kinda like a good game but not good
Parece un juego en alpha
concept is fairly interesting and it's not too difficult. i'll come back to finishing this someday
This review contains spoilers
writing was fun gameplay was solid and the glasses item was a fun way to explore the last 2 dungeons.
Really underrated zelda-like with a creative story and lots of cool mechanics and bosses. While definitely not as polished as it could be with how the procedural generation is, it works fine enough and opens the game up to loads of replay value.
Lenna's Inception is a little hard for me to sum my feelings up about, because it feels like it wants to be too many things at once, at the detriment of the sum of its parts.
On one hand, it's an excellent Zelda-like with its own twists: it recontextualizes Zelda traditions like the trading quest and incorporates some charming, Undertale-esque pacifist themes to its narrative. Uncovering the lore of the game and seeing the main characters develop (to an extent; there isn't that much storytelling in the game at the end of the day) is a joy, as is the witty writing.
On the other hand, Lenna's Inception wants to be a procedurally generated game that appeals to the randomizer speedrunning community, with constant randomized seeds and speedrunner-friendly modes to cater to it. I think I understand where the developers are coming from with it, especially given that the game makes a decent amount of references to the sort of metagame exploits common in glitched speedrunning, but for someone comparatively distant from the scene, it drags down the rest of the game with it for me.
The fact that all the seeds are procedural means that someone's first experience with the game world will be nowhere near as elegantly and organically designed as Link's Awakening - one of Lenna's Inception's closest Zelda relatives alongside the original game.
While rare, it is allegedly also possible to find yourself in an unwinnable seed, or at least one that requires understanding of the game's less explained mechanics to proceed, which is something I doubt people will think of trying on a first run.
The same goes for the dungeons and various hidden mini-dungeons: they follow a roughly LA-esque "run into blocked areas until you find the dungeon item that lets you access those areas" kind of dungeon design, but are - mechanically and in design - about as shallow of the earliest dungeons of the original Legend of Zelda.
Depending on what you plan on accomplishing with your playthrough, the dungeons end up becoming a formality; something doesn't have much of a reason to exist.
The game allows you to skip dungeon bosses if you like, but locks most of the narrative behind confrontations with the bosses - meaning that if you decided to skip some, especially the later bosses, you end up missing out on much of the game's actual plot, which also results in a confused non-ending that doesn't even begin to hint at the charm that the full story has.
Finally, a handful of items - some plot-mandatory, and some debug tools that are available to acquire in the game world - just end up breaking the entire point of exploring the overworld and dungeons. The former plot-mandatory item is actually necessary to proceed in various parts of the game, meaning that there is no choice to not use it once it's acquired; even it alone can trivialize exploration, but when both are combined, there really is no point in playing the game "normally" in my opinion.
I feel like maybe these two distinct sides to Lenna's Inception would have been better off left as their own games, where each half could have been developed further than they currently are.
As it is, however, the dissonance between the game's ideas leave me incapable of rating this game alongside its two aforementioned Zelda cousins.
I'd love to see the developers pick a side for their next game, if it ends up being anything like this in its ideas. I can't say I'd be into it if they commit to the randomized speedrun approach, but I'd even rather see that than another game that struggles at cohesion.
On one hand, it's an excellent Zelda-like with its own twists: it recontextualizes Zelda traditions like the trading quest and incorporates some charming, Undertale-esque pacifist themes to its narrative. Uncovering the lore of the game and seeing the main characters develop (to an extent; there isn't that much storytelling in the game at the end of the day) is a joy, as is the witty writing.
On the other hand, Lenna's Inception wants to be a procedurally generated game that appeals to the randomizer speedrunning community, with constant randomized seeds and speedrunner-friendly modes to cater to it. I think I understand where the developers are coming from with it, especially given that the game makes a decent amount of references to the sort of metagame exploits common in glitched speedrunning, but for someone comparatively distant from the scene, it drags down the rest of the game with it for me.
The fact that all the seeds are procedural means that someone's first experience with the game world will be nowhere near as elegantly and organically designed as Link's Awakening - one of Lenna's Inception's closest Zelda relatives alongside the original game.
While rare, it is allegedly also possible to find yourself in an unwinnable seed, or at least one that requires understanding of the game's less explained mechanics to proceed, which is something I doubt people will think of trying on a first run.
The same goes for the dungeons and various hidden mini-dungeons: they follow a roughly LA-esque "run into blocked areas until you find the dungeon item that lets you access those areas" kind of dungeon design, but are - mechanically and in design - about as shallow of the earliest dungeons of the original Legend of Zelda.
Depending on what you plan on accomplishing with your playthrough, the dungeons end up becoming a formality; something doesn't have much of a reason to exist.
The game allows you to skip dungeon bosses if you like, but locks most of the narrative behind confrontations with the bosses - meaning that if you decided to skip some, especially the later bosses, you end up missing out on much of the game's actual plot, which also results in a confused non-ending that doesn't even begin to hint at the charm that the full story has.
Finally, a handful of items - some plot-mandatory, and some debug tools that are available to acquire in the game world - just end up breaking the entire point of exploring the overworld and dungeons. The former plot-mandatory item is actually necessary to proceed in various parts of the game, meaning that there is no choice to not use it once it's acquired; even it alone can trivialize exploration, but when both are combined, there really is no point in playing the game "normally" in my opinion.
I feel like maybe these two distinct sides to Lenna's Inception would have been better off left as their own games, where each half could have been developed further than they currently are.
As it is, however, the dissonance between the game's ideas leave me incapable of rating this game alongside its two aforementioned Zelda cousins.
I'd love to see the developers pick a side for their next game, if it ends up being anything like this in its ideas. I can't say I'd be into it if they commit to the randomized speedrun approach, but I'd even rather see that than another game that struggles at cohesion.
Lenna's Inception was an interesting game to play. I enjoyed the overworld how it was directing you to a path as certain wats to proceed will require items. The writing I liked also, a smaller yet satirical story about you being the teacher saving your students against 'the glitch'.
The items they offer are very practical and function well within the game. The best part of the game for me was the boss battles. They were creative and well balanced with the mechanics. My only gripe is they can be easy once knowing the pattern and adding an extra hit on the final phase would be a good balance.
The music and graphics were of much higher quality then expected. I tried both 8bit and 32bit and both were a joy to play on.
My concern was the procedurally generated dudgeons. I am not a fan of random made challenges and this was no exemption as my taste is for a hard crafted approach. There are some rooms with just hit bad-guys or move some blocks. Some room you can just walk over to the next room with no challenge at all making it feel like filler. Just focusing on having a decent puzzle element would really lift the game There is also no real 'trick' to enter the dudgeon also which is an interesting choice.
The game had an OG Zelda feel but the overworld has a more Links Awakening progress system. The game took me about 6 hours to finish with some extras The overworld was fine with the procedural generation, but the happy medium would be to have deliberately made dudgeons for a more focused challenge. If that was achieved it would be a 9/10.
The items they offer are very practical and function well within the game. The best part of the game for me was the boss battles. They were creative and well balanced with the mechanics. My only gripe is they can be easy once knowing the pattern and adding an extra hit on the final phase would be a good balance.
The music and graphics were of much higher quality then expected. I tried both 8bit and 32bit and both were a joy to play on.
My concern was the procedurally generated dudgeons. I am not a fan of random made challenges and this was no exemption as my taste is for a hard crafted approach. There are some rooms with just hit bad-guys or move some blocks. Some room you can just walk over to the next room with no challenge at all making it feel like filler. Just focusing on having a decent puzzle element would really lift the game There is also no real 'trick' to enter the dudgeon also which is an interesting choice.
The game had an OG Zelda feel but the overworld has a more Links Awakening progress system. The game took me about 6 hours to finish with some extras The overworld was fine with the procedural generation, but the happy medium would be to have deliberately made dudgeons for a more focused challenge. If that was achieved it would be a 9/10.
More than once this year I have gone back to play games I missed from studios that bought out things I love. I’ve really enjoyed seeing previous works that can show you first attempts at stories, ideas and mechanics that would become much stronger in a later form.
Bytten Studios, based in Brighton released Cassette Beasts this year and it is quietly one of the best and most interesting JRPGs in a while. A grown up Pokémon that shows love and respect to the genre’s history.
Bytten’s previous work was this, Lenna’s Inception and the team were clearly Nintendo fans as this is their take, their love letter to The Legend of Zelda (TLOZ).
Much like Cassette Beasts does, Lenna’s Inception follows the formula whilst also playing with it and breaking through its edges.
The story itself starts with you as protagonist Lenna teaching her class when suddenly the school is pulled away, by a glitch?
Lenna goes to find the village elder who she finds dead, with a message written in blood “It’s to go alo…”. To any fan of TLOZ this is quite familiar.
Soon after comes in a tunic wearing boy named Lance, Lenna hand’s over the blade the elder was grasping and they go to a tutorial area where Lance dies.
At first this seems quite funny, you wonder if the tone of the game is going to be “edgy” but thankfully what follows is much smarter and more mature than the intro may lead you to believe.
Without spoiling any more of the story Lenna goes on a quest, she has eight dungeons to enter with bosses and unique items that let her progress further. The usual TLOZ affair except for one key difference and that is the dungeons are procedurally generated.
Again much like Bytten would go on to do with Cassette Beasts, this game isn’t a retread it has its own modern innovations and giving the game a lot of replayability via procedural generation is one of them. Also included which is great for the speedrunning crowd is that worlds can be seeded so if you don’t want a random experience on a repeat playthrough you can.
Unfortunately while I have the utmost respect for giving these options to the speedrunning communities and the like, and I really appreciate ideas above just simple polish I would have preferred procedural generation wasn’t a part of the game.
Not a particular new take but procedural generation never quite shows the art or thoughtfulness that a crafted experience can, even with a good selection of tile palettes and enemy designs the dungeons all feel very similar. Classic TLOZ also has great emphasis on dungeons not only having unique looks but puzzles and mechanics - there is very little of that here.
Almost all of the new items you obtain for traversal may as well be keys - melt ice, pick up rocks, shoot target boards, all of these are single squares taken out by one item.
Worse still is the puzzles or lack thereof, each dungeon simply has some block pushing which looks aesthetically the same in each of them and that’s it until the final dungeon which isn’t procedurally generated.
Between the fairly boring puzzles and layouts of the dungeons the combat itself is quite easy and fairly flaccid. You can unlock different swords and a few other items throughout your journey but none of these ever truly change how it feels.
This extends to the bosses, the (again like Cassette Beasts) Archangels which have fantastic designs but are as good as the most middling TLOZ boss at best.
It’s a huge shame because the presentation is fantastic but the content is lacking, like a beautifully prepared dinner that tastes like a ready meal.
One thing that needs to be mentioned is how Bytten does a fantastic job in their homage, not just to the Zelda games of the past but also glitches and what surrounds that.
A lot of the plot circles around an overflow glitch happening, the start of the game uses visual glitches like they are natural disasters and towards the end of the game you are deep in broken looking places and screen wrapping your way through.
This again is very cool but personally a part of the game I found quite frustrating, it was nice to finally get into a more crafted part of the game but it was actually for me a huge difficulty spike.
Finally another “but”. Lenna’s Inception has a very smart story that uses the glitch elements and plays with the format of the genre in a quite Undertale style.
There are multiple endings and to achieve the “Perfect Ending” you have to do things a little differently than you would expect.
It’s cool and it gives the game replay value, but without knowing this beforehand you can find yourself doing a lot of side quests for items that you ultimately have actually missed the chance to use. In many games it’d be fine because you could go back or maybe there would be a NG+ but Lenna’s Inception doesn’t work that way because again its innovation of procedural generation encourages full replays.
For me, because my enjoyment came from the innovation, the ideas and the plot but not the actual dungeon crawling and world exploring I could not bring myself to go through it again.
At this point I like to suggest if it’s worth buying a game but also if there are issues: what to do.
I think Lenna’s Inception is definitely worth picking up and seeing through yourself, if just to support a British Indie Dev that is doing great work with wonderful ideas, great art and fantastic music.
However I don’t know what to do about the multiple endings. Maybe if you play through in co-op a second playthrough will be more enjoyable, you could look up what to do first but I wouldn’t want to spoil it ahead of time as I value discovery (I hate I’ve spoiled as much as I have).
The only other answer is to do what I did, everything you can and then watch YouTube videos afterwards but honestly, that’s disappointing.
This may not be the most glowing review but I am definitely a fan of this studio and eagerly look forward to what is next from them.
Bytten Studios, based in Brighton released Cassette Beasts this year and it is quietly one of the best and most interesting JRPGs in a while. A grown up Pokémon that shows love and respect to the genre’s history.
Bytten’s previous work was this, Lenna’s Inception and the team were clearly Nintendo fans as this is their take, their love letter to The Legend of Zelda (TLOZ).
Much like Cassette Beasts does, Lenna’s Inception follows the formula whilst also playing with it and breaking through its edges.
The story itself starts with you as protagonist Lenna teaching her class when suddenly the school is pulled away, by a glitch?
Lenna goes to find the village elder who she finds dead, with a message written in blood “It’s to go alo…”. To any fan of TLOZ this is quite familiar.
Soon after comes in a tunic wearing boy named Lance, Lenna hand’s over the blade the elder was grasping and they go to a tutorial area where Lance dies.
At first this seems quite funny, you wonder if the tone of the game is going to be “edgy” but thankfully what follows is much smarter and more mature than the intro may lead you to believe.
Without spoiling any more of the story Lenna goes on a quest, she has eight dungeons to enter with bosses and unique items that let her progress further. The usual TLOZ affair except for one key difference and that is the dungeons are procedurally generated.
Again much like Bytten would go on to do with Cassette Beasts, this game isn’t a retread it has its own modern innovations and giving the game a lot of replayability via procedural generation is one of them. Also included which is great for the speedrunning crowd is that worlds can be seeded so if you don’t want a random experience on a repeat playthrough you can.
Unfortunately while I have the utmost respect for giving these options to the speedrunning communities and the like, and I really appreciate ideas above just simple polish I would have preferred procedural generation wasn’t a part of the game.
Not a particular new take but procedural generation never quite shows the art or thoughtfulness that a crafted experience can, even with a good selection of tile palettes and enemy designs the dungeons all feel very similar. Classic TLOZ also has great emphasis on dungeons not only having unique looks but puzzles and mechanics - there is very little of that here.
Almost all of the new items you obtain for traversal may as well be keys - melt ice, pick up rocks, shoot target boards, all of these are single squares taken out by one item.
Worse still is the puzzles or lack thereof, each dungeon simply has some block pushing which looks aesthetically the same in each of them and that’s it until the final dungeon which isn’t procedurally generated.
Between the fairly boring puzzles and layouts of the dungeons the combat itself is quite easy and fairly flaccid. You can unlock different swords and a few other items throughout your journey but none of these ever truly change how it feels.
This extends to the bosses, the (again like Cassette Beasts) Archangels which have fantastic designs but are as good as the most middling TLOZ boss at best.
It’s a huge shame because the presentation is fantastic but the content is lacking, like a beautifully prepared dinner that tastes like a ready meal.
One thing that needs to be mentioned is how Bytten does a fantastic job in their homage, not just to the Zelda games of the past but also glitches and what surrounds that.
A lot of the plot circles around an overflow glitch happening, the start of the game uses visual glitches like they are natural disasters and towards the end of the game you are deep in broken looking places and screen wrapping your way through.
This again is very cool but personally a part of the game I found quite frustrating, it was nice to finally get into a more crafted part of the game but it was actually for me a huge difficulty spike.
Finally another “but”. Lenna’s Inception has a very smart story that uses the glitch elements and plays with the format of the genre in a quite Undertale style.
There are multiple endings and to achieve the “Perfect Ending” you have to do things a little differently than you would expect.
It’s cool and it gives the game replay value, but without knowing this beforehand you can find yourself doing a lot of side quests for items that you ultimately have actually missed the chance to use. In many games it’d be fine because you could go back or maybe there would be a NG+ but Lenna’s Inception doesn’t work that way because again its innovation of procedural generation encourages full replays.
For me, because my enjoyment came from the innovation, the ideas and the plot but not the actual dungeon crawling and world exploring I could not bring myself to go through it again.
At this point I like to suggest if it’s worth buying a game but also if there are issues: what to do.
I think Lenna’s Inception is definitely worth picking up and seeing through yourself, if just to support a British Indie Dev that is doing great work with wonderful ideas, great art and fantastic music.
However I don’t know what to do about the multiple endings. Maybe if you play through in co-op a second playthrough will be more enjoyable, you could look up what to do first but I wouldn’t want to spoil it ahead of time as I value discovery (I hate I’ve spoiled as much as I have).
The only other answer is to do what I did, everything you can and then watch YouTube videos afterwards but honestly, that’s disappointing.
This may not be the most glowing review but I am definitely a fan of this studio and eagerly look forward to what is next from them.
Very positive experience. The fact the game gave me an item to do the classic Link's Awakening screen warp glitch was catered to people like me, and I do not mind.
Also I was kind of impressed at the tone? From the intro I feared we were gonna be in the thick of edgelord dark humor, but honestly it's really well balanced.
Also I was kind of impressed at the tone? From the intro I feared we were gonna be in the thick of edgelord dark humor, but honestly it's really well balanced.
A Zelda-like that is very faithful to the 2D Zelda formula (even more so than games like Ittle Dew or Blossom Tales), with solid delivery across most elements necessary to succeed in the genre, but with a couple shortcomings.
While part of the appeal of the game is that it has multiple endings (in order to get them, you need to play through the game multiple times); however, likely in an attempt to make subsequent playthroughs interesting, certain components of the world are procedurally generated. I believe this choice contributed to most of the dungeons being generally uninteresting. With that said, even within the constraint of procedural generation, I think they definitely could have made the dungeons more interesting (e.g. including more small puzzles).
Beyond the multiple endings (/procedural generation), it largely fails to bring something new to the genre (/set itself apart) in any meaningful way... although it starts to do so... but then the game quickly ends.
While part of the appeal of the game is that it has multiple endings (in order to get them, you need to play through the game multiple times); however, likely in an attempt to make subsequent playthroughs interesting, certain components of the world are procedurally generated. I believe this choice contributed to most of the dungeons being generally uninteresting. With that said, even within the constraint of procedural generation, I think they definitely could have made the dungeons more interesting (e.g. including more small puzzles).
Beyond the multiple endings (/procedural generation), it largely fails to bring something new to the genre (/set itself apart) in any meaningful way... although it starts to do so... but then the game quickly ends.
This game is really fun and I cannot recommend this enough.