DarkMaus
Pros:
Thoughtful, weighty combat
Eerie, atmospheric music
Interesting use of light and line of sight as a gameplay mechanic
Well designed bosses and general enemies
Doesn’t hold your hand - allows you to discover mechanics and preferred playstyles for yourself
Cons:
Simplistic art style
Awkward controls
Frequent crashes
Friendly AI often bugs out, sometimes with frustrating consequences
Possible to miss important items early on, making the game much more difficult
DarkMaus is an interesting, generally well made top down RPG which takes clear inspiration from Dark Souls, though it has enough unique and interesting mechanics to hold the player’s attention. It may not be as long as a Souls game, but this means that it doesn’t outstay its welcome and, overall, is a very good experience for the pricetag.
– Real player with 26.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Souls-like RPG Games.
THIS IS A VERY LONG REVIEW/THERE WILL BE A TL;DR AT THE BOTTOM
After a much longer length of gameplay than expected, I’d finally completed Dark Maus, albeit with a sour taste in my mouth. Before you read, please know I am a veteran Souls player. I’ve spent, literally, thousands of hours in these games, collectively. Also know, that I don’t see any of those four titles as perfect. Each one has some pretty strong weaknesses, but generally these are overlooked because the games are so well crafted. I strongly urge everyone AGAINST using this in reference to, or as part of the Souls series style of games. This game differs heavily and it’s most prominent features make it more akin to a horror game with action/rpg elements.
– Real player with 15.6 hrs in game
Last Night of Winter
The story takes place in an old stronghold, at the last days of a great battle. You died, but your will was stronger than your body, so you woke up again, to continue the siege in a never ending night.
Remembering little more than your purpose, you’ll have to leave the dungeons, advance through the stronghold’s outskirts, and reach the most high tower. To find the Heir and end your curse.
//–- Features:
· Non-linear map where you’ll be unlocking access to new places once you have acquired special items or abilities within the game.
Read More: Best Souls-like Action-Adventure Games.
Brume
I’m completely smitten by this little piece of gaming art that was put on my radar by Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It’s Dark Souls dissolved to an extremely slim form. An intense, bite-sized soulslike dance of simple, obscure, but effective mechanics, jazzy visuals, stylish cinematics, moody sounds, weird camera angles and stiff legs. It deserves to be played by every Dark Souls fan and every Dark Souls fan owes it to themselves to play this. Scratch that, everyone should play this just for the vision Sokpop brings to the medium of video games. Have I mentioned I’m totally smitten by this little game?
– Real player with 11.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Souls-like Adventure Games.
The premise of Brume is as simple as it is unexplained. You control a nameless character in a new and strange land, Why are you here? Who knows. Venture forth. There is no dialogue in the game, but that only builds the atmosphere.
As the game begins, the first thing that struck me was the askew angles used in the cut-scenes to build an unsettling atmosphere. It creates a vague feeling of discomfort and unease; of something just not being right. The muted colour scheme, low poly-count and soft soundscape create a beautiful little world to get lost in for an hour or two.
– Real player with 7.4 hrs in game
Immortal Planet
Immortal Planet is an Isometric RPG that mimics a Dark Souls format. I think the game has great combat, dialogue, level design, art direction and immersive atmosphere. The pace of the combat can be a little slow due to reliance on stamina and avoiding attacks. Everything that this game does has a purpose in my opinion, but someone who is not familiar with the genre may find that movement is a little stiff. In short, I think this is a fantastic game for people who like methodically slow gameplay that relies on timing, patience, and reflexes. It also has a limited 90-degree animation which is nostalgic but causes some aiming problems.
– Real player with 47.5 hrs in game
tl;dr: it’s hard for no reason, but is an interesting attempt at games like this if you like to suffer.
The importance of any game one plays “For the Challenge” is predicated on the understanding that ultimately, that challenge is fair and interesting to achieve. Through whatever mechanics you provide, you expect the player to 1. get a handle on them, and 2. master them enough such that the player can overcome challenges in their way. The top problem with a sword stuck in it is “you can just lose 200 health on a misstep,” and that’s to any enemy. My two most common ways of dying are “oh my hitbox was overlapping with an enemy slightly so when i tried to dash away it counted it as inside the enemy and stunned me,” and “oops i dashed off a cliff,” and these often kill you regardless of how much health you have. For a game ostensibly about making mistakes and learning from them, it took me hours upon hours of intensive practice to get used to the game, and i’ve still not done a single boss without taking damage partially due to how many of them spread fire or acid or cold or something on the ground.
– Real player with 16.6 hrs in game
SAVAGE: The Shard of Gosen
Saw this game a while back, so when it popped up on steam as early access I decided to pick up, AND . . . its good, really good, combat feels smooth, nothing feels too over complicated. Although it does take a bit of time to pick up on the controls. The music is really good, the sound effects are good, the atmosphere is really good also, specially when it rains. Oh this game has a weather system and a day and night cycle btw. Which was a really cool touch I thought. The level design is a little “Crowded” and it might be my only real problem with the game so far, basically you get swarmed by enemies in a way. to many to fight at once etc. This is good in specific cases, like in forts, occupied caves and so on, but in the forests it gets a bit strange, kinda out of place idk, just my opinion. either way I look forward to the finished game and hope more people find it as it deserves attention i think.
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game
I picked this game up on sale for about half off, so I won’t return it or anything, but I cannot recommend anyone else purchase it. I don’t want to disparage the dev, but there’s about nothing here. It’s about 15% of an SNES game at this point, and those games were pretty vapid as-is. There’d be a lot of promise if this was early access with only about a month under it’s belt. But this game has been been around for 6-7 years (over 2 years in EA on Steam). The dev seems to be active in doing updates, but I fear scope creep has handicapped his efforts.
– Real player with 6.4 hrs in game
Unworthy
An extremely underrated 2D Souls-like made primarily by one guy.
It’s playable on both KB+M and a controller, but you can’t rebind the mouse controls.
Right off the bat, the game shows the silhouette, monochromatic pixel graphics, which is like that for practically the entire game. Depending on who you are, that might be an immediate turn-off or a unique interest. There’s a surprising amount of detail being shown off in the background, foreground, the enemies, etc.; what little you see can be left up to your imagination, and given its extremely dark theme, it can do some wonders with that.
– Real player with 32.0 hrs in game
I’ve enjoyed watching Unworthy develop through updates on Aleks Kuzmanovic’s twitter for the last year or so. The game is a triumphant accomplishment with outstanding presentation and great twists on its sources of inspiration. The slickness of animations on monochromatic sprites is pixelated eye-candy. It produces an uncanny effect where motion displays so much information despite being made from intuitively shaped characters.
Combat uses those animations to its advantage. Charged attacks and switching weapons have nice ‘umpf’ and combos and dodges are satisfying to initiate. The level of detail on particle effects, sword slashes and flourishes is astounding. Boss by boss, the elements in battles stack up and encounters get more intricate.
! Learning to teleport into dodge into slam during the fight with Father Amandil was damn good time.
– Real player with 26.1 hrs in game
AEON BLOOD
take a Beat em' Up
now give it souls jank
now make that souls jank janky souls jank
now you winning the war on fun with the new Beat em' Up-shaped souls
play the game and blow your stick right off with that brand new jank explosion
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
It’s sort of like Streets of Rage, I think. Never played that game, but I’m familiar with it’s type: a sort of 2.5D brawler where you shuffle along a mostly 2D plane, but can slowly shift axis. Your attacks mostly only hit along the same axis, though there’s some wiggle room, thankfully. Animations are good, mostly, but combat can start to feel pretty tedious at times, especially since you can’t run from encounters at all, so if you’re struggling to beat a mid-boss, as I was, you have to fight every enemy leading up to them over and over again. Get’s pretty grating. Furthermore, because a lot of evasion depends on positioning, and the basic movement is really slow, it can get quite hard to evade when there are a lot of enemies on screen. You have a spear twirl that can clear out people right next to you, but if it doesn’t connect, you’re basically certain to get counter-attacked in the brief window you’re locked in after the spin. And if you get knocked down with enemies nearby, you’d be better off just laying there because you’re likely to get utterly crushed the second you stand before given any chance to defend yourself. Just a bit of a grind. Not the worst game, but not really something I can get into.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
Boss Rush: Mythology
Right now the game is on sale for only 0.99 euros, which is a steal if you enjoy:
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Side-scrolling combat
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Dark Souls
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Boss fights (that’s all the game is)
If you don’t mind the graphics you see on the trailer and you can put up with the occasional junkyness that comes with indie games, Boss Rush: Mythology is definitely worth a buy.
I’ve only beaten the 1st boss so far but i will update this review once i finish the game. For now i just wanted this to work more as a shoutout for what seems to be a great deal.
– Real player with 35.8 hrs in game
Boss Rush: Mythology feels like a 2D Dark Souls that, like Cuphead, is just boss level after boss level. I highly recommend this game, but with a few caveats. The difficulty bar for this game is insanely high, and without knowing a few tricks, it may seem unmanageable for some players.
Pros:
+Difficulty - If you love difficult games, then this is for you. Cuphead and the Dark Souls series are some of my favorites, and if these games appeal to you, then you will enjoy Boss Rush: Mythology.
+No fluffy B.S. - This game jumps immediately into the action. There is an optional tutorial, and then you have your hub area. This area is small and lets you either buy items with gold accrued, or head over immediately to the bosses. Even though the area is small, you can also warp straight to the items or boss doors, saving you a few more seconds of running. This game cuts out all of the extra fluff, focuses on just the bosses, and has a simplistic setup, which I enjoyed.
– Real player with 28.1 hrs in game
Cryogear
Recommended only if you have played all other metroidvanias out there and just want some more. Sadly its pretty repetetive and somewhat boring. Most likely youll be using same weapon through all the game and exploration abilities are limited to double jump, that youll unlock in first 15 minutes of the game. Theres some sort of jetpack, but it can only be used in couple of levels.
– Real player with 13.0 hrs in game
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Review by Gaming Masterpieces - The greatest games of all time on Steam.
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Is this game a masterpiece? It is a Metroidvania in a large, interconnected, open-world cyberpunk scenario, and you play a robot that someone has programmed to kill the Emperor AI. You need to platform, melee and shoot, use PSI powers, find or craft your gear, upgrade your character with 80 skills in 4 branches, discover secrets and of course backtrack a lot.
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game
Gangsta Woman
As the speedrun world record holder of Gangsta Woman with a time of 7:52 (only displayed as 7:58 on speedrun.com), I can safely say it is the second best game I’ve ever speedran.
– Real player with 7.0 hrs in game
This is a SERIOUS review.
PROS:
-good graphics for the player character.
-fair graphics for the world
CONS:
-controls took a lot to get used to. Standard WASD & Space for Roll but no real jump ability which poses an issue later in levels 4 and 5 specifically as you would encounter fences you would like to jump over.
-map layout is bland. most are just rectangles with assets in between. Lots of invisible barriers.
-MOST IMPORTANTLY there is NO gameplay. You get the achievements not by killing the hordes or the dragon but by smashing the bottle that is ALWAYS behind the dragon.
– Real player with 1.7 hrs in game