugs... have heard NO RESPONSE

A terrible support issue from either... and a sad support from both.

Hi tiriss,

I'm sorry to hear you are having a poor experience with the game. Can you tell me what methods you've used to report bugs? I've been looking through the Steam forums and am not seeing a lot being discussed recently, and don't see any emails to SJG about it. Is there an email you used? I'd like to verify where you are sending the information is going someplace useful. Can you tell me the basics of the system you are testing on (I'm assuming Windows)?

From an SJG perspective, you can CC reports to ogre@sjgames.com; that way I'll see them in addition to sending to Auroch Digital and I can follow up with them to check the status. There are 23 updates that are listed on the Steam forums since the game's release (the latest was in November 2022), so there is an ongoing effort to patch issues. I won't lie and say there are a lot of resources available to fix tons of bugs, so I can't promise every issue you find will get resolved, but we'll do our best to address what we can.

Thank you for posting what you are seeing; and let me know what else comes up.

[tiriss]

The main reason I haven't been posting on Steam is that I don't want to give the game a bad reputation and I don't want to hurt SJG nor Auroch in any way.

I thought this was the best way to inform the problems I've had, and yes I'm using the Windows/Steam version.

Here's the latest email I've sent to both ogre@aurochdigital.com and info@sjgames.com:

Scenario 6 is unbeatable.... this is the 7th or 8th time I've beat it. Despite the overrun rules not working, despite the game cheating at every roll of the die... despite the game just crashing and locking up in most overruns and crashing the autosaves. Despite the game not allowing infantry riding armor...

Despite everything FRIGGING WRONG with this broken version of the game, I've always loved the tabletop and pocket versions of the game.

Give me the source code and I'll fix it. Name a price. But name a price and I'll fix the thing. $50k? 200k?*
Show me ANY one that has beat Scenario 6, because this is what I get EVERY TIME I've won:
<there should be a print screen here of "Game Over Error", "Sorry there was a problem finding the correct victory level" >

I don't understand the business model of making something that doesn't work as proclaimed. It functions, barely, and now you've released to PS4/5, and XBOX S? I'm astonished at the bravado releasing something so filled with problems.

Give me the source code and I'll fix it in probably 6 weeks, maybe 3 months, but these bugs are obvious and should have been noticed 6 years ago.

Respectfully,

Jaman

The bugs I mention are 66%-100% reproducible. I do now work in the gaming industry, but I've been in software development my entire career. It frustrates me that obvious problems with a game are not fixed.

Feel free to contact me at tiriss at yahoo dot com

[tiriss]

Originally Posted by GranitePenguin

Hi tiriss,


Thank you for posting what you are seeing; and let me know what else comes up.

Thank you for responding and hopefully it will produce a better experience for all.