The Consuming Shadow, by Yahtzee

[Jasede]

This game has been released and you can get it on the Humble store without DRM for ten bucks. Personally, I have been looking forward to this game ever since the demo. The premise is really neat.

Basically, you have about 60 hours to figure out a way to banish the coming cosmic horror by driving through dismal Britain, fighting monsters along the way. The game enforces very strict resource management - so strict, in fact, that every time you even fire a bullet, heal or want to use magic you think twice because all the costs are severe and painful.

I haven't played the game yet but I loved the alpha and will get it in a few days, when I am done with One Way Heroics.


The game is a rogue-lite in the style of FTL, except you only control one guy and there's side-scrolling action stages in-between your decisions. The difficulty is very punishing, especially when you are just starting out, and the sanity is very, very challenging to manage. (For example, it's almost impossible to restore once lost, and of course it's very easy to lose sanity when fighting cosmic horrors.)

Check it out, or don't:

http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/conshadow/

 

[28.8bps Modem]

I don't know. In a world where Neo Scavenger and Darkest Dungeon are things I already own, this looks a bit like babbie's first roguelite. I watched Jim Sterling's thingy on it, and while the writing is pretty good, the choices seem so random and the action parts look terrible.

 

[Jasede]

It's very different from both of those games and has a very nice mood that I appreciate. But it's not nearly as polished as Darkest Dungeon since it's a one-man project.

I can only talk about the alpha - beating that was certainly about as hard as FTL on Hard, which is, well, very hard.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I didn't know that the Stroppy Git had made another game.

His "5 Days a Stranger" series of AGS adventures are worth a play (as well as 1213) so I'll take a look at this at least. He also made a Duke3D TC that's worth trying out, but the name eludes me at the moment. Probably somewhere on his site.

 

[Ludo Lense]

Finished it (as much as you can finish a rogue-like). I liked it overall but you get insanely overpowered with more than 3 or 4 stars. The true experience, imho, is to play it without any bonus.

I really like the logic puzzle of figuring out who is the Invading God, his enemy and his ally. Beyond clues you can figure out a lot of things by the runes on the walls and the way you find bodies (type of death indicates what God it is).

The fundamental gameplay layer is figuring out how to be able to melee every creature you meet so you can conserve resources (I think you can melee just about everything without getting damaged). The magic system is cool but I am disappointed that times stops when you cast spells, there is no sense of urgency and it gives you a "breather" in very tense situations. The sanity systems is genuinely frustrating which is good, you really do not want to be insane at any moment unlike Eternal Darkness where you are tempted to see the cool effects. What I don't like at all is the hard limit to carrying bullets, basically if you find bullets and you go over capacity (which is just 6) they just disappear, I get that it is an anti-stockpiling feature but I wish the bullets would remain on the floor for the rest of the level at least, it feels very cheap.The only really big fail are the hunter creatures, when you finish a dungeon there is a chance for a hunter creature to chase you to the exit but the thing is that the solution is always the same, run as fast as you can to the exit, if it weren't for the bestiary I wouldn't even know there were different hunters or how they look.

Also the 3 other characters have completely different play-styles which require you to go about the map and the dungeons differently ( learning different melee animations will take you quite some time).

A solid 10-15 hours experience. Writing and Atmosphere is good if you can get over the graphics (which aren't as bad as you think once you get in the mood).

 

[ColCol]

Wait, this was going to become a paid game?

 

[Jasede]

Yes, ever since alpha. TBH with those graphics I feel like he can charge $5 at best. I mean, they're not terrible, but certainly amateurish.