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събота, 26 август 2017 г.

Pyre - Is basketball a ritual?



In the Commonwealth everyone live happily together. Different races, but no hate and no discrimination. Or at least it sounds like that, but if so why people are send to the Downside into an exile? This and many other question appear during the game and some are even answered, others not and the answers of third create even more questions.

The Story, The World, The Characters

You awake in a dessert like area and hear voices around you. Other exiles. Your first companions. But who are you? Why you are the soon to become Reader or the Reader of this band of exiles. Readers are people who, despite of it being forbidden, learn to read. Not clear does they learn to read in general or read only special books, but as a Reader you are the one who will command the team during the Rites. You have no other name than Reader and you have no face. Everything is shown like you are seeing it first person through your own eyes. Which is great touch, because Pyre in many ways is a personal experience. For both you as a Reader and for your companions.



After you have enough strength your companions explain to you who they are (The Nightwings), where are you and ask you to become their Reader. Becoming part of the Nightwings is the first step toward regaining your freedom. Or what you thought is freedom. This is a spoiler to some degree, but may be one of the most precious things about Pyre is its musing about freedom and what it is, and how the player sees it. But that I will leave to you, to discover in more details. Back to your objective in the game. To have the chance to return to the Commonwealth you have to take part in Rites and defeat the opposing teams. Do this enough times and you will return to civilization. Before speaking about the Rites though I like to mention few things about the world and the characters you meet.



In Pyre you will move between nodes in the area you currently are. Usually you will have a choice which way you to go and there are slight differences between what will happen and what you will find there. You might want to choose carefully though as you will not be able to come back soon and visit the places you missed. The way traveling happens is one of my biggest problems I had with the game. Nothing happens while you travel. You just travel from point A to point B and that is. Truly the surrounding world is beautifully drawn with great amount of detail, bright colors and imagination, but the pure uneventfulness of traveling make it tedious and boring. It felt like a missed opportunity. To me the only good thing which came from those travels (other than the beautiful world and amazing, amazing music!!!) are the dialogues with the other characters. These are one of the two sources of lore and information about the world. And as someone who loves delving into game lore those were great.

Speaking about the characters...

Because all the characters you meet are part of the story and I hold pride in my fairly spoilerless ( it is a word now) reviews let me tell you how the creatures you meet fit in the world. The world of Pyre is colorful and a bit quirky, but at the same time serious and a bit gloomy. Its residents are the same. You will meet speaking dogs, sentient trees and demons as well as many others weird creatures, but all of them have their own tragedy, their personal story and reason why they should be the ones who are going back to the Commonwealth. Each character is distinctive and well-built with their own specific temper and drives. But other than lore source and something to talk with, the characters you meet will also be your adversaries or your teammates in the Rites. And this brings us to the most controversial part of the game - The Rites.



It is ceremonial basketball 

The Rites are the action part of Pyre. They are your objective and your sole purpose. They are the way to return to the Commonwealth. But only if you win enough of them.  During a Rite two teams of three characters meet in an arena. Each team has a pyre at certain health. In the middle is dropped a fallen star which you should bring into the pyre of your opponents effectively quenching their pyre until you extinguish it. Your adversaries are trying to do the same. 

All the characters you have managed to convince to come with you will form your rooster and after you have more than three, before each match you will have to pick a team. Each character has a special ability and is useful in a team. Some are small and fast and hard to intercept, others fly, some are big and stompy, but slow, etc. There is something for each style of play and each is viable. Aside from special abilities each character can jump, dash (in some form) and release his aura (in some form again) to damage enemies. Each character, depending on their size, deal different amount of damage to the enemy pyre. 



Now I said this is the most controversial part of the game. What I mean? The Rites are interesting to play especially against some harder opponents and it is satisfying when you win or when you turn around a Rite, but...it did not feel ceremonial to me. It did not feel like a Rite. It felt like a sport match. Fun, but not in the right game...

Conclusion

Pyre bears many of the Supergiant's typical characteristics. Great music, good atmosphere, interesting story (reminded me a bit of “Fahrenheit 451”), looks gorgeous and alive. At the same time it is not on par with Transistor or with Bastion. It felt a bit repetitive and on rails. True, the world opens up a little after certain point, bit it turns into a grind basically which is bearable only because more lore is revealed during this part. On another hand it is a short game with its 12-15 hours length. 
The strangest part? I loved it. I did not like some things, but the more I played Pyre the more I liked it and I do not know why or how it happened. I guess Supergiant is Supergiant after all.

Where to find:




четвъртък, 3 август 2017 г.

Kingsway - Is this the dream operating system?




Kingsway is a roguelike game, coming from Adult Swim and Andrew Morrish. The game did not look like that much to me, but it made some noise so I decided to try it and see what all the ruckus is about.



This Good old Roguelike is...


The game starts pretty standard - you choose a face for your character, class(warrior, rogue, wizard, beastman(the exact name escapes me) ), name and you are ready to go. Kingsway take place on the map of the world and you will move between nodes on it. Even if you enter a dungeon the movement system remains the same. While moving between nodes you will have the chance to have an encounter. Either with another wanderer which will give you some options to interact with him or you will encounter a monster. When the encounter is finished and you are not dead(which might happen with both types of encounters) you continue to your destination. Your goal lies to the East and while nothing stops you to rush to there, you will probably die if you try to. And while on the topic if you die you are death for good(for bad I guess, but...), but you can leave something for your next character who is brave enough to venture into Kingsway. 

Kingsway is so rouguelike-ish that even its graphics are in retro pixel style.





 ...not like the others?


If you want your game to be seen and people to talk about it(which Kingsway managed) you need to do something if not unique at least different enough. The different about Kingsway is that it is like an OS. Yes, you read that right. Everything is happening in windows on the desktop of a retro OS. Your Inventory is a folder, Start menu is the Main Menu of the game, your quests come as e-mails, progress while traveling and attacking is shown with loading bars, etc. And you can open all these helpful windows all at the same time and just put them around the map or order them in any way you want on your desktop effectively ordering the UI of the game in the most comfortable for you way. 




But the most interesting part is the battles. When you encounter an enemy he will pop up on your desktop into a separate window with a picture of the monster and your skills as buttons at the bottom. Here comes the tricky part - the monster window unlike any other windows will not stay stationary letting you choose skills and hit the monster. Oooh, no..it will move and bounce around making it really hard for you to click that skill button and because that is not enough some enemies and traps will throw projectiles at you which in their turn will pop up in little moving windows with "avoid" button on them and you will have to click it if you do not want to get hit. It is really, really chaotic and tough. It takes more than little to get good at this game.






Conclusion


While the fighting mechanic is unique indeed and there are huge amounts of nostalgia with its pixel graphic style and retro OS-like environment, Kingsway has nothing much else to offer.You make a character, make a run find cool items, reach fairly far, you die. Rinse and repeat. Now do not get me wrong all roguelikes are like that and I like the genre as I have said many times. It is just that the game did not seemed that different or original to me. It felt like any other(good) roguelike out there. That may be good thing or not, depending on what you are looking for. 

Where to find:

Official site
Steam Store
GoG
Humble Store