Record of Lodoss War-Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth-
Impressive game, I enjoy it a lot. Felt a rush in my heart while I was playing it, Remind me a lot of Castlevania:SOTN. By far a true gem, I will hope for the sequel to buy it ASAP.
Thank you for creating such a beatiful experience
– Real player with 19.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Based On A Novel Exploration Games.
Warning: If you’re photosensitive, stay away. There are a number of flashing cutscenes and transition effects that cannot be turned off or disabled. At the end is a series of flashes that are painful to watch even without being photosensitive.
Another very solid Metroidvania-lite from Team Ladybug, who made the wonderful Touhou Luna Nights a few years ago. Like their previous game, this is a “lite” form of the genre, where you have the game broken up into stages (while still being interconnected) and it is much more linear than some of the other examples of the genre. Each stage after the first contains one major progression ability, two bosses, and a scattering of other upgrades, spells, and weapons lying around.
– Real player with 16.4 hrs in game
Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer: Survival Game
We are one of the first studios who decided to make a videogame based on Mark Twain’s books.
So, we took a chapter from Tom Sawyer’s Adventures book, about him escaping to an island with his friends. And decided that this will perfectly fit into a concept of a survival game. But it is not a plotless survival sandbox. As anything with our studio, our games are highly focused on unique experiences, intrinsic motivation, and player emotions. If we make a survival game - it is going to be unique and most of our time is going to be dedicated to immersing the player and creating a feeling of an authentic teenage adventure inside the player’s head.
Read More: Best Based On A Novel Simulation Games.
The Ballad Singer
As much as I would like to recommend this game, I just can’t. I could say that it has beautiful graphics, is fully voiced, has an intricate story with 4 characters, who sometimes cross with each other, has nice soundtrack and several QoL features, like ability to double the speed of narrator’s voice to speed up the game.
But all of this gets completely ruined by absolutely unfair death mechanic and BS choices. At the beginning of the game you’re warned that you will die here, a lot, that’s why developers created fate system. You have limited amount of fate points, every time your character dies you can either continue the game as other character or restart your last choice. Both of these options consume 1 fate point. Ok, so you decided to create a game that revolves around constant danger and death traps, fine. Surely, you will spend extra time making these deaths logical, so only if player actually made a mistake they would die, right? No. Most of choices in the game that lead to your death are absolutely random and, unless you already know which one is the right one, you will die not because you’ve made a mistake, but because you drew a short stick. Here are few examples, technically spoilers:
! I am an “elf” in the middle of the forest who needs to get to the cabin in the distance and sees two roads: a big, stone one or small, trodden one. She has to pick one. I chose small, trodden one. Game then tells me that I spend some time walking on that road and noticed that it leads in completely other direction from the cabin and that day is closing to the night. Now I’m faced with another choice - continue on this road, or go back and choose other road. I, thinking that this new piece of information is game hinting me that I chose wrong, choose to go back and pick the big road. And I died. Because apparently there’s some shitty death trap on the big road. How was I supposed to know that? There were no hints, there was actually a fake hint that made me choose the wrong road.. Another example -
! I am a mage and am currently fighting a giant water elemental. She (yes, she has gender) creates a water wave and I need to defend myself. There are three options: make a tornado, create stone wall or create a flame shield around me. Now, the last one is obviously a bad desision as I’m fighting a water elemental who, surely, can easily fight fire (also, earlier in the game, we already used another water elemental to fight fire elemental, so it’s logical even in game). This would be a logical death choice. Developers could choose other two choices as “right” ones - they will allow you to continue the fight, but give different texts or future options, because the fight would progress differently. That would be cool. But no. Only one of these choices is correct - tornado. Why? Why the fuck should I pick tornado, except by random? I picked the stone wall, because surely, the stone wall can stop water wave. No, you died, fool. And, despite me playing only for two hours, the game gave me tons of such choices already. They, aside from making the player angry, completely ruin the immersion. No, you’re not a mage trying master the elements, you’re an idiot, sitting before your PC and who was unlucky to pick the wrong choice, so now you have to reload and make the “correct” one and it’s correct because developer said so. A death should be a result of either one very dumb and obviously wrong decision, or a series of bad decisions with hints that you’re doing everything wrong. Not what we have here.
– Real player with 15.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Based On A Novel Indie Games.
If you came here with one thumb on your lighter, ready to lose yourself in some heart-wrenching ballads, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you. I didn’t encounter my first ballad until at least 3 or 4 hours in, and it was pretty underwhelming when it finally arrived.
Yeah, their choice of titles doesn’t make a lot of sense, and neither do most of the other choices in this game.
Well, I can’t say I wasn’t warned. They always told me not to judge a book by its cover, and that’s exactly what I did. Can you blame me, though? On the surface it looks great. It’s got that Extremely Fantasy, D&D manual sort of vibe. Everywhere you look you find fierce monsters and sharpened blades, towering dragons, fireball-hurling wizards and pots of stew consumed in shady inns full of adventures just waiting to happen.
– Real player with 7.8 hrs in game