I can't say I went into this expecting much, but I was frequently impressed, constantly challenged, and fully in love with its hands off approach. It's somewhat like a first person Link to the Past. Simple, often frustrating combat likely due to its simplicity. I really enjoyed happening upon a new weapon or piece of armor, because each one feels game-changing as each one allows you to reasonably fight a different enemy type. I won't spoil but this also has a great surprise in the end-game. Just a lovely and quick game, I highly recommend it for people who want a 5-6 hour adventure that's challenging while also offering a lot of rewarding exploration.

Very exploration driven adventure that forces you to explore, adapt, and learn your way through its interesting low poly world. Exploration means finding items and equipment, which means you can explore further and for longer and find new equipment and so on and so forth

The loop works, the world is pretty cool, but for me it was let down by the combat mechanics. They're pretty simple and quite rough around the edges, and I simply never felt like I was doing anything skilful with them. Winning fights felt like other pure technical superiority (admittedly sometimes this was by selecting the right weapon for a fight!) or movements that felt a bit like "cheesing" each enemy.

After a couple of bosses that took a good few attempts my interest in persevering waned and for now I've decided to stop. I'm sure others could enjoy the game, but sometimes its just worth playing something else. I may watch a lets play of the rest.. if someone ever uploads one to YouTube.

(p.s I love that the humanoid enemies will also be attacked by the dangerous creatures. It is fun to try and bait one enemy and then see it kill a whole camp of others for your benefit!)

The following is a transcript of a video review, which can be viewed here:
https://youtu.be/mXBwKXbX7mE

The open world is a form that video game worlds can take in order to add scale and create the perception that the game contains a broad adventure that the player will be able to get lost in for months if they’re willing. The typical series of beginning a level, and then ending it and moving on to the next map is absent from open world games, instead the player is sent around the world to find objectives in order to progress the narrative or develop their character. This type of world design can be used to great effect in many areas players find valuable within video games: an open world allows the art team to craft environments to feature prominent landmarks that can be referred back to repeatedly if necessary, reducing the required scope of the project and gaining more mileage out of the assets the team has created, the travel time also increases the length of each playthrough, stretching a game that players might be able to blitz though had the game used a traditional level structure, it also allows the developers to cleanly integrate side content by simply placing it somewhere in the world, the freeform level design also grants the player a lot of freedom when it comes to completing which objectives when, including sometimes providing alternative solutions to those tasks, and often looking over vast expanses of playable area can be quite a beautiful visual to impress players whenever they gain a vantage. Of course, the lack of structure can lead the open world to become a gigantic slog. Without quality level design, or at least clear signposts, players can end up spending a lot of time running around without achieving anything, but overpopulating an open environment with objective markers and minor tasks can quickly desensitise the player to the world’s scale. If everywhere has a collectible to grab or an event to engage with, they stop being special and start to become busywork. Recently, the majority of big studio open world games have strayed further into busywork, leaving many looking for a more qualitative approach to world design. Curious Planet saw these desires and decided to make that game. They sought to take the experience back to the beginning, back to when open world game design was in its earliest form, and then rebuild the concept from there. The End of Dyeus is the product from such a venture.

Upon starting the game, the player is given a single objective: find Dyeus. There’s a bitrate destroying display of particles before the player awakens amidst a stone circle in the middle of a forest. There are a handful of chests nearby with some primitive equipment, and a few enemies to try that equipment out on before the player enters the wider world beyond the trees. Here, in the grassy plains, the player will learn of the game’s nature. Throughout the world are a variety of notes and excerpts to find to piece together a sense of the setting, the hooded Shadows are engaging in a relentless war with the more advanced Guardian forces, with their battles centred around a mysterious door under the Guardians’ control. Surely, Dyeus is beyond that door. The player must then find and retrieve three keys in order to open the door, all of which are under the guard of the region’s most formidable beasts. It’d be quite the achievement to defeat these foes with a stick and a handful of arrows, so the player must delve into the rest of the world in order to gear up. While these aspects are indeed fairly similar to the original Legend of Zelda, I can’t help but think the game more closely resembles King’s Field. Vague objectives, no specific barriers preventing exploration, a mysterious military force, hit and run combat, and bosses occupying the normal world. This does beg the question, however: if The End of Dyeus is an open world game, is King’s Field? Does an open world require the fields and forests, or can a series of corridors still be considered an open world? I think this definition can change from person to person.

The first sentence on the Wikipedia page on ‘open world’ says “an open world is a virtual world in which the player can approach objectives freely, as opposed to a world with more linear and structured gameplay.” It also has 2 citations for this sentence and neither of them actually say anything like this, but as a start point I think this definition is as good as any. For a definition, in some ways it's very vague and in others it doesn’t seem quite correct. The implication of “approaching objectives” is that the player can complete the objectives however they like, but it really means ‘approaching’ in the geographic sense. The player is free to walk to the objective from any direction. And “linear and structured gameplay” sounds like an open world is indicative of sandbox gameplay, which doesn’t apply to a large quantity of games with open worlds. Some games with open worlds are basically linear, requiring the player to run to wherever the next objective is in order to continue the game. Just Cause is strictly linear; there is side content but for the most part the open world exists to facilitate the narrative missions without the developers having to build a new environment for each mission. King’s Field has linearity, but for the most part objectives are available to complete whenever the player decides to engage with them, even if it doesn’t seem mathematically possible. There are far too many exceptions to really create a single sentence definition, but as long as the majority of the gameplay occurs within a handful of game scenes and that there aren’t too many in-world barriers, I think we’re good.

The End of Dyeus’ world adheres to these very basic tenants, as well as being unique in its own ways. The game almost entirely occurs within a single scene and there are really only 4 or 5 objectives to complete, with the player being free to attempt the first three whenever they like. That’s far easier to say than it is to achieve but it does incentivise exploring the rest of the world to find tools to overcome the challenges. Overall, the game space appears to be a relatively standard earth-like environment, with forests, rolling hills, meadows, wetlands, and the dry desert areas toward the fringes. People have been present within the region for a very long time, and the structures they built have seriously deteriorated, though many are still inhabited. A city had once existed here, now little more than rubble, but there are other parts of this world that also seem constructed. The map has mountainous partitions between the zone of desert in the corner that functionally match the walls enclosing the similarly dried out region on the other side of the map. The mountain at the centre of the battle between the Shadows and Guardians is almost perfectly circular, and stands defiantly alone upon a large, flat area. In some ways the world isn’t trying to feel natural, it feels designed. The Shadows are using the same bows, spears, and shields the player has, but the Guardians have an armoury of energy weapons and robotic sentries. There was clearly an advanced civilization here at one stage, but they are now long gone. What happened to this place and how are ultimately unimportant, but there are plenty of pieces to assemble the puzzle throughout the playthrough. Amongst those puzzle pieces are also the various equipment pieces the player can collect to help them advance through the more challenging locations of the world. Equipment is almost always stored in chests, which makes sense in some locations, but oftentimes a chest will be sitting idly in the forest instead of its contents being laid out on the ground or something. It's as if someone knew the player was coming and scattered all the tools they’d need around the place in easily found boxes that protect the items from the weather. Which is true. I’m sure that Curious Planet did this for a good reason, and the answer can surely be gleaned from Mayto’s conveniently written video game design manifesto.

Within the About section of curious-planet.com is a cute GameBoy filter photograph of Thomas ‘Mayto’ Ducourant as well as a little personal blurb to read. This page also hosts Mayto’s philosophy. Primarily, this philosophy revolves around player agency and freedom. His games spawn from a concept that is almost entirely open ended, where the mechanics are the basis for the overall design. This idea bleeds into the rest of the game, the presentation, the narrative, the objectives, all informed by the mechanical content. This is somewhat reminiscent of something I said about King’s Field; that the game was strenuously constructed around a single piece of the final product. Things differ massively when taking into account which piece was the bedrock for the project as a whole. In King’s Field’s case, going with the level design first revealed some weaknesses within From Software’s optimisation practises, and the rest of the game, particularly the combat, suffers for it. In The End of Dyeus, Mayto decided to have the player controller polished to a brilliant shine before engaging with much else. The world is specifically designed with the movement speed of the player character at the forefront, meaning the player will never have to spend too much time walking from one location to another with nothing to do in between. When a game’s focus is heavily placed on exploration of its world, it is vital for the player to not be too slow as to be discouraged from actually exploring anything, but not too fast to avoid having them miss items of interest. And while there aren’t many especially mind blowing things to find within The End of Dyeus, the widespread, snack-like discoveries keeps the exploration enjoyable. Mayto also mentions that his designs aren’t necessarily innovative and I must agree, but I think that the focus on player agency is unique among game developers.

With the recent resurrection of the immersive sim the discourse surrounding video games has remembered the phrase ‘emergent gameplay’, and while both ideas do have some things in common, emergent gameplay and player agency are distinctly different concepts. During our conversation, Mayto expressed that his understanding of ‘emergent gameplay’ was that it more resembled a linear design with a sandbox toolset, which I find to be agreeable. ‘Player agency’ is almost the opposite configuration: the player has a comparatively limited set of tools, but the game contains an absence of tasks with urgency or specific direction. Where Deus Ex hands the player JC Denton the cybernetic pocket knife and tells them to escape the facility, Sable points at Simoon and ushers the player out the door. Neither one of these ideas is inherently superior to the other, but I think the examples that I was drawn to reveals my preference. It is far easier to drop a bunch of locations in a game world and hope the player finds travelling between them fun than it is to craft a hyper expressive player controller and then build levels that facilitate that expression. There are a million things a player can do in Deus Ex which I think is a much better fit for an interactive medium. That said, this kind of mechanical complexity is heavily reliant on everything working together well, and it doesn’t take much to break the entire experience.

The mechanical aspects of The End of Dyeus are simple, but that simplicity made the gameplay quite cathartic for me, while also allowing Mayto to construct some in depth challenges that push the player to use the full extent of the character’s capability. I mentioned the movement speed before, and that swiftness is also present within the game’s combat. At the outset, the Shadows are simple to defeat, but they’re more than just punching bags. They can block attacks, and are rarely ever alone, so the player had better get their rhythm down soon or else they’ll be taking a lot of damage. But their low health values make them unlikely to be able to kill the player, so being outnumbered isn’t too big of a hurdle. As the game progresses, the Shadows become better equipped and appear in greater numbers for the player to really test their timing. I like the helmet guys a lot because usually their big heads are easy targets, but in order to spam the armoured guys down the player has to play into their rhythm or start stabbing at their feet. There is also the rock-paper-scissors interaction between various weapon types the player can find and the Shadows can be equipped with. Swords are generally good weapons, but they lack range and can be comfortably evaded by spears. Enemies with spears usually cannot block, so the best way to defeat them is to shoot them with the bow before they can get close enough to attack. And of course, blocking arrows completely shuts them down so swords are generally going to pay off. This system is simple, it’s approachable, it’s accessible, but it’s also interesting and offers the player a lot of decisions to make while they’re battling enemies. Healing and resurrection are also handled in simple, but satisfying ways. The player can find food to eat in the world to recover some health, enemies and breakable environment objects can also reward a small amount of health, and there are plenty of healing Vials to find that can be administered to regain larger quantities of health. Much like King’s Field’s potions, these Vials offer health immediately and are not tied to an animation or an activation timer. Saving is done at fountains. Simply tossing a coin into the water sets the player’s spawn there, creating convenient locations to launch face-mashing expeditions throughout the world.

As engaging as the Shadows tend to be, they aren’t the only enemies in The End of Dyeus. Most of the wildlife in the game will also attack the player, and while a good many of them are designed much like the Shadows or offer similar timing challenges, there are those that buck the system to become more frustrating than I feel they should be. The crocodile frogs are clearly vulnerable to ranged weapons, but learning to fight them with a sword is fantastic. I adore the guys with the bombs and fireball weapons because they always kick off some chaotic scramble and manage to kill themselves or their allies a good percentage of the time. The birds, bats, and enemies from The Void are okay, though there’s a lot of down time when fighting them with melee weapons since they all engage in hit and run tactics. And as fun as the plant enemies in the swamp were at first glance, their proximity to each other often renders the player helpless for a long time. I didn’t dislike fighting the Guardians, but at the stage where I was fighting them often I found that I was either massively under equipped and being solidly killed by them, or I had their energy gun and could take them out with ease. That energy gun drastically alters the way the player engages with enemies and I would have hoped it was a bit weaker overall, to keep the other equipment pieces at least a little relevant. Fortunately, a typical playthrough won’t have access to it for too much of the game as it’s acquired from an especially dangerous location so the first couple of boss encounters won’t be the pushovers they could be. The first boss I encountered was Salamdra in the swamp. This enemy mostly charges around and shoots a flurry of projectiles at the player. It functions like many of the other animal enemies in the game, only more dangerous and with a larger health pool. I especially like its position in the world, since other enemies can get involved in the battle if the player triggers the boss before clearing out some space. Armadillium is a large burrowing insect who doesn’t directly attack the player, she walks around the arena while her offspring do the offence. The player needs to attack Armadillium’s face directly in order to deal damage to her, so the battle becomes entirely about positioning and juggling the presence of all of the other enemies as well. It’s a decent fight, but it won’t blow anyone away. The final beast boss is Aves, a giant bird who spends a lot of the battle flying far out of reach. Other bird enemies in the game fight in the same way Aves does, but Aves has an attack that can actually hit the player through their shield. Combined with her relentless aggression, I found this fight to be far out of reach of my favoured pike and had to look elsewhere for an upgrade. Shooting at the phoenix makes the fight slightly easier, but Aves can still torpedo into the player to deal huge damage through their shield, always being able to kill the player if the move selection dictates.

Now, there is another boss enemy, perhaps two if you’re generous. But that part of the game, that revelation is so brilliant, so earth-shattering, that I don’t think listening to me talk about it will do it the justice it deserves. If the game has seemed interesting enough up to this point or you might consider checking it out eventually, please skip ahead to the timestamp. It isn’t an especially long game and the reveal is far and away the best thing The End of Dyeus does.

So once the player has managed to defeat the three bosses, they’ve travelled to the door the Guardians had been, well, guarding, and they’ve inserted the keys into the locks, they may enter the mountain. Within a group of scientists had been working in a secluded laboratory during an apocalyptic event. As far as they knew, the world beyond the wall had ended. They continued with their work anyway, and they were ultimately successful. They had created Dyeus. Within a sealed chamber lies the lifeform, a mass of tissue that had been birthed to try and stave off humanity’s destruction. And while all of its creators had long perished, Dyeus remained alive. The player is given the option to touch the lifeform. Doing so immediately kills them and transports their consciousness far away. As the universe flies by, the stars blurring into lines against the deep darkness, the player approaches an object. It’s a planet, a rotten sphere, plundered and barbarised by its own inhabitants. Earth. Upon starting the game the player isn’t given any objective. There’s a bitrate destroying display of particles before the player awakens in a cave on the edge of a wasteland. They can scrounge around for some primitive equipment, and hope there aren’t too many enemies they’ll have to use that equipment on as they enter the wider world. The dream is over now, it was never about finding Dyeus or figuring out what had happened to the world, it was just a desperate mind trying to find some inspiration to escape. Now, they need to do it for real. The final throes of humanity are ruthless survivalists, ready to go to any length to get their hands on the resources they need and viciously fighting to defend what they have. They’re ill-equipped and the player can eventually get a hold of their scavenged guns and grenades, which they can use to fight back and to keep the blood monsters at bay. A great tower in the distance surely holds the key to freedom, so the player must travel there. Uroboros is the tower’s guardian and the battle is fantastically challenging. This enemy had been subtly foreshadowed throughout most of the game and it really lives up to the tales. I died to Uroboros a lot. In an open environment, the snake’s moveset is faster and more damaging than the player character can handle and they will quickly be defeated by the gunfire and charging attacks. Uroboros isn’t a pushover with some terrain in the way either, but it at least makes avoiding certain attacks a bit more achievable. I also think the name is great, the snake’s purpose is to assure its own destruction, signalling the end of the world when it does finally happen. Just an excellent detail to include. And with the snake’s destruction the player can enter the tower and destroy the core, punctuating the conclusion of this cycle of existence.

The End of Dyeus stands in defiance of many of the video game industry’s standard practices. There’s no list of features, there aren’t any UI prompts or mini map markers, the player is never explicitly told what to do, nor is there anything in the game that exists to explicitly waste the player’s time. The world is open from the jump and a light mystery is the player’s primary motivation to explore. Whether the player examines every corner, collects every item, or fights every enemy is entirely up to them, and if they do decide to engage with the game the player will experience an adventure unlike anything else on the market. Mayto and Curious Planet definitely have a winning philosophy on their hands if adherence yields results like this, and I think anyone aspiring to make video games could apply the same ideas to their own work and see tremendous improvement. Sometimes, bigger just isn’t better.

An example of how to do it very, very wrong next time.