Once upon a time, when I was a member of forums and had a community I felt at home with (sort of), I enjoyed creating or participating in mid-year review discussions and evaluations as June gave way to July. By then E3 would be over, many of us would have had an opportunity to catch up on some older titles we fell behind on, and the releases ahead would be etched more clearly in stone and intimidating for our wallets.
Now that I am no longer a part of a forum and am looking to plaster some content onto this blog while I prepare more interesting works, I figured it’s as good a time as any to look back on what I’ve enjoyed most this year, what’s looming ahead, and how I’m generally feeling as a content creator. It might be a bit of a long read, but hopefully it’s varied and interesting enough to keep your attention.
This year has been a rather interesting one, so let’s waste no time in kicking things off.
I’m not sure the top-down hack-and-slash is quite for me. Perhaps if they took greater inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but these games tend to go for something else (and, more often than not, it’s that “Souls-like” tag on Steam). I cannot say that There Is No Light is without promise, but there’s just something about it that failed to hook me.
The narrative establishes plenty of intrigue and curiosity, for sure. There’s something going on in this post-apocalyptic world where humans live underground, an oppressive theocracy enforces its rules, and children are gladly offered up to a faceless, hand-shaped creature revered as a god. A horrific creature resembling a reaper and plague doctor combined has saved our protagonist and given him powers to combat this supposed god, though this supernatural Industrial Metal mascot keeps his reasons closely guarded. Narratively, there’s definitely a hook.
The combat is what gives me pause. It seems the primary gimmick is to wait until an enemy is preparing an attack before striking out and interrupting them while they’re vulnerable. The nature of enemy mobs makes such a strategy more difficult to pull off than I’m sure is intended, and as such it’s easier to just dodge, strike once, dodge away again, strike once more, and so on. Guerilla-style hit-and-run tactics are far more effective than attempting the game’s far more risky mechanics. There’s also a meter you can build up to unleash an ability, potentially releasing a health gem that will heal the player once shattered. The problem is that, even with a successful interruption, foes rarely seem vulnerable enough to make filling up that bar and unleashing an ability possible without suffering even more damage. The timing is incredibly tight and the risk-reward balances far more on the “risk” category.
Or, perhaps, I’m just not very good at the game. The top down nature also made it difficult to determine where certain hit boxes were, whether they were based on the x-axis or y. Nonetheless, it was still an enjoyable enough experience with an intriguing narrative hook. It would not be the worst of the demos I’ve played, for certain. When surrounded by the promising games that had a far more enthusiastic response, however, it suffers the misfortune of seeming to lack the special ingredient each of those titles possessed.
Nonetheless, I may keep an eye out to see what shape the finished product is in. If another demo is released, I would likely check it out and see if they managed to tweak or polish the mechanics a bit further.
There are a lot of game comparisons that came to mind when I booted up Ghost Song, each of them undoubtedly a source of inspiration. Metroid, Dark Souls, Hollow Knight; be it mechanically or atmospherically, I could tell each of these titles was informing the design of Ghost Song. However, it is the best kind of influence, for while I was reminded of each of those games, the mechanics and gameplay possess their own unique feel and atmosphere. It feels more unique and individualistic despite that combination of familiar inspirations.
I think much of this comes from the game’s combat, which is more slow and methodical due to both the enemy health pools and the protagonist’s arm cannon overheating. While the player’s rate of fire is at first rapid, it slows down as the cannon grows hot. However, that smoldering red gun barrel becomes a more powerful melee weapon, applying greater damage when striking a close-quarters blow. This developed a sort of careful rhythm to the game’s combat, where you’d focus your rapid fire on one or two enemies before carefully beating another one or two to death with the sizzling hot metal of your gun.
Checking the current feedback for the demo, it seems there are a number of complaints regarding how long it takes to kill foes. I have mixed feelings, as I am certainly not a fan of damage sponges soaking up so much weapons fire. At the same time, without those sponges, there would be no need to vary up your tactics between projectile and close-quarters melee. The demo also barely gives a taste of the modules scattered about the game world, providing the player with additional secondary fire and other boons and bonuses to customize their play style. Perhaps it would be more prudent to modify some enemy health pools while leaving others as they are, working with a scalpel instead of a chainsaw.
My only complaint was getting stuck at one point, though it’s partially my own fault for not experimenting. The dash ability the player unlocks can also be used in mid-air, though I never thought to attempt such a thing. For some reason I had assumed I could only use it while grounded, and thus found myself wandering around for several minutes without a sense of where to go. A single, additional line of information being added to the in-game explanation of the upgrade could fix any potential confusion, however.
Otherwise, Ghost Song is currently one of my favorite games to have played this Next Fest, and I was eager to venture deeper into its depths when I had reached the demo’s end.
Last year I did not get to properly take part in Steam Next Fest, a veritable buffet of in-development indie games featuring a slew of playable demos. Part of the problem was my lacking awareness of the time limit; you only have so long before the demos become inaccessible. As a result, I have endeavored this year to set time aside to try over a dozen demos that captured my interest. Over the next few days I’ll be writing my impressions of each demo I played within the available time frame.
Note that this is not necessarily a recommendations list. While I came away feeling positive about most of the games I played, there were a few I bounced off of pretty quickly. The interest here is more in sharing my experiences with the different games I tried so that you, personally, can decide if you’d like to keep your eye on that particular title or not.
As can be expected, this series will be divided across several posts throughout this week. Please look forward to following along, and feel free to leave a comment beneath if you happened to try one of these games out yourself.
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