It becomes very quickly apparent that this isn’t a finished game. Apparently I met a travelling healer, who appeared in the form of a text box. Later enemies appear in teams of four, but there’s still only one of them on screen. You fight one at a time, and for some reason have no access to your inventory during battles, so can’t use potions and so on. And I’ve yet to figure out how to equip a torch. The party member who had them is now dead, but none of the others appear willing to hold them. The same goes for many items. Goodness, this is an odd thing.
It feels like an early prototype. On the second floor you “meet” an elderly lady, asking for a torch. (A text dialogue in an empty corridor.) Agree to let her have one and you’ll gain 300XP. Although on my second time attempting this, it let me give her all my torches, 300XP a time. (Although XP is so poorly balanced that you need 4000 to get all four to level 2, with the average kill getting you 80.) Chests and doors are locked, and sometimes you can open them, sometimes you can’t, but I’ve yet to encounter a key. I guess it maybe has something to do with killing enemies, but since they spawn at random, and there’s no sign of loot, it’s hard to square it up.
Early on the second level there’s an attack by the exact same group of goblins you’ve only encountered so far, that finishes with a surprise (sorry!) goblin shaman. She is, so far as I can tell, impervious to all attacks but for magical ones. And since you’ll have just fought three other goblins, aren’t allowed to heal or restore mana during battles, the chances are your single magic flinger isn’t going to be capable of taking her out while the rest of your team is brutally slaughtered as they haplessly swing missing attacks around her. (And let’s be clear, there’s no actual swinging – just a “swoosh” sound effect. Although, hey, a sound effect!) After dying three times to her, and restarting twice to see if I was missing anything, I was then left resorting to clicking on the “Wait for monster” button, to line up a string of dreary goblins in an effort to see whether level 2 might make a difference.
And then I gave up. 20XP each for each kill, 375 to go, nothing else to do. I’d be out of healing and mana potions before I got close. And I read that there’s no choice when you do finally level up. And that’s where I stopped. On the second floor. I’ve read that others have finished the game in two hours. Congratulations to them, and their patience. I’ve wrestled with it for about that long, and it’s a shell. There’s no map, which is true to the era it echoes, but remains frustrating. There’s no sense of movement, and secrets are unmarked walls you can just walk through, meaning the blipping transitions are extremely confusing. If there’s a way to rest, I’ve not found it.
It’s very odd that this isn’t in Early Access, and appeals on the Steam forums for information on updates have not been responded to. It’s
£7 on Steam, but I would widely avoid.
