The default keyboard controls are awful. Movement is WASD-but-not in that there is no “up”, instead the space bar is set to jump. A/D are Left/Right and S is down but only functional when you’re on a bridge. You have three weapons, a Bow with infinite arrows, an Axe, and a Whip. These are default bound to the Left, Down, and Up arrow keys for some reason. I tried playing with keyboard controls for about 5 minutes before I switched to an Xbox 360 controller and things were immediately more comfortable: Left Analog for movement, A for Jump, X for Bow, Y for Whip, and B for Axe.
Endorlight is currently billed as an Early Access game, and it shows. Currently the main menu announces it’s an “Almost Beta Build” which give you a good idea of how much is successfully implemented. I’ve only had a couple of crashes, but there’s no bug reporting system built into the game. The level design is pretty limited; aside from the boss room I’ve only seen three level designs: brown, green, and red, and each has a very repetitive soundtrack. Level 1 is always brown, Level 2 is always green, and Levels 3 and 4 are always red. The 5th level is the boss room, and the 6th level has been red or green about an equal amount of times. I haven’t made it past Level 6.
The level design is pseudorandomly generated and doesn't have very good checks. I'm trapped in this pit.
This poor bastard is trapped forever.
Heart powerups are sometimes available in a level, but it does not remain between levels so they're fairly useless.
At about 90 minutes in I started to feel the Stockholm Syndrome take hold. The game is pretty fast paced, and as a Rogue-like you expect to die fairly often so when you do the game puts you back on the main menu with no fanfare or Game Over screen, ready for you to take another hit. However, it’s kind of like going back for thirds at the buffet, you have to wonder if it’s really a good idea.
One thing I do like are the destruction noises. There are bottles, treasure chests, and boxes to destroy for gold or a possible bomb and they each sound distinct and fun to break. The enemies as yet do not make any noise in life or in death, but since this is an Early Access I suspect that is something that will be put in later.
As it stands right now I absolutely cannot recommend this game. It’s in Early Access so you should already avoid it, and by its own admission it’s not even in Beta yet so by my understanding of the software development process they’re not done implementing the features they want in the game. The gameplay is repetitive and there’s no story to connect the levels, as I mentioned before you don’t even keep your heart upgrades.
If you want to play this game with better graphics, better randomly generated levels, upgradable weapons and armor, and the ability to warp to later levels, go find Devious Dungeon either on a phone or tablet, or through an Android Emulator. Endorlight is currently awful and does a poor job of copying it, only get it if you can for free like I did or if you desperately need to buy every game on Steam that’s under $5.
No comments:
Post a Comment