Zoria: Age of Shattering: Atmospheric music, some spelling mistakes in the first few texts you can see which doesn't leave a good first impression. Graphics are alright. TAB is apparently a highlight key that the game calls a "vision ability" lol. "F" auto picks up items from the ground. The entire level map is uncovered from the start, although there's no markers, quest pointers or anything like that. Tutorials are just PopUps on the Screen, could be done a lot better. There's ~140 Stat points (main Stat painted Orange) and 5 Abilities you are to choose for every character that joins your party (without knowing much about the combat system or what abilities are useful, this might be a Demo thing to be able to test out different builds). HP seems to be relatively important in battle, the more HP a char has, the longer they'll stay in more difficult battles, ~350-400 chars go down easily. For some reason you can even directly increase your Armor or Magic Armor protection as a Stat, weird choice. Lots of lore dumps at the beginning of the game in dialogues, scrolls you can pick up and read, and including "letters" conveniently placed to tell you about the final moments of whatever band of Adventurers. Gets a bit better later. Equipped items don't change character looks, there seem to be some class-specific secret rooms.
There seem to be Shrines with ~1min cool-down that restore your HP and remove Negative Status effects if you have a "Battle Cleric" in your team. Action Points in combat (usually two for each char) are displayed by red jewels at the top of the Screen. Turn Sequence is displayed to the right of the Screen Top down. "Focus" is a battle resource that you cultivate during battle with simpler attacks that you need for more advanced abilities. You usually start battle by walking towards the enemies and doing some basic attacks first.
At the start of the Demo you make your way to a forward military camp right North of your starting location and get the choice of "going through the caves" or taking the way through some "Abandoned Fillondian outpost", choosing the caves requires you to choose a Female Lancer for your party that's proficient in clearing away rubble, the other way a Male Kingsman/Soldier that's proficient with Mechanics. NPCs either don't talk to you or only have generic responses before a Quest advances to the point that it allows you to talk to them, after which they get green glowing globes over their heads. If you go to the Goblin camp South first you can choose between an additional Wizard or a Ranger. You can play with a party of up to four in the Demo, but formations indicate that it could be up to six in the final game.
Story seems to be about military trouble between two countries, the Izirian Empire (a "Magocracy" led by powerful Mages and Necromancers) and the Kingdom of Elion, which you are a part of as a Military Captain.
Either my party build was shit or the game got more difficult near the end there, wiped a few times and got by in some fights with only 1 of 4 remaining standing, and only because of HP and other pot use. There were some mage class Undead enemies doing 3 consecutive attacks and Summons and basically just picking off my chars one by one. Position seems important, there's Backstabs leading to Criticals and Side attacks, although I'm not sure how to position a char other than make him attack a target facing a certain way. Some chars also retaliate, was usually the Ranger that launched an arrow towards a Mage's or Necromancer's face when attacked.
Demo is rather lengthy compared to some of the others. It seems competent enough, graphics and assets are pretty good, it shows promise in other ways and with its systems, there's certainly more here than the usual Indieshit Infinitron keeps shilling, but there's just a lot of "beginner's mistakes" in the design everywhere.
Lost Eidolons: First thing I noticed is apparently no support for 4K or any resolution above 1600p. Also lmao, leave it to Koreans to make a vaguely European-resembling Medieval setting with a story about Monarchy & shit actually populated largely by people who look like they'd fit in there, also some hot chicks.
Game Demo starts with a Cinematic, immediately afterwards throws you into a Turn-based Battle/Siege without much of any explanation. After you've finished that, it throws you into a 3rd person over-the-shoulder "Camp Exploration" section, where you can walk around your campaign war camp and talk to the troops. Presumably this is also where you upgrade the camp, buy new equipment etc. but can't do too much in the Demo. Can't jump or do lots of stuff with the character either, just sprint around and talk to random people starting brief conversation cutscenes. There's some weird/awkward animations and clipping making it all look a bit janky. Talking "realistic" characters having no lip movement or voice-over at all in "Cinematic 3D" adds to that feel, but presumably they plan to change that for the final release. I also stumbled upon Quicktime Events during combat Training, it wanted me to press Q+E and disappeared so quickly I couldn't even react. You spend Leadership points (10/50 pro section apparently) to do things like Training, Sparring and Talking or sharing a meal with other characters to improve relationships in these segments between missions. Dialogue during these scenes seems to be generic/repeating about a few generic topics you can choose from and not specific. Another thing that'll get old fast.
If you're confused of how to break the Siege at the beginning, "Swap Weapon" on Knights/Warriors changes their current Weapon to a Bow. Attacking enemies with magic or Special Attacks from afar that they can't counter (you see on your HP bar if you get any incoming damage and lose HP when you are about to attack) and then finish them with an attack that they could counter but are too dead to do afterwards for less damage. Enemy does nothing with his units when you're moving/repositioning your troops from one side of the map to the other while you're not engaging or within direct sight of that specific group of units.
Kinda Eh... Battles drag on for quite a bit with not much happening, gets a bit boring. Played over 4 hours for two missions and a bit of running around in camp after each. Don't know if I can stick with slowly and systematically moving the same ten units across the battlefield and patiently murdering everything of the wrong color while watching the same attack animations play over and over again with the distinct possibility of them whittling down my units and not being able to finish the final fight/having to redo the entire thing. The camp stuff felt boring, since it was largely fetch-quests with a bit of choice text.
Finishing the Demo sends you to this page with some sort of Survey:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1580520/view/5466788056884269812
These were both rather lengthy Demos that can take up to ~4 hours, so trying out some (hopefully calming) Adventure games next
Brok the InvestiGator: You play as a cartoon alligator in a future Techno-Dystopia full of other cartoon animals with problems in this crossbreed between an Adventure game and a Beat'em'Up. You can play with a Controller or Mouse+Keyboard. It seamlessly switches between them depending on what you're using, so you can easily mix and match too. There seems to be only one interaction button for most items though. You have 120HP at the beginning of the game and certain actions give you -10HP. You can switch to "Action Mode" with the "Y" button to beat the shit out of objects (beat down doors, destroy crates and similar) or fight enemies, which gives you fight XP. You gain levels by Leveling Up that way and can improve your HP, Strength or Special Attack. You can Jump and fall down places in Action Mode, you can't in Adventure Mode. Beat'em'Up sections aren't trivial either and there's various mechanics like dodge, light and hard attacks, special attacks while under 50% health etc.
There's also some sort of hint system I haven't really used based around collecting "Ads" (3 on every screen), some of these seem relatively tough to find and they aren't highlighted by the Highlight system. There's deaths and you can try to "collect" all Game Over screens, you can do wrong shit or lose fights etc. This doesn't punish you too much though, it returns you to the same Screen with half HP (sometimes this means you get healed) and memorizes everything you've already done before e.g. what items you've picked up or conversations you've had with other characters. Talking about conversations, there's a circular menu for dialogue, top row is the themes you can talk about. As long as they still glow blue there's still new information to be gained and bottom row is about your own thoughts about someone and showing items to NPCs to see their reactions to them.
I will admit I was a bit apprehensive at first regarding whether to even download this due to the Furry-esque art style, but it seems to be more in the style of 90s cartoons before anthropomorphic animals were irrevocably tainted, and the game kind of grew on me with time. The world, story, characters and mood don't feel simplistic and it kind of reminds me a bit of Beneath a Steel Sky with a bubble city and two-class society etc. and with characters that have a similar charm to them, are more complex and don't come off as "one-note", but not at all from the art style. Also, just my luck the Demo is long, 4-5 hours for what the game says is about 15% of the entire story. Just as you're about to finish the Demo, the game also pulls an "Interrogation" mechanic based on clues you uncovered in Adventure Mode out of the hat:
There seems to be quite a bit of C&C, most of it based on whether you "solve" problems via Brain or Brawn, which mostly means that you can bypass some puzzles by using your fists or on the other hand bypass some fights and platforming sections by using your brain. But based on your decisions and whether you decide to help certain characters or not they can apparently even die. This definitely gets a Wishlist. Here's my final decision tree for the Demo/Prologue:
It also teaches you important lessons, like:
More Screens:
Warp Frontier: Pretty trash from the looks of it. Meh voice acting and sound levels off with some characters and lines louder than the protagonist, awkward animations, static backgrounds that look like from a VN, lots of hotspots that aren't directly interactable with no dialogue, just an explanatory text Popup at the top. Stupid and non-obvious puzzles because of this, you'd think you could take something from the garbage, crates lying around the ship to patch the hole, but the game wants you to remove a specific tool panel with a knife to be able to do it. You have to use items on yourself for further interaction etc. Your Helper AI tells you you're being "Offensive". Ends relatively quickly. Next.
The Season of the Warlock: Classic Adventure game by a Spanish development studio. You walk around searching the screen for things to click on and fill your pockets with stuff you later find use for. You play as either Lord Alistair Ainsworth, an English university professor researching supernatural phenomena like Warlocks on a research trip to the country of Groldavia and residing in a big Castle, or his fat, hunchbacked manservant Nigel. The 3D animations are a bit awkward, but the characters seem to have some personality to them and the story seems promising enough so far. There are some Story-Cutscenes with dialogue interjections. Sarcastic "English humor" with quite some lines that hit. Somewhat macabre. If you double-click anywhere the character disappears briefly and reappears a la "quick travel". The Demo ends by asking you to either enter a deal with "the" Warlock or fight against him and promises that the entire game will change revolving around said choice.
Anyone played this? I can't quite place it or what it's about, but it keeps popping up:
