Game call "Loot River" but the Loot kind of sucks. The River is actually good tho.
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I was not expecting isometric roguelike Dark Souls but thats what it ended up being (I guess I dont know what I expected it to be).
- The most prominent thought on my mind while I played this game was: this shit is fucking janky. As a roguelike, and as a soulslike, being able to reliably perform actions and being able to reliably read enemies is everything. There will be times where you scuff a run solely because something just didnt... work. The game also has some situations that demand quite a bit of you and dropped inputs, missing hitboxes, and wonky damage calculations are not conducive to those expectations.
- Following that, the River gimmick does feel pretty novel - but more than that I think it also confers some really nice benefits.
>1. This obscures the procedural generation by having the blocks of generation "rideable" and "alterable". You care less that everything is generic somehow (quite an accomplishment in a genre that usually struggles to avoid feeling random). Its like flotsam on a.... river. Very smart (or accidental) synergy.
>2. Your explicit control of the platforms allows you to abuse them to exploit the pathing of enemies. This is one of your main ways of combating and offsetting the jank.
- Something that is a negative upfront is the games lore. It just.... dumps it on you. Relics, First Citys, The Keep, a Cult? Its just sort of.... offputting how much it expects you to care with no groundwork. Over time I was able grow to appreciate it a bit more but game devs should not do this. Its not charming, its suffocating. Let the game be normal, give normal incentives in those early hours. Giving everything a new Proper Noun is one of those things that makes everyone hate Dark Souls contribution to video games.
- I did a couple "normal runs" and visited the various "side areas" in the game. Its easy to see that the "true ending" requires that you weave through all the various areas and defeat all the bosses in one single run - but Im not enjoying the game enough to do that. There are 5 bosses but really any boss with a sword is the same boss and the jank is severely not worth the squeeze.
- Game looks good.
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I was not expecting isometric roguelike Dark Souls but thats what it ended up being (I guess I dont know what I expected it to be).
- The most prominent thought on my mind while I played this game was: this shit is fucking janky. As a roguelike, and as a soulslike, being able to reliably perform actions and being able to reliably read enemies is everything. There will be times where you scuff a run solely because something just didnt... work. The game also has some situations that demand quite a bit of you and dropped inputs, missing hitboxes, and wonky damage calculations are not conducive to those expectations.
- Following that, the River gimmick does feel pretty novel - but more than that I think it also confers some really nice benefits.
>1. This obscures the procedural generation by having the blocks of generation "rideable" and "alterable". You care less that everything is generic somehow (quite an accomplishment in a genre that usually struggles to avoid feeling random). Its like flotsam on a.... river. Very smart (or accidental) synergy.
>2. Your explicit control of the platforms allows you to abuse them to exploit the pathing of enemies. This is one of your main ways of combating and offsetting the jank.
- Something that is a negative upfront is the games lore. It just.... dumps it on you. Relics, First Citys, The Keep, a Cult? Its just sort of.... offputting how much it expects you to care with no groundwork. Over time I was able grow to appreciate it a bit more but game devs should not do this. Its not charming, its suffocating. Let the game be normal, give normal incentives in those early hours. Giving everything a new Proper Noun is one of those things that makes everyone hate Dark Souls contribution to video games.
- I did a couple "normal runs" and visited the various "side areas" in the game. Its easy to see that the "true ending" requires that you weave through all the various areas and defeat all the bosses in one single run - but Im not enjoying the game enough to do that. There are 5 bosses but really any boss with a sword is the same boss and the jank is severely not worth the squeeze.
- Game looks good.