DaytimeDreamer
Southern Pounce.,
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2005
- Posts
- 747
Have you played "The Last Door?" This is HD by comparison.
Ok just saw the game. Hipster game of the year?! Holy shit at that pixel size, WTF seriously.
Have you played "The Last Door?" This is HD by comparison.
Nice. Thanks for the bump. Been looking forward to it.Pardon the necro but this title is a week away from release (Sept.10). Really looking forward to a day-one Switch purchase if there are no delays in arrival!
Can I call it now and say that our hero's name is Drilldo? Like... a drill dildo?
I think I'll just wait to give my money until the game is actually out. I hated Salt and Sanctuary and disliked Slain, and both of those games promised me a lot more than they delivered on.
Another anti-christian game, another tired cliche.
I wish I knew how to make games
or just think one up and it would come true
I would make a game called Falling
you are falling into a pit, probably at the bottom of which would be hell, but you don't know so you try to survive just in case.
along the way you have all kind of shit try to rip you apart and you have to dodge, bounce, deflect and fight your way through.
Falling - release date 00/00/00
Can't tell if serious, or sarcastically referencing this:
Tried to download the demo but I guess they pulled it. It said it was available until the 4th and I was on my PC around 6pm. Couldn't find a link on steam or externally.The demo is available on steam. I played it. It's more sotn than souls like. The animation and art are amazing but I dunno I wasn't blown away. That said, I'll probably still pick it up.
Tried to download the demo but I guess they pulled it. It said it was available until the 4th and I was on my PC around 6pm. Couldn't find a link on steam or externally.
Ah well, few more days.
Okay, so I may have to do this one as a running commentary of my experiences. But unlike Dead Island, which I did for laughs and out of frustration stemming from the game's unevenness, this one may be vastly more satisfying to me
Right off the bat, the game drops you into a world teetering on the brink of oblivion. It's not our world, as far as I can tell, but one very similar to Europe in the middle ages during the worst months of the Great Mortality (black plague).
Religion is, as expected, the driving theme behind the narrative. As with Christians in the middle ages and even some sects of Buddhism in feudal Japan, one's devotion to their faith is equal parts pursuit of bliss and acceptance of eternal suffering. Life is punishment and pain meant to be endured as a means of measuring and testing one's own resolve in their faith and spirituality.
I don't consider the game 'anti-religious', specifically, but more an examination of what it means to have faith. Spiritual people believe that the baseline for human existence is suffering that must be overcome, and this interpretation of faith is, at this point in the game, a representation of that balance.
For example, what few people remain in the first village of Alhero are wallowing in the muddy streets outside the rotted wood structures they might have once called home. It's clear that these last few who haven't either died or left in the hopes of finding greener pastures are clinging to the belief that something better is coming. Once again, that duality of suffering leading to salvation by way of sacrifice. It's a compelling philosophical theme, and so far the grim aesthetic of the game serves it well.
There is a small group of priests and nuns giving what healing they can but they lack in supplies and ask you to bring them anything that may be used to cure the sick and injured. Charity is also a tenet of spiritual faiths, a sort of karmic belief in reward for struggling for a sense of meaning in this life.
In short, the themes are off to a pretty great start.
One aspect of the lore is that there is a fear that god has abandoned them to this fate, a common anxiety shared by many people in austere societies on the brink of total anarchy resulting from mass death. This, I am sure, will be explored in greater detail in the game's many environments and bosses. Could it be that the virtue of the almighty jBlasphemous is dependent on the faith of the masses? And if people are dying and those that survive are privately resentful, does that mean that their corrupted belief structure is the cause that effects a corrupted diving being? We shall see.
In terms of the overall aesthetic, it's a cross between Dark Souls, Diablo and Ingmar Bergman's film The Seventh Seal, where the sacred has become so subverted as to almost be profane (i.e., Jons' conversation with the painter in the chapel early on in the film). The world wants you to lose faith in your cause by presenting so much of what should be benevolent as sacrilegious. It's easy to understand how, in such a world, the only ones that can hang on to their conviction are the most devout and the most desperate; everyone in between is a coward or a survivor hanging on by a thread.
That's enough about the art direction, which so far is top notch.
The graphics are glorious, highly detailed and demented genius. This is the kind of twisted world I dreamed about exploring in the heyday of the SNES. The animations are fluid and with sharply contrasted pixel shades to help give the environments a greater degree of depth and personality. I'm glad this is 2D sprite art; the abstract presentation helps you visualize the world on your own terms, akin to the older Final Fantasy games. The enemies are all grotesque and mortifying and all seem to represent some kind of ultimate failure of human consciousness or ideal. Fans of Berserk and Dark Souls will know what I'm driving at here.
As for the mechanics, they are deliberate and methodical as with Dark Souls but the character progression is more SotN. It's a combat engine built on anticipation and counter strikes, and the more abilities you unlock, the more varied the combat becomes.
There is an item equip mechanic that allows for customization based on your preferred play style There is a rosary screen where you can attach different beads, with each one having its own effect so I imagine you can build whatever you want.
There is a spell system, of sorts, and each of the spells has its own effects and capabilities for further customization.
So far, the game's character progression seems to be more item based than anything else.
With your XP, you can 'upgrade your weapon', which is a way to unlock new attacks. There is no overall character level, which truly makes this game a merging of dark fantasy aesthetics with hardcore simplified enhancement.
There is a penalty for death in having to go back and retrieve lost XP/currency, a la the Souls series. But rather than seeing this as derivative of Dark Souls, I feel like it's more of a reflection of how that series has altered game development when it comes to games of this type.
Enough for now. More to come.
I had backed this and actually participated in the alpha and beta, and gave feedback based on those experiences. I'm hooked on the lore that's been created here, and I'm a sucker for occult and religious based lore and stories and as Taiso mentioned, it delivers on that front in spades. I like the combat and it's deliberateness, and the controls feel tight and responsive (with the exception of the downward thrust which always seems to go into a sword swing before actually triggering).
I only gave it a go for a bit last night after OT, so I'm looking forward to the deep dive this weekend. Between Blasphemous and Children of Morta, I'm set for the next little while.
Did you get digital materials with your pledge? I am REALLY interested in looking through the digital art book. Some of the monster and environment designs are mind blowing in their concept, proof and application.