Golvellius is a fascinating game from a period when genre conventions had not yet been firmly established and developers were still throwing all kinds of ideas at the wall to see what stuck. Taking clear cues from The Legend of Zelda, Golvellius takes several of the same ideas and goes in a completely different direction with most of them.
The quest is simple, even if accomplishing it is not: find seven magical orbs in seven different regions of the titular valley. Each orb is kept in secret by an old lady in a cave - there are lots and lots of old ladies in caves in this game - and you have to explore a large overworld in a top-down view, slay monsters with your sword, find and collect gear, and defeat the boss of each area before she'll give up.
If that sounds like a familiar structure, the actual gameplay loop in each zone is not. In nearly every screen of Golvellius, there is a hidden entrance, and every screen is a small puzzle of sorts as you must figure out how to reveal it. Some come from killing enemies, some from striking certain trees, rocks or other objects, and a few have other requirements. Most of these caves have helpful characters offering advice, items or healing. A lot of them have old ladies, and they want money. So much money.
You start out with tight limit on how much gold you can carry, and the first order of business in each zone is finding old women in caves who will sell you bibles to raise your gold carrying capacity. Yes, actual bibles. No, I have no idea why. The second order of business is to find still more old ladies in caves and buy life meter-extending potions to withstand the steadily increasing onslaught of strong monsters. Still other old women in other caves sell herbs that act as potions when your health meter runs out, or other items. Even when it comes time to fork over the magical orb, they want money. Lots of money. This is basically a game of exploring and getting extorted by old women.
The caves are where Golvellius further differentiates itself from Zelda. While that game featured mazes to explore, Golvellius features gauntlets to survive, in two flavors. One is top-down and auto-scrolling, where the challenge is not getting scraped to the bottom of the screen and kicked out. The other is a very fast, simplified side-scrolling action platformer with lots of enemies, platforms and mini bosses. After either type of cave, there's a boss fight, and they are all well designed.
One of my favorite details is how the overworld music changes: not when you enter a new region, nor when bosses are defeated. Instead, it's when you find a powerful new piece of gear. Finding a great new sword and emerging to find it was so powerful it changed the overworld theme felt great.
The gameplay has one major flaw, in that you can only attack up down, left and right, but the monsters are designed to attack from all angles. This makes many areas a gauntlet of difficult to hit enemies and some areas are pretty tough for it. The caves are not especially hard - the most difficult to took me four attempts, and and they are all only a few minutes long - but they are very simple and repetitive affairs.
Despite these issues, I had a great time with this. Tons of secrets to discover, a challenging and reasonably long quest, a superbly well designed overworld and a terrific soundtrack. The game structure and gameplay loops are quite unique and I found myself really wishing more games in the action-RPG genre had this kind of experimentation. So long as the extortive old women hanging out in caves stay here, in the valley.
The quest is simple, even if accomplishing it is not: find seven magical orbs in seven different regions of the titular valley. Each orb is kept in secret by an old lady in a cave - there are lots and lots of old ladies in caves in this game - and you have to explore a large overworld in a top-down view, slay monsters with your sword, find and collect gear, and defeat the boss of each area before she'll give up.
If that sounds like a familiar structure, the actual gameplay loop in each zone is not. In nearly every screen of Golvellius, there is a hidden entrance, and every screen is a small puzzle of sorts as you must figure out how to reveal it. Some come from killing enemies, some from striking certain trees, rocks or other objects, and a few have other requirements. Most of these caves have helpful characters offering advice, items or healing. A lot of them have old ladies, and they want money. So much money.
You start out with tight limit on how much gold you can carry, and the first order of business in each zone is finding old women in caves who will sell you bibles to raise your gold carrying capacity. Yes, actual bibles. No, I have no idea why. The second order of business is to find still more old ladies in caves and buy life meter-extending potions to withstand the steadily increasing onslaught of strong monsters. Still other old women in other caves sell herbs that act as potions when your health meter runs out, or other items. Even when it comes time to fork over the magical orb, they want money. Lots of money. This is basically a game of exploring and getting extorted by old women.
The caves are where Golvellius further differentiates itself from Zelda. While that game featured mazes to explore, Golvellius features gauntlets to survive, in two flavors. One is top-down and auto-scrolling, where the challenge is not getting scraped to the bottom of the screen and kicked out. The other is a very fast, simplified side-scrolling action platformer with lots of enemies, platforms and mini bosses. After either type of cave, there's a boss fight, and they are all well designed.
One of my favorite details is how the overworld music changes: not when you enter a new region, nor when bosses are defeated. Instead, it's when you find a powerful new piece of gear. Finding a great new sword and emerging to find it was so powerful it changed the overworld theme felt great.
The gameplay has one major flaw, in that you can only attack up down, left and right, but the monsters are designed to attack from all angles. This makes many areas a gauntlet of difficult to hit enemies and some areas are pretty tough for it. The caves are not especially hard - the most difficult to took me four attempts, and and they are all only a few minutes long - but they are very simple and repetitive affairs.
Despite these issues, I had a great time with this. Tons of secrets to discover, a challenging and reasonably long quest, a superbly well designed overworld and a terrific soundtrack. The game structure and gameplay loops are quite unique and I found myself really wishing more games in the action-RPG genre had this kind of experimentation. So long as the extortive old women hanging out in caves stay here, in the valley.