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Star Wars: The Old Republic is fascinating. Next to World of Warcraft, it has somehow become the MMO I've invested the most time into, despite not always being sure what I think of it. In 2011, it was a game at odds with itself, and while so much has changed since then, that has not. But that conflict has also lead to seismic shifts, with BioWare Austin dragging it in unexpected directions. I keep coming back and, with a new expansion on the horizon, some of you might be contemplating the same. You should. With some Death Star-sized caveats. At launch it was disappointing. There was BioWare's RPG, an enthusiastic Star Wars fantasy full of scintillating class stories that offered up countless lightsaber duels, Sith intrigue, superweapons, a personal spaceship and you could play as a Chiss James Bond. Great stuff. But then there was the MMO, which stuck rigidly to the most conservative adaptation of World of Warcraft, from the combat to the structure. For every great Star Wars moment, there were a hundred lacklustre fights and hours upon hours of running between repetitive quests. Things have progressed quite a bit since those days, however. After you finish your class story around level 50, for instance, you've now got several games' worth of adventures and crises and character-driven yarns left to play through. The first couple of expansions aren't really worth repeated playthroughs, but everything from Shadow of Revan onwards is surprisingly gripping stuff, evocative of the singleplayer RPGs that inspired it, but not beholden to them. Perhaps most like Knights of the Old Republic 2, the later chapters make the Star Wars universe and the Force feel strange again. All of that is far, far ahead of you if you're starting from scratch, but vanilla TOR has been tweaked countless times, and overhauled, so it's not quite the chore it sometimes used to be. Even before setting foot on one of the starting planets, however, you might want to consider if you want to spend any money. Since 2012, TOR has been free-to-play with a cash shop and optional subscription. The free-to-play tier ain't great. You miss out on raids, gear, rewards, crew skills, the bank, races and have an absurdly low credit cap that means you'll never be able to buy anything decent. You do get all of the class storylines, however, which will take you to the free cap of level 50. And while there are a lot of restrictions, many of them can be eased with one purchase, no matter how small. Buying anything from the Cartel Market, the in-game cash shop, confers Preferred status immediately, easing up on the limitations for free players. Preferred players still miss out on a lot and don't get access to the expansions, but that can be sorted by subscribing for a single month. During that month, you'll have access to everything, but you'll also be able to keep a lot of it even if you choose not to continue your subscription. Those first 50 levels are going to either fly by if you're subscribing, or take a good while longer if you're not. All the XP bonuses and complimentary boosts means that subscribers can get to the original level cap purely doing class and planetary quests. They're invariably the best written and most engaging parts of the game, to the point where it feels like a classic BioWare RPG. Everything else is a crapshoot. The actual objectives for every kind of quest rarely deviate from the most uninspired MMO tropes of fetching and killing, so most of the heavy lifting is done by story and characters. I do regret blasting through it these days, because there are some interesting little side stories going on between all the important, fate of the galaxy missions. There are also plenty of duds. Even the poorer ones typically have convincing voice acting and more context than your average MMO quest, however, and if you're playing for the first time, you'll probably want to do most of them. Most of it is also all based on stuff that was a bit dated in 2011. The environments are large but lifeless, the characters are plentiful but look and move like soulless marionettes, and the quest design is just a bit boring. But this is also stuff that I've explored to death. Familiarity has made it more of a chore, and apparently not enough of one to stop me from making my second Sith Inquisitor and playing through that exact same story again. You don't understand, this time I gave him a terrible beard and a sassy attitude. It's a huge difference! You're the one with a problem! When you finish the class story, there's a weird lull. You can't start Knights of the Fallen Empire, where BioWare made some of its most significant changes, until level 60. The Dread Lords and Rise of the Hutt Cartel arcs are related to other stuff you'll know about from your 1-50 journey, but they're weaker than the class stories and, while I didn't mind them the first time around, I'm never eager to return. I usually skip straight to Shadow of Revan. It's a brisk expansion if you're just in it for the main yarn, which ties together lots of threads from both the MMO and its singleplayer predecessors. The writers' treatment of Revan and the Exile is perhaps a bit divisive, but I think that's inevitable when dealing with characters that people have actually played. It's a solid expansion and leads into an even better one. Knights of the Fallen Empire was bold in 2015. BioWare made a singleplayer game in their MMO and it was, and still is, surprisingly great. The original promise of TOR was that it was going to be KotOR 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on. Better than a new singleplayer RPG. Nobody believed it, and that was because it was bollocks. But with Fallen Empire it gets much closer than any MMO has a right to. Calling it KotOR 3 might be a stretch, but there's a great deal of KotOR in it. The episodic structure also works wonders. Instead of trying to have your singleplayer fun while all these other Jedi and bounty hunters are jumping around and doing the same quests, you're transported to a personal instance where BioWare's been able to make a more curated experience. There aren't any interruptions, long jogs between objectives or repetitive odd jobs. They're brisk but manage to squeeze in plenty of action and plot, and while the story is shared across all classes and both factions, each episode gives you opportunities to leave your own mark and reap the consequences. The big choices are still binary and framed as Dark and Light side options, but they are more nuanced than that limitation suggests. A villainous Sith Lord can make what is ostensibly a Light side choice for evil reasons, like saving a city block from devastation because one day soon you intend to rule all the people you've saved. Advertisement

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Game title: The Beast Inside (Demo) Studio: Illusion Ray Score: 3.5/5 GS Reviewer: Ric Crossman The sign of a good scary game is that you can type its name into YouTube and you'll see a thousand thumbnails of people making scared faces as something spooky comes on screen, and that's exactly what we have with the recently released Steam demo for Illusion Ray Studio's The Beast Inside, a Kickstarter horror game that's looking to bolster its fundraising efforts with a small teaser of what's to come. Far be it from us to turn down a scarefest, and so we dived into the demo headfirst to see whether we could experience the horror for ourselves. The first chapter put us in the first-person perspective of a man moving to a house in the middle of nowhere with his partner to try and escape the hassle of the urban sprawl, and when we say in the middle of nowhere, it's pretty much bang in the middle of this huge forest. Now you don't need to be a horror expert to know that this is pretty much a guaranteed bad idea - alongside such other bad ideas in horror games like 'let's split up' - and lo and behold it seems to be. Not that we see it in this first chapter, mind you, as all we do here is work out the controls and mechanics by exploring the house until we find a diary, which details the lives of someone who used to live in the house in the 19th century. This is when the scares start, as it gets dark and we're thrust into the role of the man who wrote the diary, Nicolas, as part of a flashback. Obviously, the darkness brings with it some terrors, and since the demo is so short, we won't spoil the events, but mechanically it revolves around lighting matches and lamps (both of which will run out if you're not careful) and fumbling around to respond to noises and mysterious events that need investigating. Ever since PT came out, the playable teaser for Hideo Kojima's now-cancelled Silent Hills project, every horror game on the planet has been compared to it in some way, and this is no different. There are certain elements that scream PT, especially considering there are spectral beings overlooking you on the stairwell at one point, almost point-for-point like in PT. We're not saying it's a copy or anything sinister like that, but a lot of what made PT so effective is present and accounted for in here, and that can only be a good thing in our eyes. There's a lot that makes The Beast Inside stand out though. For a start, it's incredibly unsettling to know that you're totally alone in a house miles away from civilisation, and this sets the tone early on since you know nobody can help you. That isolation hits home even more when you realise that strange and mysterious events are unfolding, and what's effective here is that we only ever see glimpses of what happens. At one point you see a mysterious figure as you're looking out the window, and at another you're jumped by a ghost who then vanishes, and you're never given too long to try and comprehend all the horrors you're witnessing. It's hard to anticipate, and that makes for the most horrific of experiences. There are jumpscares, sure, but we wouldn't go as far as to say The Beast Inside is reliant on them. The emphasis is more on intrigue here, rather than knowing what the threat is and trying to avoid it. Here we don't know what's going on, so we're forced to keep gathering clues around the house and consulting the diary to make sense of what's going on. When the jumpscares do happen though, they hit hard, so this should be one for those who like to squeal when playing their games. The Beast Inside has definitely awakened something in us. Perhaps not a beast, but definitely a desire to know more about why all these mysterious events are going on and how all these strands of narrative link together. It looks good, it delivers the story to us in satisfying chunks, and most important, it's pretty good at scaring the pants off us, so we're excited to see whether the Kickstarter campaign hits its target by April.

A chaotic, yet fun musical eye hazard. There are many beat-based games available today, from the classic but still fully supported osu! to the extremely new and po[CENSORED]r virtual reality game Beat Saber. Both previously said games fail at one thing: automatically creating a level or difficulty solely based on the song itself. Beat Hazard 2 does just that without any human input. Beat Hazard 2 is also unique in the sense that it does not necessarily have you play the level to the beat, but instead creates the level from the beat. However, Beat Hazard 2 is a true hazard for some individuals. If you suffer from photosensitive epilepsy, I strongly caution you when viewing this game as it utilizes bright, rapid flashing lights and colors. As previously stated, this game is based on a song’s beat. With that, there are many ways to give the game songs to use. You can use locally stored audio files on your PC, stream from an internet radio, or use Beat Hazard 2‘s newest feature, Open Mic. Since a majority of people no longer store their own music, Open Mic allows players to use any audio that is currently running on their PC. When enabled, the game will start listening for audio on your PC, meaning that you can use music from virtually any source. Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify and even YouTube are just a few examples that I’ve tested. Beat Hazard 2 then uses the audio to create a level, which varies from throwing different sized meteors at you to giant spaceships with several different types of weapons. In addition, the game uses a service very similar to Shazam called ACRCloud to identify the song that is currently playing. There were some songs that I played that weren’t able to be identified and were simply listed as “Unidentified track”. One example of a song that ACRCloud couldn’t list was Blue Zenith by XI. Firing micro missiles at a boss. Gameplay is fairly straightforward once you have a song playing. You have one small ship that will shoot lasers based on the beat. This makes specific parts of songs difficult because if the song slows down, so does your firing, in turn causing a DPS decrease. Though small, it does make a difference in your gameplay. The game features different power-ups as well, the two main ones being Color and Power. Color does exactly what you’d think, giving the space behind you and your lasers color. Other than the visual effect from it, I have not noticed any gameplay changes from this power-up. Power’s effects are also in its name and adds firepower to your primary lasers, making them fire a little more often with larger shots. An additional power-up you start with is a single bomb. It detonates from the position of the player, then moves outward from that position like a wave, destroying anything it touches. As the player goes through songs, they also earn money to be spent on perks. Perks are upgradable abilities that can be equipped to give you an edge. They range from one extreme to the next. Some are able to increase the amount of points you gain in a song by increasing the score multiplier at the beginning, providing multiplier power-ups more often throughout, or just increasing the raw point value of destroying certain things. Perks can also be used to increase your firepower by raw value or unlock additional power-ups that can be executed by hotkey. One such upgrade is a shield that will block anything from damaging you for a short amount of time and depending on the object, reflect it to the nearest enemy. Another upgrade, and one of my personal favorites, is the micro missiles. They are small autonomous missiles that seek out the biggest threat on the field. Once further upgraded, you are able to fire off many of them in a volley. The player maneuvering in space while being blinded from bright, blue light.

Shooters have always had a special place in my heart ever since I’ve started playing the earlier stages of Counterstrike. While not always at the top of my gaming priority list, Shooters in general, may it be first person, third person or even those sidescroller shooters have taken hours from my life whenever I get pulled into one. And that’s one of the things that happened to me with Super Bit Machine’s online F2P shooter, Armajet. Overview Armajet pits your team of three against three other players in real-time arena-based online mobile combat. With your wide array of guns, you need to win by getting the most kills within the time span. Your loadouts are composed of one primary and one secondary weapon. Typical to multiplayer shootouts, you can switch your loadouts only before matches so you have to prepare them pre-match. Unlike some shooters however, Armajet is a little liberal in terms of the starter weapons as you have tons of choices from the get go. And what I liked about the gun options is that they pack enough punch that you won’t have to feel the urge to grind for new weapons like normal shooters. With enough skill, you can hold your own against veteran players and their fancy weapons just fine. Gameplay The game’s classical mode is the above mentioned 3-on-3 team play, but Armajet has much more under the hood to keep things fresh. There’s various game modes that you can take part in. One is the team shield rush mode where your team needs to get as much shield upgrades as possible. Then there’s the deathmatch mode where you enter against five other players and race to score the most points before time ends. Armajet Mobile Review It's not pretty, but Armajet runs surprisingly smooth considering six mobile devices are connecting to one match. Armajet’s gameplay is really a striped down version of online shooters where plot or storyline fluff is minimal so that mayhem is maximized. After getting into a match, you immediately requeue for another battle with the same team you have. You have a small window of prep time to adjust your loadouts, or bail if you want nothing to do with the team you just played with. Submit this page to Reddit - get some karma! Armajet Mobile Review Vincent Haosonby Vincent Haoson@haosonREVIEWOct 17, 2016Critic Score: 4 out of 5 User Rating: (9 votes, average: 3.11 out of 5) Shooters have always had a special place in my heart ever since I’ve started playing the earlier stages of Counterstrike. While not always at the top of my gaming priority list, Shooters in general, may it be first person, third person or even those sidescroller shooters have taken hours from my life whenever I get pulled into one. And that’s one of the things that happened to me with Super Bit Machine’s online F2P shooter, Armajet. Armajet Mobile Review No frills attached here. It's all about the core gameplay being solid. Overview Armajet pits your team of three against three other players in real-time arena-based online mobile combat. With your wide array of guns, you need to win by getting the most kills within the time span. Your loadouts are composed of one primary and one secondary weapon. Typical to multiplayer shootouts, you can switch your loadouts only before matches so you have to prepare them pre-match. Unlike some shooters however, Armajet is a little liberal in terms of the starter weapons as you have tons of choices from the get go. And what I liked about the gun options is that they pack enough punch that you won’t have to feel the urge to grind for new weapons like normal shooters. With enough skill, you can hold your own against veteran players and their fancy weapons just fine. Gameplay The game’s classical mode is the above mentioned 3-on-3 team play, but Armajet has much more under the hood to keep things fresh. There’s various game modes that you can take part in. One is the team shield rush mode where your team needs to get as much shield upgrades as possible. Then there’s the deathmatch mode where you enter against five other players and race to score the most points before time ends. Armajet Mobile Review It's not pretty, but Armajet runs surprisingly smooth considering six mobile devices are connecting to one match. Armajet’s gameplay is really a striped down version of online shooters where plot or storyline fluff is minimal so that mayhem is maximized. After getting into a match, you immediately requeue for another battle with the same team you have. You have a small window of prep time to adjust your loadouts, or bail if you want nothing to do with the team you just played with. There are tons of unlockable features in Armajet, and most of them don’t necessarily require you to spend money on them. The way purchasing and getting new stuff in-game happens is that you have to purchase “boxes” that provide shards of weapons or of aesthetic unlockables in-game. You need to reach a certain number of shards per item before you get them to use them on your account. The game’s player tracking system is also top-notch. After every match, you are given the stats of how you did in-game and overall to allow you the bird’s eye view of how great or how bad your run is. This gives players who are a bit more particular with their game results a proper breakdown of where they need to improve. Other Features Since this is a shooter, it’s kind of expected that awards, medals and trophies are given to multi kills and the like. Armajet just loves to show you how much you earned, or failed to earn. Each double kill, triple kill, bomb kill and any kind of enemy killing variations that you can do in-game is tracked. This ties into the competitive feeling the game has and the streamlined matchmaking. You rarely wait in-game as long as you’ve started matchmaking and this is what makes the game such an enjoyable one. Armajet Mobile Review Stat junkies and competitive players will love the detailed breakdowns. If there’s one thing that the game doesn’t do well, that’d be visuals. Armajet isn’t the prettiest in terms of the looks department and there are undoubtedly prettier shooters in the market today, even on mobile. But at least the game’s visuals stick to the theme that Armajet is gunning for – dark and gritty.

The facts What: Cashtronauts Type: Indie game Company: Simon Prefontaine Platform: PC, Steam Price: 7,99 euro Release date: 1 september 2016* When I fired it up, I had no idea what the game was about. Of course, I could have read the description on Steam or watched a video beforehand, but I like going in blind. Turns out Cashtronauts has no tutorial whatsoever; you just get thrown in. And that seems to be the main attraction of it: prodding things, see what happens. I guess the following picture sums up the Cashtronaut experience pretty well: The tiny pink vessel on the picture above is your starter ship. Collecting moneeeeeeey. Why? You need it for unlocking risks and new ships, and playing around with them. There are other things, too, like upgrades that you can pickup and install, that I didn't find out about until recently. I wouldn't be surprised if there is more to discover. The ultimate goal? Nothing that I've discovered so far. It's a more about the road than the destination kinda thing. The charm of the game lies in the explorative and messing around part - and in the arcade nostalgia vibe. I fondly remember the eureka moment when I found this place that wanted my crystals Navigation Cashtronauts is played in a top-down 2D view, in which you use simple arrow or keyboard keys to move your ship around in space. As the game has no map, compass or any sort of area overview, you'll have to remember your position compared to a select few landmarks in the center and their border in order to orient yourself. At the start nooby Rav kept getting lost in outer space and eventually blown to bits by predator ships as I ran out of fuel! This made me come to the realization that knowing how to get back to the safe "center of space" is a vital ability. After a few play sessions, though, I developed a feeling for direction and distance. Eventually, I came to appreciate the absence of in-game navigation methods as an extra something to keep you on your toes. I'm an asteroid, pretty please. Please do shoot me!

Pine is incredibly ambitious. Successfully funded on Kickstarter roughly two-and-a-half years ago, small Netherlands developer Twirlbound set about working on its big idea. The project promised to combine many genres: the adventuring of a Zelda title, Shadow of Mordor’s intricate AI simulation of NPC friendships and rivalries, a dash of Fable‘s hero’s journey, and a Bloodborne-inspired combat system for good measure. Promising Breath of the Wild on a shoestring budget, Pine very nearly achieves its lofty ambitions, featuring an engaging world, impressively deep simulation, and a wide variety of gameplay systems. However, the clunky controls, poor communication with the player, and a raft of bugs prevent Pine from reaching its full potential. In the tiny island nation of Albamare, evolution played out a little differently. Alongside humans, groups of other creatures also gained sentience, edging humans out of their territories with superior physical attributes. So inferior are the humans to the other species that only a handful remain on the island, a tribal group living upon a crumbling mountaintop. This isolation brought them peace, for a while, but the peace was not to last. The shifting soil they live upon turns into a landslide, killing several people and destroying much of the village. The tribal humans have always been afraid of the outside world, but with half the po[CENSORED]tion wiped out they have little choice but to let Hue, a curious young man, explore beyond their home plateau. As Hue looks for a new home for his people, he discovers a world more complicated than he could have ever imagined. The world outside of Hue’s little village is vibrant and teeming with life. While perhaps a touch small compared to other open world games, the map is dense, containing a wide variety of biomes, hills, lakes, and valleys to explore. Crafting materials are abundantly distributed across the land, regrowing at a steady clip. This bounty of food items, stones, logs, flowers, and gems is quickly put to good use. On his travels, Hue can gain ideas for new crafting recipes, turning sticks and stones into makeshift traps or improving weapons. Food restores health and reenergises him for battle. Any item he does not have an immediate use for can be thrown into a nearby donation bin, which will gain him favour with the nearest tribe. Alliances between the island’s inhabitants are constantly in flux, with Hue’s actions having a marked effect on the world around him. Relations between groups are divided into hostile, neutral, and allies, with the current relationship affecting both how Hue can interact with the creatures, and how they interact with each other. Allies will trade with Hue, offering a friendly wave as he goes past. Neutral creatures are more skittish, keeping their guard up but otherwise going about their business. Hostiles will attack on sight, often ignoring smaller monsters to take on the human threat. Mani[CENSORED]ting these relationships is key to progressing through Hue’s journey, as he will need to interact with each race to uncover the deeper mysteries of the world. Raising friendship is easy in the beginning, a few items in the donation box enough to sway opinion. Each action taken has knock-on effects, however: making a donation to the Krockers, for example, a race of large crocodile-like beings, will anger anyone they are at war with, causing Hue to lose standing with the opposing race. Helping a group to upgrade their village will see the idea spread like wildfire across the map, with better buildings and weapons at every turn. Relationships will continue to shift even when Hue is not involved, warring and trading as the leaders desire. This deep level of simulation is the core of Pine‘s appeal: a living, breathing ecosystem that is constantly changing. It is also, however, the source of much of the bugginess of Pine. Most of the story quests need a group to be in a certain state to progress, hostile, neutral, or allied, but the unpredictable nature of their behaviour means they can switch between states at the most inopportune time. This results in odd behaviours, such as people attacking when they are supposed to be neutral, animal monarchs refusing to interact with the player, or quests being brought to a standstill since poisoning their king was apparently not upsetting enough to break the alliance. Once one gets used to the volatile nature of the simulation, if something strange occurs the player will know the best choice is to step away and try the quest again later. In the early stages of the Pine, however, stuck quests are quite frustrating, as alternatives are lacking. This is compounded by extremely barebones quest text, which will not help the player determine why their current approach is not working. While the whole world is open to explore from the start, only a single quest is available at the beginning: to explore one of three vaults. Once a vault has been chosen, all other options are blocked off, but the quest text does not reflect this, leading to confusion. Things improve considerably after the first vault is completed, with a large number of quests becoming available, giving the game the flexibility it desperately needs. Some more side quests earlier on would help the game considerably, as the gameplay experience is best when the player has a lot of options. Hue’s adventure involves a lot of combat, both from monsters in the overworld and the sentient races. Each group has a unique approach to fighting: Krockers and the moose-like Carablin favour hard-hitting melee moves, slow but powerful. The fox-like Fexel are potion masters, throwing smoke bombs and healing constantly. The large flightless birds of Gobbledew are the all-rounders of the animal kingdom, using both melee and ranged attacks. Hue’s movements are slow and deliberate, requiring the player to carefully watch enemy movements to find a moment to strike. Enemies hit hard, but their attacks are clearly telegraphed, similar to the Dark Souls style of combat. For the most part, combat works well, but the lack of a proper dodge button is frustrating. When locked on to an enemy, the wimpy side-step does little for evading blows. An approach to get around this limitation is to not lock on to the enemy at all, and run back and forth to evade attacks. Thankfully, for those who do not enjoy this style of combat, the game autosaves often, meaning little progress is lost after death. Most encounters can also be avoided entirely by either running away, or maintaining a decent reputation with all the groups. Less impressive are Pine‘s platforming challenges, located both as optional extras in the overworld, and annoying obstacles in the dungeon-like vaults. Hue’s jump is extremely sluggish, requiring the button to be pressed well before the edge of a platform. No concessions are included to help with correcting a dodgy jump, like the ability to grab onto a ledge or allowing the player to leap just after they have stepped off the platform, known as ‘coyote time’. Compounding this frustration is the design of the vaults, where a missed jump often requires a long climb back up to the previous position. While the vaults have some nice puzzles, lots of flicking switches and checking ancient markings, the platforming aspect taints the whole experience. Completing a vault simply evokes a feeling of relief, not accomplishment. A lot of thought and care has clearly gone into the visual design of Pine. The environment is lush and beautiful, an explosion of colour that shifts depending on the time of day. Each of the races has a unique design, reflective of their different cultures. However, this personality could be better reflected in the writing; talking to a non-storyline NPC will draw from the same small pool of generic comments, evidenced by a Krocker remarking ‘I was scared when a Krocker came to our village’. Main characters fare a little better, but with such a fascinating world on display, not delving deeper into the lore feels like a missed opportunity. The main issue holding Pine back is poor communication. Tutorials are close to non-existent, a brief display of button prompts before pushing the player out to explore the world. This is particularly notable with the combat. If one is unfamiliar with the Dark Souls style of fighting, the two minutes spent explaining the concept is woefully insufficient. No options exist for sorting or storing inventory items, a big omission in a game focused on crafting. The map is hard to read, white icons upon a pale background with no key for the icons. Quest text is basic and, at times, confusing. With item-based quests, half the time the player will be given the item and the other half only the crafting recipe, with no clear distinction between the two. A significant patch dropped during the review process, which corrected some of the glitches and writing issues, so hopefully more of the same is on the way.

Steel Mantis Games is comprised of the tag-teaming talents of Andrew Gilmour (art and animation) and Thomas Jenns (programming and design). The duo saw a rocky start to their development careers with the release of Slain! back in 2016. Slain! was a critical flop, prompting a re-release a few months later as Slain: Back from Hell to much more success. Still, despite its excellent soundtrack and visuals, Back from Hell had plenty of flaws. Three years later, Steel Mantis has returned to right the ship with their newest heavy metal-infused platformer: Valfaris. Can Valfaris live up to its own epic soundtrack, and can it top the precedent set by Slain!? Either way, get ready to rip the galaxy a new wormhole. Daddy Issues Valfaris introduces the player to Therion and his AI assistant Hekate. Therion is a skull-rocking, head-banging, long-haired, bonafide badass who’s hell-bent on saving his home planet of Valfaris. The player soon discovers that Valfaris is ruled by Vroll, a tightfisted dictator whose reign has devolved the planet into civil war. Turns out Therion is Vroll’s son (understandable), and Therion must return to his home to uncover the truth of its doomed fate and challenge the arcane evil at its very heart. Oh yeah, and to kill his dad. Ultimately, despite the occasional off-handed comment from Therion, the narrative of Valfaris is nothing to write home about. In fact, I’m leaving the game with way more questions than I had coming in. We never really find out what happens to Vroll, or what he did to make Therion hate him. In fact, even upon the game’s completion, we’re met with little more than a bad cliffhanger. But then again, the story was never really meant to be the main draw of Valfaris. Like the 16-bit era that it takes influence from, Valfaris doesn’t need a gripping narrative to provide the player with motivation to explore. That motivation is instead guided by its kick-ass heavy metal soundtrack, hand-animated characters, and 16-bit vaporwave aesthetic. Valfaris does an excellent job of paying homage to games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Blackthorne, and Contra, all while feeling distinctly modern. Meeting a frame rate of 60fps even on my laptop, Valfaris is consistently smooth, responsive, and beautiful – regardless of what machine you play it on.

“Hear ye hear ye! Welcome to the city of Alluris traveler! I hope you’re prepared for an adventure unlike any you’ve ever seen! Baron Dread is amassing an army and no one here can be bothered to do anything about it! Good news for you I suppose. You get to take all the glory for yourself! I mean, you may die, but that would HARDLY be MY fault would it? Well, I take your silence as agreement. Now, there are many trials before you and no singular pathway to overcome this evil. But you will figure it out. I mean, if you don’t we’ll just send the next traveler who looks dumb enough to err uhmm, I mean, good luck traveler! We’re all counting on you!” Gameplay: You begin your journey on the roads outside the City of Alluris. Your goal is to travel the world, level up, and collect items, followers, and abilities until you can overcome Baron Dread and save Alluris. The game is played with the simple input of dragging cards left or right. However, the decisions you need to make can sometimes be everything but simple. Your options for dealing with a situation are dependent on your backstory, race, gender, or a prior decision you’ve made in the run. Unlock New Playstyles! As you explore the world, you’re bound to wander into something interesting. If you’re clever, you might achieve something great, and earn a new race or background to start as on your next run. These mutators can radically change how a play-through goes. They could make you awful at combat, but constantly showered with gold. Maybe you’ll start with access to places that would take entire runs to reach.