Ok, here we go. Steam says I got 70 minutes down with this game. It won't get any longer.
If your screen res is higher than 1600x900, the game will run in borderless window in the center of the screen. You won't be able to change this or move it. Only Options in game menu are New Game, Continue, Quit and Language (English and German).
Ok, here's the story: Near the town of Candlewind some rogues are doing shenanigans. You are adventurers that seek fortune and go to their hideout to... idk, to be heroes I guess. That's what adventurers do, you know?
The opening theme is really nice albeit rather generic medieval lute/harp/flute stuff. Sadly it seems to be the only tune in the game and as soon as it ends, the game stays dead silent. Except for the low quality combat sounds.
I rather liked the idea of the game's artdirection. Low fantasy authentic medieval style, no shiny huge pauldrons... Sadly they had to make every character look the same, and color everything in this ugly muddy green. See the screenshot at the beginning of this thread, 2 years ago? The game looks exactly the same, always, no exception.
You don't get to create characters. You have to go with a warrior, a bard, a mage and an archer. Each one has 6 attributes (Strength, Int, Luck,...) and 3 [sic] different skills (Melee, Spells, Ranged).
Story bits are delivered in textboxes in a stylish fantasy font, I believe it's Arial.
Now you are in the Game. You start at the entrance (you can't leave by the way). And move around either with the arrow keys (no hotkey customization) or clicking on the 1 Pixel wide directional arrows on screen. Oh, and that's it with keyboard control. Everything else is mouse driven. ESC for menu? Nope.
Oh the menu: Saving, Loading, Credits, Exit. Keep it simple, I guess.
Ok, you got an archer. But on the first encounter you will notice you haven't fueled your bow with arrows. How to fuel them? Just click on your stack of arrows and drag em onto your bow? NO STUPID, do you want to fire 40 Arrows at once or what?! No, here's how it works. You click on your arrow stack. You select 'split stack'. You click on the single arrow, then you select use. Arrow is now attached to your mouse pointer. You click on the bow. You select "Use Arrow with Bow". Hey, it's pure logic isn't it? At least you don't have to repeat this step after each shot fired. Not that it would matter, because unfortunately...
...Bows don't work. At least not as a ranged weapon. I have fired 40 shots on enemies in the distance and didn't hit ONE SINGLE TIME. On the other hand, if your melee dudes are already in hand to hand combat with enemies, your bow hits always.
Speaking of combat. It's turn based. But don't expect anything good. Enemies appear out of nothing in ~3 tiles distance and then you have to click next round 3 times until they are in melee range (they always get the first smack). Unless you want to have your archer miss 3 times, or have your mage unleash the power of the arcane. Let's throw a fireball on 'em, shall we? Funnily enough, throwing a fireball triggers the only sound effect in the game that resembles the sound of a swung weapon. The animation of fireball looks exactly like you would throw a tennis ball playfully at your dog, and has about the same impact.
To be fair, this seems to be the only bad animation in the game. Because it seems to be the only animation in the game.
Back to the combat. Dull shit, period. Your two frontliners can attack or block, your backliners can cast/shoot or block. Absolutely no interesting options. Click the weapon next to character 1's portrait, then click the weapon next to character 2's portrait, then click the spellbook and /or the bow from char 3, and 4, then click end turn.
If an enemy kills one of your characters, all others skip their turn. You have to assign a new frontliner, and the enemy immediately gets another attack on your mage or archer, who's now in the first row. Possibly gets oneshotted and you have to assign the next frontliner and so on. So a single kill can easily become a TPK immediately.
If you revive dead characters, their portrait won't be changed back, it remains the skull. Considering the look of the portraits, I think this isn't a bug but a feature.
Dungeons are pretty dark places, you know? Glad you have 4 torches with you. Now imagine a turn based game where the duration of torches is tied to real time. Would be silly, agree? Well, apparently not too silly for Legends of Candlewind. I started a new game, opened up the menu (!!!), went to the kitchen for a few minutes and went back. Screen was black. I thought the game crashed and started a new game. But it's true. You better hurry your way through the maze because you only have 4x5 Minutes of light and I haven't found any new torches. Your torch ran out and you want to ignite a new one? Re-read the paragraph about loading your bow and you get an idea how clunky this will get.
Let me talk about the Maze itself. I carefully counted and double checked: There are exactly 1 (one) different wall tiles and floor tiles to be found. Exceptions are doors and stairs up/down. There is absolutely nothing, zero, nada to discover, besides two random chests. The labyrinth doesn't serve any purpose other than being a labyrinth for its own sake. And there are so many pointless doors that lead into empty rooms and dead ends. So far, the game seems totally linear.
On the first level you will only encounter solitary goblins, which are dead within two strikes but also can deal solid damage. On the second level you'll encounter groups of goblins and shamans, which defeat any level 1 party with ease. That means, you have to grind levels on the first floor. Well have fun: One goblin yields 20xp per party member, and you need 1000xp to level up. That means you have to grind through 50 (less if you have your stupid archer get killed on purpose) encounters which thankfully appear on demand because there is a button "wait for monsters" that trigger random encounters. But remember what I said about torches? Better hurry up!
I did it anyways, and I did it for you my Bros. The level up was what dragged my game from 30 minutes to 70 minutes. Since there is no possibility to rest or replenish resources, and the mobs don't leave ANY loot, you have to carefully manage your resources and hitpoints. So I had to savescum my way to the levelup.
When my first level up finally came, I wasn't even disappointed any more. You get a notification in your Arial console, some stats rise automatically, period. By that time I already knew there wouldn't be anything like a dedicated levelup screen.
There is also a hunger mechanic, but when I stopped playing, my hunger bars still were in the safe area, so I oviously can't judge this featoure. I won't play any longer to find out tho.
I can't believe such a game found its way to steam. Judging by the screenie on the thread's first page, I genuinely wonder what the hell the dev's were doing the last 2 years. It almost seems they stopped working on it and last week someone said 'Hey, remember your botched Programming 101 class project?" Why not try to make a few quid out of it?"
This makes me sad. I really love blobbers, and it's not like we are gifted with many of them in the last years. Also the extreme scarcity of recources in this game could have been very interesting, as well as the art direction. But this piece is incredibly soulless and mind-numbingly dull, even I can't stand it. It does not even come with the Raven's Cry-like hilarity factor, it is just bad.
TL,DR: 9/10, Possibly GOTY, now 20% off on Steam, go for it!
