Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Svarog's Dream

[Darth Roxor]

Tags: Svarog's Dream; VI Game Forge

Suka blyat, all stand to attention! Is game of Eastern European origin, and RPG Codex has review of it!

Thanks to the priceless input of comrade BosanskiSeljak, you can now learn of the ultimate slavic experience presented by Svarog's Dream, a deep and complex RPG (because that's what they always are) made by two people you've never heard about.

Comrade reviewer praises the game's many satisfying aspects, such as the world design and reactivity as well as the unorthodox approach to character death, but seems less enthusiastic about the combat and general production values, as the entire budget was a crate of vodka and five kilograms of potato. In his own words:

The standout feature of Svarog’s Dream is its ever-changing world, which reacts to random events and player choices, extending beyond the main narrative. Each playthrough will have unique scenarios, and I could easily provide multiple examples for every small action that causes a reaction just from a single (experimental) playthrough. There are several systems incorporated into the game to achieve this.

(...)​

While the actual mechanics of combat in Svarog’s Dream are average, the system benefits greatly from the well crafted world and character building. Isometric action combat with auto-attacks, occasional kiting and active abilities running on cooldowns is the quick synopsis on what to expect. An additional mechanic is the spirit form, which allows you to leave your body and scout out an area (while you remain vulnerable). Death is a massive penalty in this game so the use of the spirit form is essential to many builds for a reason that will soon come apparent. This provides a small boost to somewhat lacking combat and lets you prepare and position yourself for fights.

(...)​

If your character dies, you’re returned to Veles who sends you out to inhabit a new body, giving you three new choices. Virtues and character level remain intact, while Attributes & Talents are replaced by the next character you choose. Your previous character's corpse remains on the map permanently with your old inventory, and looting it will leave the nude corpse behind as you carry on with your mission. There is no way to game the system as death-scumming is discouraged by design. Consistently dying does buff the attributes of your next character choices, but has unforeseen consequences on the world, raising the difficulty as a result.

(...)​

This is a very consistent game across the board, but as with any ambitious project by a small team with a lack of budget, there will be some misses. Visually, Svarog’s Dream is lacking, and while the sound design alleviates that to some extent, there are lackluster moments with combat being the main culprit. I do not get close to the same feeling walking through villages here as I did with The Witcher, the most atmospheric non-Western fantasy game I've played to date. Additionally as previously stated in the story section, there are mistakes and it's written by a non-native speaker so you won’t find a classical literary work here, which hampers the flow of dialogue.​

Klassikal literary works are unnecessary as long as I can reincarnate as Yuri Gagarin and conquer the unknown world. But still more important information is included in the review, and you would be wise to read it. Or else!

Read the full article: RPG Codex Review: Svarog's Dream

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Opa

Doing a giveaway if anyone is interested.

Fun fact: "One God" was originally God/Christian God but people were extremely triggered over this and the dev is a weak willed cuck so changed it. Luckily just the name, not the content itself, so the blue haired obese reddit-types don't cry about agreeing with God if they want to be virtuous.

 

[Habichtswalder]

If your character dies, you’re returned to Veles who sends you out to inhabit a new body, giving you three new choices. Virtues and character level remain intact, while Attributes & Talents are replaced by the next character you choose. Your previous character's corpse remains on the map permanently with your old inventory, and looting it will leave the nude corpse behind as you carry on with your mission. There is no way to game the system as death-scumming is discouraged by design. Consistently dying does buff the attributes of your next character choices, but has unforeseen consequences on the world, raising the difficulty as a result

The idea of playing as someone new in the same world after death is very interesting. This should be done more often.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Thank you for the review BosanskiSeljak . I was curious about this one.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Thanks for the detailed review. Made me interested enough to check out the game on Steam. There is a thread in the discussions forum which suggests that ironman is optional, so save scumming isn't completely blocked?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2004640/discussions/0/4354495356171349653/

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Toss a link to the steam page on the top plz.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Thanks for the detailed review. Made me interested enough to check out the game on Steam. There is a thread in the discussions forum which suggests that ironman is optional, so save scumming isn't completely blocked?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2004640/discussions/0/4354495356171349653/

The dev added a difficulty to play without ironman so that's always an option. Although the game isn't designed around that and you're missing a lot of the experience (achievements are disabled in this mode for a reason). It was added in after release because people claimed it was too hard or something.

To me it doesn't exist, just thrown in to stop retards from crying about perceived difficulty so it's not worth even mentioning.

 

[Fargus]

I rarely care about codex reviews. But always good to see one from BosanskiSeljak

Didn't know this was made by serbians.

In reality, Svarog’s Dream is more akin to properly designed open worlds like in Gothic. Items are hand placed instead of relying on mob drops, dangerous & safe areas are logical, there is a clear hierarchy in mobs and most importantly, enemies do not scale to your level. NPCs work on a schedule further amplifying the feeling of a lived in world. While the map is available to you from the start, fog of war restricts vision on a large portion of the map until certain events in the main quest. As with Gothic, this encourages thought when exploring, especially in unknown locations.

World Events Resulting from You: Arguably the game’s strongest feature, these events are direct outcomes of your character’s actions. Successfully dispatching a threat might lead to the opening of an inn a few days later, proving yourself a top alchemist gets you invited to a secret society, etc. Conversely, not completing/refusing a quest to eliminate a creature terrorizing the village might result in a useful NPC getting mauled. If you kill it, a far more deadly creature might call the den its home. There are countless examples, so many that I cannot do the game justice by listing a couple.

PERMADEATH

But thanks for the quality review , i enjoyed reading it.

 

[damager]

This looks really good. I only skimmed through a bit to not spoil me, but I think I will try this.

 

[oasis789]

so its slavic fantasy pathologic?

 

[rojay]

Outstanding review and the game sounds pretty cool. The strong points are right up my alley and seems like I've dealt with the weaknesses before without much trouble. Thanks BosanskiSeljak.

 

[puur prutswerk]

A Svarog game? Smart move and right on time, with 3D animation having made leaps of progress and the advent of AI, the videos are about to lose their relevance. Too bad about the retconning for censorship though, it seems like they added a whole lot of religious stuff to make up for the more interesting parts of the Svarog films for lack of a better descriptor.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

The dev added a difficulty to play without ironman so that's always an option. Although the game isn't designed around that and you're missing a lot of the experience (achievements are disabled in this mode for a reason).

I cannot really think of anything more meaningless than "achievements".

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Social media?

 

[Humanophage]

Klassikal literary works are unnecessary as long as I can reincarnate as Yuri Gagarin and conquer the unknown world.

Klassikal literary works are Anglo-Saxualised chernukha nonsense, comrade. Slavic Russian myths + Gagarin is enough.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

so its slavic fantasy pathologic?

Pathologic is a trip.

This one actually feels (and is designed) like an old-school crpg

 

[PrK]

Played it after reading the review (big props to BosanskiSeljak), very cool game, will definitely buy it along with the expansion when it comes out. Despite me disliking hack & slash combat and character development quite a bit I think I enjoyed it more than SKALD actually (the last game I did buy).
Now that I think about it, both games would be well served with a proper difficulty setting, what is it about devs and being afraid of challenging the players?

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Played it after reading the review (big props to BosanskiSeljak), very cool game, will definitely buy it along with the expansion when it comes out. Despite me disliking hack & slash combat and character development quite a bit I think I enjoyed it more than SKALD actually (the last game I did buy).
Now that I think about it, both games would be well served with a proper difficulty setting, what is it about devs and being afraid of challenging the players?

Agreed

I really got into my groove when I started playing a class I enjoyed because at least it changes how you play, along with exploring parts of the map at night. Makes it so I have to actually be prepared (Have potions ready, have an escape plan, scout out the area, etc.) because you can easily find yourself. Luckily the fully open world alleviates the lacking parts.

When I first loaded up the game, I wanted to get to a town but chose not to sleep beforehand despite it being evening because I thought I could make it in time. Ended up getting ambushed by a werewolf much stronger than me.

RE:

both games would be well served with a proper difficulty setting, what is it about devs and being afraid of challenging the players?

Considering a non-iron man mode was added because people were complaining about difficulty, we see why. The dev himself is too weak, seen by that and the fact he changed God to "One God" because people didn't like the Christianity portion.

 

[PrK]

Exactly, the game already has the tools to lean heavily into the survival aspect to prop the challenge, with the day/night cycle, towns/wilderness, food and potions, recruitable bodyguards etc but it is quite undertuned. Especially since apparently every time you die the world becomes more chaotic/difficult, you don’t get to experience that if you don’t die to begin with..
That said, despite that and the overall junkiness, the game still has a distinctive soul that permeates most aspects incuding the writing and music, and that makes it worth playing despite its flaws.

 

[Cryomancer]

e changed God to "One God" because people didn't like the Christianity portion.

The dev talked about it here > https://steamcommunity.com/app/2004640/discussions/0/4848778098914545551/

You may be surprised by this, but initially, the whole negative feedback about it came from non-believers claiming that the game is too kind toward Christianity and even promotes it, which was not my intention at all, especially since I am a non-believer myself.

But the game has Veles and your soul goes to Veles and Veles can decide to Punish your soul. So according to game lore, Slavic faith is the True religion.

 

[mediocrepoet]

After trying this out, nearly 3 hours dissolved like it's nothing. The game has some weird janky elements (mostly the 3D camera getting blocked by whatever and some pathfinding weirdness) but it's compelling and feels good to play. Not knowing what you're doing or why is presented fairly well and the game gives you enough of a nudge to start exploring and trying to figure things out.

Very cool, I'm looking out to playing more of this one. Thank you to BosanskiSeljak for the kind gift.

 

[kaboom]

Here is a good Youtube review:

 

[Peachcurl]

One of the most interesting games I've seen in a while. Nice.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Suka blyat

The creators are Serbian, thereby the proper term is pičku materinu.

 

[Humanophage]

I played it for a while. Mainly the impressions are positive, but it is rather janky. I would still recommend that you give it a run. It definitely has an early 2000s vibe (it's generally a "vibey" game).

Pros:
- Cool exploration. The world feels handcrafted and has a certain old school Ultima 7 feel. Actually, the whole game feels Ultima 7 (silly kiting combat, fun world - somewhat shallow but not in a bad way). Many have praised the complete lack of level scaling, and I agree.
- The atmosphere is good. I would describe it as a mash-up of Thea, Baldur's Gate 1, and Divine Divinity. In fact, it's so similar to Thea that I expect the devs to have gotten inspiration there. It even shares some icons. I'm replaying Thea after this.
- There is a certain nonchalant weirdness to the game, like e.g. suddenly fundamentally changing the whole interface with certain dialogues that imitate divine experience.
- The builds seem diverse enough. I understand summoning is overpowered so I am playing frost mage/tank.
- Decent itemisation that doesn't feel too oversaturated with increasingly epic loot.
- Very creative solution with sneaking and fast movement where you can transform into animals at will. I got a rabbit necklace from a random god reward. At first I thought, how ridiculous, I lost the lottery. But the rabbit can sneak, is super fast, and has good stamina. It also means much fewer trash fights.
- The rebirth scheme is pretty good. It punishes you for death without making you do a boring restart. It also punishes excessive boldness. My main character with whom I went through most of the game died in a distant ruin due to being stuck between enemies, and it seems to be quite a predicament to get his stuff back (as I'll just get stuck again on the stair).
- I liked the temporary events.
- Pretty decent graphics with some surprisingly poetic imagery. The weakest part are the monster models which all feel samey (but that's a general issue with Diablo-like games).

Neutral:
- The writing itself is crap, but concise. It has a certain Baldur's Gate 1 charm.
- The difficulty mainly comes from a bunch of fast-moving enemies suddenly appearing out of nowhere for no reason and trying to curbstomp you. Feels like being a coloured victim of skinheads in early 2000s Russia. Frankly, it's an incredibly weird design decision given how janky and unreliable the controls are (e.g., a button might stop working). This turns into a con when they do it during a dialogue.

Cons:
- Any amount of side-questing makes the main quest too easy. I got so bored with it I just dropped it and started exploring the most distant parts (and died).
- The controls are atrocious. Movement is done via mouse in your standard Grim Dawn/PoE style. But if you accidentally hover the mouse over an enemy or an obstacle, your character stops moving and starts attacking. There is no way to reassign the right button to movement without an externally reprogrammable mouse (i.e., right mouse button = "T"). It's mainly OK once you do this.
- The flat open world movement is OK. But once you get into any building, it's a complete pathfinding nightmare as everything randomly becomes visible, invisible, and this changes pathfinding all the time. The quest castle with the plague was completely inane. Generally the visuals don't correspond too well to passable terrain.
- The movement button seems to occasionally become unresponsible for no reason. Since fast response is very important as Svarog is pretty twitchy, this is intensely annoying.
- Inventory management is somewhat bad. You can thankfully sort by weight and type, but can't move item types to bags (even though most bags have bonuses for item types).