Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £6.99
Where To Get It: Steam
Version Reviewed: 0.47
Other Reviews: Release

“It’s facing downward!” Yes, like the last twenty times. I think I get it now.

You know what I really loved about Prince of Persia 2008? Collecting lightseeds. That was, hands down, the best part of that game. Sod smooth platforming, sod weird not-deaths, the lightseeds were totally the best part of PoP2008. Followed closely by the backtracking to get those powerups I need to progress.

That preceding paragraph is, of course, complete bullshit unless you replace “best” with “worst.” So you can imagine how I feel about the Skypieces in Downward, a game that tries to take the nigh effortless free running of Prince of Persia or Mirror’s Edge, the collectathons from a lot of platformers of my youth, and the posthuman mystery elements of modern science-fiction/fantasy.

It achieves the collectathon, I will give it that. So let’s start with the story!

“As you can see Bob, Wormwood, Great Cthulhu, *and* The Giant Meteor have a really good platform this year!”

It is the year 1125AD. Except it clearly isn’t, because there’s technology, and the world has split into weird shards, ala Gravity Falls, and somehow people survived. Except they didn’t, because they killed each other off. I would like to think, in the interests of black comedy, that the AD stands for “After Donald” (or, if you’re a Brit like me, “After David”), and it’s days instead of years. You are an artefact hunter, who suddenly finds himself talking to someone who is clearly not an AI in a crystal lattice, I want to make that clear right now, and begins collecting things because this will solve the mystery of what happened to humanity. Somehow.

The protagonist shows his colours by exclaiming what useless things the mysterious KeyCubes are, or just expresses confusion, after he has already collected something like 30 of them, from jumping puzzles, angry, highly pattern based golems, and just general fucking about. That’s just the kind of guy he is.

Ooooh, mysteri- Oh, wait, not really. Sigh.

See, I’m not opposed to story justifying games. I’m not even necessarily opposed to bad story justifying gameplay. I am, however, opposed to jank. And jank, my friends, is what currently inhabits Downward. The Not-Lightseeds are used for unlocking powers. A good 90% of them are simple quality of life stuff, and the other 10% is the strangely thought out ability to trade the cost of Arbitrary Powergem Usage for placing teleporters, and teleporting to them for free, with the cost of sod all for placing teleporters, and costing Arbitrary Powergem Usage to teleport to them. Hrm. Infinite teleports to a limited number of places between refills (via fountains, which replenish health, gems, and stamina), orrrrr just four straight teleports, but I can choose where to place the endpoint infinitely…

…Already, I’m getting “the Not-Lightseeds can largely be ignored” and “I wasted 290 of them when I could have got more teleports.” Of course, by the point of this realisation, I had also realised that the space bar, used for most jump mechanics, doesn’t always chain like its meant to, and level placement of the parkour-able walls, some too low, some too high, some at awkward angles, meant that I couldn’t trust that chaining anyway.

Pretty. Disconnected. It… Kinda looks how the game *feels*

I want to say “Hey, it’s Early Access, at least some of this will be fixed by release”, as it’s at version 0.47 at the time of writing, but… It’s not going to fix how arbitrary, how hollow it all feels. Whither golems? Wherefore strange crystal turrets? To what end Skypieces? I don’t feel I’ll get answers, I don’t really feel motivated to explore these (sometimes pretty) not-quite-Arabic, not-quite-Medieval worlds, to interact with the few characters that exist, or to grind my brain and fingers, time and time again, against a world that isn’t dragging me in, only pushing me away with mocking removal of Skypieces when I die, itself hollow because, as I’ve mentioned, they largely don’t matter.

What I’m basically saying is: The platforming is currently finicky and unfun, the story feels arbitrary, and the protagonist is a tabula rasa that has somehow gained the power of speech… To his detriment. I’ll take a look again at release, but for now… I’m not impressed.

The Mad Welshman picked up his trusty keyboard, the eldritch symbols of power etched upon its slabs. “Hrm, what’s this for?” he mused, as he used it to write these words.

Filed under: Early Access Releases, Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

Source: I wanna say bought? It’s been a while… @.@
Price: £5.59 (or thereabouts)
Where To Get It: Steam, Official Site
Other Reviews: Release

After my experiences with Barony, way back when, I felt somewhat burned out on dungeon crawling. But, of course, with a new year comes new updates, and one that happened while I was away was a content patch to Delver, a procedurally generated first person dungeon crawler that, like Barony, takes at least some of its inspiration from Ultima Underworld and their ilk… Along with a teeny bit from old Roguelikes such as Angband or Nethack, in which you, an adventurer, enter a supposedly shifting dungeon complex near a wizard’s tower that’s suffered a bad case of subsidence, to retrieve an orb attributed great magical power.

Okay, so it’s not *the* orb of great power… But, y’know, it’s a skullball, and it floats!

That, and potions not having a known effect, are basically the main nods to the genre Delver comes from. The rest is pretty much its own thing, and, despite some niggles it can’t really help but have, I’m… Okay with it! So, let’s get the niggles out of the way first: Equipment, and predictability.

Equipment, specifically weapons, degrade over use. And, of course, you never know when you’ll get the next one. I’m telling you this now, because… The game doesn’t, and it comes as a somewhat nasty shock when you look in your inventory and happen to notice that your Peachy Keen Sword of Being Quite Quick (Previously Excellent, doing 9 to 12 damage) has now become The Blunt And Cracked Whiffle Bat Of Still Being Fairly Quick (Doing 1 to 4 damage.) If armour suffers the same way, I have yet to notice, thankfully (THAT’S NOT AN INVITATION OR REQUEST!) Similarly, while the most recent patch went a long way toward controlling your ranged ammunition shortage (What with recoverable arrows, sometimes even from corpses), this, too, is a major concern you should keep in mind while playing: Save your wands and ammo for ranged enemies.

See that skelly in the background? That’s the *real* threat.

As to predictability, this is somewhat of a double edged sword with Delver. On the one hand, you know what to expect in each of the (currently) four or five types of dungeon you encounter, and so you know, for example, to save ranged stuff for the Caves/Dwarven Mines, in which Eyebeasts can ambush without a whole lot of warning, then scoot rapidly out of your range to throw fireballs. On the other, it becomes a case of “Yes, okay, Ruins, good fine, let’s get onto those orc type fellers down on Sewers 1 and 2, eh?” , and that can… Well, get a little bit dull at times. The door behind the fireplace in the underground bar is like an old friend, and I view the unstable ground over the lava pits of the Ruins to be the cackling rival, occasionally trapping me in a pit with no way out but death and reincarnation outside the dungeon despite the fact I know they’re there, god-dammit…

Still, there’s a fair bit that’s good about the game, and it is still in development. The tile based, pixellated look works quite well for Delver, each weapon type has at least a couple of swings, easily memorised, and each run takes anything up to an hour (Depending, obviously, on caution and skill), so it’s not a time demanding game (Something I, as I grow older, grow a little more grateful for each day), and the music is pleasant, fitting, and at times, quite dramatic.

Even the campground has… Y’know, *some* drama. That dang bard, hiding things and playing sad tunes… >:|

So, is Delver worth a gamble? Well, let’s think. Less than £6, for a start, does have story (in the form of notes, which I won’t spoil, because although it’s as simple as the game right now, there’s still some good, short reads in there about the poor sods who came before you), and, while it has been called shallow (It is, a little), that’s not necessarily a bad thing, so long as you know it’s not going to have you poring over loreposts in forums. It’s fun, it’s somewhat challenging, and it doesn’t demand you Get Good… Only mildly suggests it while stressing you’re there to have fun and relax.

…And I’m okay with that.

Filed under: Early Access Releases, Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £6.99
Where To Get It: Steam, Itch.IO

Deidia is a clever game. Deidia is an artistic game. Deidia is punk as fuck. And, like many of these interesting altgames, it’s probably not going to do amazingly. That’s a real god-damn shame, and let me tell you why.

It begins with a reference to the demoscene. That’s right, the demoscene, you younguns may not remember that, where folks wanted to make their 3.5” floppy collections (or, to go back further, cassette tapes. Yes, in Ye Olde Days Of Gaming Lore, games came on tapes) of demos and programs as flashy and memorable as possible, so they did all sorts of fun things with text effects, colour cycling, and chiptunes. The intro even has a scrolling pixel vista to introduce the game like an old Amiga or Commodore 64 game.

Scrolling Amiga/Atari style text? Why, I haven’t seen that in donkeys!

And then you get in, and… At first, it’s jarring. It’s lo-fi, highly pixellated rocks, obviously layered over each other. The hero has a triangular cape that wouldn’t look out of place on a shitty N64 game. There’s even 5’25” floppies as platforms for the intro. And yet, there’s a weird sort of beauty to it, so… You go deeper. You hit an obstacle… Oh, shit, it’s got clicker/wait elements. So you buy Deitycoin clickers with your Deitycoins, get a little deeper, and…

…Invisible walls. And floors. And sometimes, the floors aren’t there when they should be. It’s at this point that so many people would quit. But… There’s always this text, at the top of the screen, telling you to hit G to corrupt the world. So you try it.

The world opens up. You start experimenting more. The visceral disgust as you hit 6 (Player Distort) and AAAAAAwhyarethey ohwait. Because you distorted the player sprite. There a reset here? Oh, yeah, for the world to- Oh sod, you’re back at the beginning of the level. You can’t fall very far without resetting the level. You-

There are many different areas, each with their own challenge, and requiring different hackery to get anywhere.

Will, in many cases, for many of the “You” that are reading this, ask for a refund. What garbage. What trash. But those of you who don’t realise… You don’t have to take that first door. Or you don’t have to play the way its intended. You set the world drifting, and somehow, manage to reach that first door, or another one somewhere else, or… Your options start opening up, and the world… Plays with you.

Right now, I’ve hit the first hub (or is it?) I’ve got more questions than answers. There’s lots of places I can go, and maybe one of them leads to this Deidia that I must apparently find… But meanwhile, my Deitycoin interface is… Slowly filling up with something. I’ve discovered (in the course of attempting to screenshot the game for review) another layer of ways I can, in a way, be the glitchy deity of this strange world, screwing with its rules. I’m noticing counters, and while even I’m not sure I want to continue, I find myself appreciating how a seemingly simple game can have… So many possible layers.

If you don’t mind spending £7 on something that isn’t the friendliest (and deliberately so) , but experiments boldly, and has a unique aesthetic, then go for it. I genuinely can’t tell you if you’ll be disappointed or not, because I’m not entirely sure how I feel myself.

There are invisible things here. Time to… SHAKE THE WORLD!

But I don’t feel I’ve wasted my time or money examining this one, whether I go back to it or not.

The Mad Welshman lost his console command list a while back. If anyone remembers how to change that one variable that makes everything seem terrible back, could you kindly let me know?

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £10.99
Where To Get It: Steam , Humble Store
Other Reviews: Early Access 2, Release

Vagante, it seems, is a game that’s rubbing me the wrong way. The title translates as either Rambling, Stray, or Vagrant, and I suspect, considering it involves adventurers travelling in a wagon, the last one. As to what it is? Well, it’s a procedurally generated action platformer with RPG elements. Specifically, Dark Souls. And therein, for me at least, lies the problem.

I can almost guarantee you, this is the brightest you’ll ever see the game.

Visually, it reminds me of a darker, harder to navigate Spelunky, a game that, even now, I still go back to every now and again, because it’s quick to play, and easy to get the hang of. Similarly, the music, the squeak of bats, remind me somewhat of that genre classic, and the tile based generation is quite obviously similar… And I forgive what generation imperfections there are right now because it’s in early access, and I’m sure they know about things like some chests being inaccessible unless you have Floor Phasing on floors where an item with that quality hasn’t dropped.

Unfortunately, from there, it feels like it’s hard for the sake of being hard, and the Dark Souls influence is extremely obvious, from the unlockable Deprived option (Where you have no items, weapons, etc…) to the combat depending on understanding patterns and working with weapon speeds, to a boss in every level, to mimic the bosses of areas. Oh, and bats, levelling up, and a “stability” stat that governs how often you get stunned/knocked back.

A lot of which doesn’t matter when you can all too easily bounce off an enemy into instant death spikes just before you realise what’s happened, instantly and prematurely ending a run. Or take enough damage from enemies that you pretty much know you can’t beat the boss of the level… Whether due to being too rash, to the inconsistency of whether dagger strikes will properly murderise a goblin before it can get its weapon animation off, due to falling off things due to sometimes fiddly ledge grabbing, or simply because you’ve misjudged whether that bat really is in line with your weapon, among other things.

This is before we even factor in class elements, like how the fighter’s sword skill adds control complexity and makes it more likely I’m going to be stuck facing the same direction on my next attack when I just want to turn around and smack that sodding Goblin that’s behind m-oh, I’m dead.

Pictured: Facing the wrong way, in a canned animation, about to get nommed.

Speaking of classes, no class is, thankfully, completely useless, but mileage will definitely vary, even between runs, on the four classes (Warrior, Rogue, Wizard, and the unlockable Wildling, a barbarian type who likes to punch things.) I’ve had the easiest time so far with the Rogue, because I know the hitbox of the dagger, it attacks quickly (Quickly enough that, most of the time, I can kill a goblin before it gets a swing off, unlike the other three), and I have the backup option of the bow (Which does tat for damage, and is slow to fire… But, of course, is ranged, which means you’re not being smacked about.) However, how well I do depends on a number of factors. For example, one of the bosses of the first three levels (And you will encounter all three bosses before moving onto the forest, presumably encountering another three bosses over three levels… I wouldn’t know, I’ve never finished the Forest area.) is a dragon. He does 5 damage, plus burning, every time he hits me with one of the three fireballs he spews as part of his pattern (The most common pattern, by the way.) If he’s in cramped corners, and I’m playing a rogue, I can generally stab him and not die. If I’m the Wizard, I can generally pull an Emperor Palpatine on his arse while dodging fireballs in almost the same time regardless of whether he’s got room to move.

…If I’m the Warrior, I am extremely dependent on either a) Having found a lot of arrows/offensive magic before I meet him, or b) him being nice enough to stay close enough to a platform I can hit him quickly enough that he won’t melt me before I stab him.

I’ve only ever killed the Wood Golem (A Forest boss) with ranged options. And let me tell you, ranged option fights are fucking tedious. Stabbing with a quick weapon? Pli-pli-pli-plink, maybe add another “pli-”, and your average enemy is dead. Takes a second or two. Using a normal weapon? Stab, maybe a second if you’re comfortable, retreat a bit to not get hit, stab, Bob’s yer uncle. A ranged weapon? Draaaaaaaw, fire. Less damage than a dagger swipe. Draaaaaaw fire. Oh wait, now I have to run away so I can do that some more. Heavy weapons, such as hammers, or especially battle axes, have their own little fillip, in that not only is their animation slow and tedious, the hitbox for the attack has a minimum range as well as a maximum. So it’s of fuck all use for fighting enemies next to you. Considering that, in the first three levels, the natural urge of every single enemy is to get right up in your face? Have fun properly judging the timing! The Forest is somewhat more forgiving. There, they’re mostly either trying to eat you or shoot you, and both are more dodgeable.

Pictured: Some wooden asshole with more hitpoints and damage than he perhaps deserves.

Meanwhile, I just don’t know how some of these mechanics work. Spells have levels. What raises those levels? Beyond a perk, that is…? Why is it that some goblins seem to have a better ability to get off their attack animation despite me frantically punching/stabbing them like I’m Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star? Is there actually a point to the stat skill trees beyond extra damage with X or slightly more hit points, over, say, the ability to mix unwanted potions into maybe the much more needed Potions of Regeneration (Not a guaranteed thing, but hey, better than maybe an extra point of damage or two) , or one of the many other skills of varying usefulness and added complexity?

I don’t know for sure, but I do know this game frustrates the hell out of me, from its FUCKING BATS (I will nearly always capitalise that, because game developers really need to learn that bats aren’t good. Their only functions in this game, just as in nearly any other I’ve seen them in, is to annoy the hell out of you, make you wait for them to come to an ideal position before you can kill them, and to occasionally knock you into spikes because you were paying attention to something else that might have knocked you into spikes and kill you), to bosses with way more hit points than is sensible (Forest Golem and your almost insta-death slam, almost insta-death rock throw, and fight that mostly consists of praying I don’t run out of ranged options while taking ten times as long to kill as any other boss, I’m looking at you) and inconsistent difficulty based on where they are (Most of the cave bosses qualify here, from “I can’t hit this f-ing dragon” to “I got thrown into spikes I didn’t even know existed by the Boss Goblin.”)

While we’re on the subject, and in summary, I’m sick and tired of “Roguelike” being a byword for “We will kill you with factors outside your control such as boss arenas”, and I’m sick and tired of “Inspired by Dark Souls” inspiring tedious combat that somehow inspires people to respond to genuine complaints about gameplay flow, fuck-you traps and enemies (HELLO, LURKER ON A SINGLE TILE I NEED TO PASS THROUGH), and FUCKING BATS (Themselves with issues when it comes to murdering the stupid squeaky bastards) with “GIT GUD, SCRUB.”

The already dark environment gets even darker when you’re dead, so unfortunately, you’ll have to take my word that a bat knocked my into an instadeath spike because I couldn’t *precisely* hit the squeaking little shit.

Each “run” doesn’t tend to take long (About 10 minutes, on average, to the Forest), but even so, without improvement, I’ve seen the Dark Caves enough that I’m most likely going to be heartily sick of them when I eventually come back for the release review.

The Mad Welshman is dead. Game Over. Oh wait, he respawned as a Console Critic. And then died and is a PC critic again, and then…

Filed under: Early Access Releases, Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

Source: Review Copy
Price: £14.99 (19.79 for Collector’s Edition)
Where To Get It: Steam, GOG

Aragami is perhaps the first game I’ve come across in my reviewing career to openly baffle me with its design decisions. This, unfortunately, is not a recommendation for it, except as an education to other game designers. Let’s unpack that, and talk about why Aragami is so baffling to me.

For reasons which will become clear, this is emblematic of the game itself.

At the core of the problem is the single save/checkpoint system that Aragami has. Done well, you can still have a single save system with skill respeccing and different play paths, but Aragami… Well, beyond deleting my save data, I had no means of resetting my skill spec, or ungaining the abilities I’d unlocked in later chapters, so… That would imply the game has a score attack element, right?

Wrong. Because of the way the checkpointing works. Nothing counts, score-wise, until you’ve actually hit the next checkpoint. Combine that with another problem (The extremely thin line between “Alerted”, and “Dead.” There aren’t any enemies, even in the early game, that can’t kill you from at least short to medium range.), and you end up with… Being able to S-Rank any level, perfect Stealth or Kill Everything, because if you don’t do it perfectly, odds are pretty high you’re going to die, and none of your cockups count due to the checkpointing system. In fact, it’s better for your score to die and restart a checkpoint (Some of which are placed a fairly long way away), than to accept an alert. So… That “-500 Alerted” feels… Superfluous, as a result.

The only way to not S-Rank a level, it seems, is to be inconsistent in your approach. Is the game aiming for replayability? Well… 2 runs, one for perfect stealth, and one for killing everybody and looting the map of skill scrolls, aaaand… You’re pretty much done.

Although it isn’t clear, this is about 1.5 seconds after being spotted, and 0.5 after being killed by a wave of light from that guy’s sword.

Now, one thing that the game has been criticised for is that there is no option but to use your powers to solve a level. You can’t jump, you can’t climb. Funnily enough, though, that isn’t really the problem for me. The problem for me with powers is that… Well, most of them feel decidedly unnecessary. See enemies and their cone of vision through walls? Not really a lot of situations that’s useful for, because it’s actually easier to just get spotted, die, and remember the position in future. A shadow mine? Sure, if enemies bunch up. But most of the time, unless they’re alerted… They don’t, and it leaves a lot of bodies, which… Alerts everyone once they’re found. Again, it’s easier to just kill, then use a cheaper power (Shadow Vanish) to remove the body. The only time that doesn’t work is when they either die or ragdoll after death into a brightly lit area, and there’s a nice, cheap fix for that too: Lure them with a bell (Unlocked in Chapter 3, then usable in all levels), teleport behind them after they enter a shadowy area, kill, vanish them.

That’s why it feels shallow to me: You have interesting tools, but their extremely situational use, combined with the extra busywork involved in replenishing their limited uses (Two uses of a special ability, then you have to find a shrine somewhere on the level… And, of course, shrines aren’t present in the first two levels) means that I’m disincentivised from using them. Similarly, before I unlock Shadow Vanish, an all murder run is tense and, in point of fact, pretty damn difficult. After I unlock it? It’s mostly making sure I’m not spotted or heard while murdering my way through a level.

Yamiko , whose name could be translated as “Come Darkness.” Aragami, similarly, roughly translates to “Violent Spirit”

This is pretty much a damn shame, because the game is visually appealing, and the spanish developers, Linceworks, have clearly put some effort into both their writing and research. But when most of your abilities feel like distractions rather than tools in the toolbox, there’s this strange disincentive to using a lot of them seemingly baked into the design, and completing levels feels more like recording a segmented speed-run than a fluid gameplay experience, not even these nice little touches, the lovely cel-shading and the japanese voice acting, can make this feel joyful rather than dutiful.

Give it a go if you want to see stealth experimented with, but go in aware that the experiment… Wasn’t exactly a huge success in my opinion.

The Mad Welshman gets around that whole silly Shadows Killed By Light thing by wearing white suits. You’d be amazed how often that works.

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!