Recent reviews by fleeb

This game provides a flexible combat system with challenge tailored to your liking through a carefully crafted customization system. The loot keeps dropping as you play it... allowing you to improve your character's skills the longer you play. And it has many synergies with which to experiment and play. Its art style feels intentionally designed to allow focus on the gameplay, a good choice for something of this genre; don't expect gob-smacking AAAA-grade graphics out of this, but the choices made do not distract one from enjoying this game. Amazing that one developer created this. Good job!

If you like a dark, folklore-ish aesthetic involving witches and earth magics, and you don't mind a bit of jank, this game offers a nice, cozy sort of gameplay you might want to try.

I've gone past the second chapter, effectively completing what amounts to a sort of tutorial, without experiencing combat. I suppose one could say this game feels much like an educational dive into ethnic folklore, spoken as if the the tales are as real and literal as daily life.

This game offers quite a lot, and the developers take their work seriously, in my view. Steam Deck and Linux players had a difficult-to-resolve problem, but the team stuck it out over a weekend to resolve it... which impresses me, given how rarely developers focus on issues that concern Linux users. The game itself is fun, offering a variety of combat ranging from melee, sniping, or gunfire to ship-to-ship combat. It offers base-building and crafting mechanics in an easily-accessible package. Its clear-the-darkness mechanics seem pretty interesting to me, and offers an extra challenge to the overall gameplay. It's quest system is light at the moment, but serviceable. I feel the game has earned my money.

I wholeheartedly recommend this game. It's an absolute blast to play, despite its not-quite-complete state. Gain skill competency in a wide variety of areas ranging from climbing and running to druidism and pyromancy. My first character fights unarmed, leaping from hill to hill, delivering justice from above. I'm very likely to try other combinations of skills. Well put together, I sincerely hope they can reach their goals in this game.

I enjoy playing this game, and although I do recommend it, I also think you have to approach it with an open mind to best enjoy it.

The game uses an old-school ASWD movement system rather than the point-n-click that many people are used to. There are benefits and drawbacks to this system, but I think some people in their reviews don't quite see the benefit and pan the game accordingly. Personally, I favor what they did; you use your movement keys to position yourself away from where a mob's attack is telegraphed, and use your mouse to position where you wish to attack (with a click or a press of a skill key). It can feel very intuitive, this approach.

There is, however, something... off... that I think folks feel but fail to express very well. I can't quite put my finger on it, either. People use the term 'janky', but that does a poor job of describing, specifically, the issue. Neither combat nor movement is janky; you issue the command, and the command goes off. The characters do what you tell them to do, and the timing is predictable. But... there is something peculiar about the timing, despite its predictability. It's like there's something off with the animation resolution (time between key frames in an animation) that feels strange. But even that doesn't quite feel like the right way to express it. Or maybe it's a bit odd to figure out where your mouse is pointing when you click to attack? Maybe I can figure it out and express it better later.

I think the graphics are good, although not amazing. They use effects well for its style, but character customization does feel a trifle limiting. You get the sense that the developers focused more on game play than ornamentation. I haven't seen any obvious glitches... certainly nothing as terrible as what you'd see playing any of the various games people created in Gary's Mod.

I've seen reviews complaining about not being able to see items in the map; the developers added a way to highlight interactable items on the map by holding down the ALT key, so I don't think that's as much of an issue anymore.

The developers added a way to play the game offline in single-person mode, although you cannot use the same characters in that mode as your online-mode... perhaps to prevent someone cheating from making online players miserable. I can see where this might annoy some players; your internet connection dies, and you want to play offline, but you're forced to play with some other character than the one you'd been working on. On the other hand, as currently designed, you aren't playing with random players; you know if you're playing with a cheater. So, if that's the reason behind this choice, I am not sure I understand it.

As best as I can tell, if one wants to play cooperatively online, one must have friends who themselves own the game. There isn't a sort of matchmaking find-someone-like-yourself sort of option available, nor a way to indicate 'yeah, start the game, and let randos around my level find me'. But neither are you forced to endure random players jumping in... you know who you're playing with.

This game has a crafting system that looks like it can get pretty involved, but maybe not in an overly distracting way. I haven't gotten deeply into into things to get a good feel for where the crafting will go, but the game is designed in a way where you must craft what you will use. I have not experienced a mob dropping a +100 Hammer Of Amazing, or a Propeller Cap of Insomnia, that your character can use; instead, they may drop components that you may then use to craft something... or you might have to skin the opponent after killing them to get a component to use in crafting. You also find components within the map, harvesting them as needed using any of the tools you can craft for that purpose.

There's a sort of skill tree, but it unlocks what you may craft. The items you craft unlock the skills you may use. There's something else, but I haven't made it far enough into the game to really get it yet... some sort of additional kind of skill (maybe passive?) that you can also unlock, but I am not yet sure how.

To me, the combat is satisfying. To wisely fight creatures, you often need to move around the playfield. This is not the sort of game where you sit in one place and spam skill keys, if you want to play it most effectively. Movement helps prevent you from taking as much damage, while using your mouse to aim at the mobs before you strike with the skill you want to use provides a sense of strategy to the overall combat. Mobs telegraph where they plan to strike, and you move away to avoid being hit. Sometimes, you have enough time to move out of the way... sometimes you don't. Or, you might use a skill that moves you out of the way more quickly if it isn't on cooldown. You may need to learn the mob's attack patterns to most effectively use your skills.

So, yeah, the game play is a bit unique, and you may need to approach this with an open mind. The developers seem to be listening, even if they aren't such a large studio that they can move at the drop of a dime. Is it fun? For me, yes. Perhaps for you, too, but you might not know until you give it a shot, given some of the more unique approaches this game takes. I like what they've done, and it feels clear to me that they put quite a bit more into this than some of these reviews would have you believe.

I never read any of the Harry Potter books, and therefore approach this game entirely on its own merits as a game.

I find the graphics well polished, and the gameplay delightful. One feels a sense of wonder as you see every tiny aesthetic detail meticulously carried out in this game helps you to feel immersed in its lore. That it works as well as it does on a Linux OS only increases its value in my mind.

There are the many occasions, though, where one feels magically transported to the desktop of their computer, when they expected a different location entirely.

I have had a blast with this game. Both on the Deck and PC, this game combines a kind of simple set of controls with a satisfying series of attacks that just helps you blow off a lot of steam at the end of a day. It has just enough depth to keep it interesting and engaging as well. Strongly recommend giving this a try!

If, like me, you play games on Linux, you may need to give this game a pass. If you want to play this game with others on a hosted world, you might also want to give this game a pass., unless you don't mind the hell of setting up Windows in the cloud.

Since the release of their Definitive Edition, the game no longer works on Linux. And I guess that it doesn't work on MacOS, either, from what I've read elsewhere.

I well understand the reasons they have provided for moving to a host-your-own-service model, but... erm... I question the wisdom of requiring Windows to do this; individuals who want to set up a machine in the cloud to host their world can't use an affordable operating system... they have to go to the added expense of using WIndows. I view this as a non-starter (and not just because I prefer Linux, but because it's an arbitrary expense to expect people to install Windows In The Cloud and endure that annoying licensing nonsense).

And it's especially frustrating that their Migration tool also only works on Windows, with no obvious option to perhaps download your target world to your own drive for some hopeful day that they might support Linux.

EDIT:

The client, at least, works on LInux now. I haven't investigating if the server can run on Linux or not, but I would assume it can, at least through a compatibility layer or some kind.

If that assumption is true, I recommend the game, as it is fun when you can run it.

The seemingly infinite combinations from the various pickups changes the nature of this arcade shooter each time you play it. Different worlds with their respective idiosyncrasies, combined with hidden gems here and there add depth to an already deep game that never bores you. Try different survivors (characters) to play from another angle. There's quite a lot to this game, yet despite the deep mechanics, the controls themselves are surprisingly simple.

I highly recommend this game.

This game has an unusually well crafted blend of building, crafting, farming, and combat in an open-world setting. Clearly a labor of love, you ought to give this game a shot.