To one who'll stand and fight - A Valley without Wind 2

So, a few weeks ago I reviewed A Valley without Wind (readable here). In that review, I mentioned how the game had a bit of a troubled development, seeing the game undergo many changes leading up until release. This went so far as to see the game still receiving changes after release, eventually reached a point where Arcen decided to do the following: They were going to take a lot of the ideas and improvements they had in mind for the game and use it to make a sequel instead. This sequel would then be sold in a bundle with the original game and this would be the only way to buy the games, they would not be available separately. Finally, to be fair to all the early adopters and those who brought the game before the sequel came out. The sequel would be given to these people free of charge.

That brings us  to where we are now, so how did the game turn out?

A Valley Without Wind 2 takes place in the same setting as a Valley Without Wind. A world named Environ where reality has shattered, resulting in a strange world made of various places form different time periods. A valley without wind 2 however, only takes place on a single continent and introduces a twist to the set up. The Ilari, strange living stones that help guard humanity and the glyph bearers never showed up on this continent. Worse yet The resident overlord, Demonaica has an Oblivion Stone, making him and his followers functionally immortal. Fortunately, your character is part of a resistance effort that's managed to get into Demonaica's ranks and get an oblivion stone themselves, giving you a chance to fight back and hopefully take down Demonaica for good.

Again like in the last game, this is mostly an excuse for the gameplay, but it's still a fairly unique setup.

You know you've got a bad job when it's only your first day, and you're already plotting to kill your boss.

At it's core, A Valley Without Wind 2's gameplay is very similar to the first game, you explore a randomly generated 2D world, pushing back windstorms and gathering things to strengthen your character. Although compared to the first game, things are far more focused. Each tile on the world map only has one map to play through, and there's far less in the way of side areas. As a result each area feels more like a level in a traditional platform game rather than a large open area to explore. Each area also has an obvious goal, usually taking down the wind generator at the end of the level, though some special locations give you bosses to fight or terminals to hack.

Also gone form the game are the random spells and enchantments. Instead, your character can pick a class from a random list, split into 5 tiers that decides what spells they have access to. There are a lot of classes in the game, about 50 and which ones you get to pick are randomized each time. Not only will you not see the same classes every game, but they'll be put in random tiers each time, meaning a weak tier 1 class one game could end up a tier 5 in the next. There's also equipment, which gives various bonuses and sometimes penalties like less movement speed in return for extra attack damage but you can only have one piece of equipment at a time and it breaks after you take enough damage, so it's not as big a deal as enchantments were in the last game.

Missions have also been removed from the game. Instead the game has special locations you can visit going to these places and completing the levels there awards you with various things. Windmills for example, level up your character, giving them access to more perks. There's also caverns, which give perk tokens, unlocking more perks to pick form when you level up, which give small bonuses like extra health or movement speed. finally there's robotic research facilities which give feats, which unlock special abilities like double jumping or the ability to shrink to fit through small spaces.

instead of finding random spells, you pick mage classes, like the ones shown here.

A new addition to the game is your resistance, unlike the last game where you had a single, protected colony, here you have resistance members, these members can be ordered around on the overworld and can do things like gathering food and scrap, building new buildings (which costs scrap), like farms, shelters and clinics and recruiting new members found on the world map. You're not really building a permanent settlement in this game, as structures can be destroyed and your resistance members will constantly need to move to either to other things or get away from danger. Instead structures are more of a temporary solution. You build them, get as much use from them as you can, then abandon them once things get too dangerous.

Speaking of danger, your main problem in the game is Demonaica himself. The overworld is turn based, with a turn passing every time you destroy a wind generator and purify some more land. as turns pass, monsters will come out of Demonaica's keep to attack your resistance members and destroy structures. and your resistance members have to deal with them, you can't just go fight them yourself. Eventually Demonaica himself will emerge and he's quite nasty, not only does he summon more monsters and cast spells like blizzards over the landscape. He's invincible, and will instantly kill any resistance member he encounters. You lose the game if all of your resistance members die, so it's in your best interest to hurry on doing what you need to beat the game once he shows up.

You can issue orders on the world map, but ultimately it's up to your resistance members to get things done.

A Valley without Wind 2's graphics are a major improvement over the first game. This time, Arcen handed the job of graphics over to Heavy Cat Studios and they came up with a nice, hand drawn graphics style. A lot of enemies form the first game have been given a new look. Environments look more distinct from each other, with more detailed tiles and backgrounds, characters are more detailed and better animated overall and everything works together, rather than oddly clashing like in the first game. Where the fist game could be downright ugly, this is a major improvement.

The game also has a pretty sizable soundtrack, though notable it doesn't sue much if any chiptune this time. A lot of the tracks are remixes and rearrangements of stuff from the first game, and it all sounds better for it, of particular note is the game's title track "to one Who'll Stand and fight" It's somewhat rare you get a vocal track in in an indie game, and it's also one of the first times Arcen games included one. Though it would become something of a tradition for them, with a lot of their later games including at least one vocal track. overall the soundtrack is very nice, though again I don't think the soundtrack on Bandcamp is the complete soundtrack.

Graphics are much nicer this time around, and the assets work nicely together.

In playing the game I did encounter one notable flaw: The game would pause for a few brief moments whenever the games music had to change or restart. it was annoying, but didn't cause me to much trouble. In reality, the games biggest flaw is more about preference. You see, A Vally Without Wind 2 fixes a lot of things, but for every thing they fixed it seems something had to be taken away. Mage classes allowed for a much better control scheme, especially for gamepad users, but less freedom in developing your character. Level design is much cleaner and better focused, but there's much less exploration. Fighting Demonaica and his followers gives the game a clear goal and much better direction overall, but the game is no longer endless, in fact, you can lose now, and is no longer a sandbox. While I'd argue the game is better overall, I can understand people preferring some of the features of the original game despite it's flaws

Overall, A lot of what I said about the first game applies to the second: If you can handle some of it's stranger ideas, A Vally Without Wind 2 offers a massive amount of replayability. That said, while it has to drop a lot of stuff to do so, the sequel cleans up a lot of the first game's rough edges and is far more accessable as a result. That said, the two game come bundled together so if you're getting one game, you'll have the other and as well give it a shot while you're at it.

A Valley Without Wind 2 developed and published by Arcen Games, LLC. It is available on Steam. It's homepage, which includes a direct purchasing option and demo is available here. It's soundtrack is available on Bandcamp.

Bigger, Better, Baaader - Escape Goat 2

So, way back in October of 2014, I reviewed Escape Goat, which you can read here, finding it to be a short but very fun puzzle platformer with an awesome soundtrack. I also mentioned the sequel and said I might get to reviewing it at some point. Well it took longer than it probably should have, but here we are. So, how does the sequel stack up?

Escape Goat 2 has the same basic setup as the last game. You're a purple goat, who has to explore a stronghold, solving puzzles and avoiding obstacles to rescue sheep. The first thing you're likely to notice is the map system. Instead of a single hub to select which area you want to go like in the first game, there's a map that shows all of the levels you can go to. with more areas unlocking as you clear previous ones. It's better laid out than the old hub as you can readily jump to any level you have unlocked though the map, rather than skipping through levels like in the previous game, and the roughly vertical layout of the map, along with numbering each area gives a better indication of how hard any given area is with stages getting harder the further up you go.

Another major change is that while levels all still fit within a single screen, the actual size of a level is now somewhat variable, with the game's view zooming in or out to accommodate. This allows for a bit more variety in level design, as the game can close in for small, tightly packed levels, or zoom out for larger, more complicated ones, and there's a good number of both to go around.

Some levels, like this one, are a bit smaller than the others, so the game zooms things in to compensate

Much like last time, the stages are heavily mechanical, full of moving parts, switches, conveyor belts and other things you'll have to manipulate or work around. Stages are a lot more complicated this time around, as while manipulating a level's layout is still a big part of solving puzzles, there's also a little more emphasis on how things interact with each other, as puzzles might require you to move blocks to help reposition an enemy or get a barrel into place. As another example, the game;s main enemy, a reaper can throw fireballs when it sees you, if these fireballs hit a crate, it lights on fire, burning not only that crate but other crates next to it. Several levels are based around this ability, using lines of crates to create fuses for the fire to travel though.

The mouse also makes it's return in Escape goat 2. Just like the last game, you can have it walk around the levels, climbing floors and ceilings, or having it sit in place. It's role however, has been greatly expanded. the mouse now has several new power ups you can get hold of. The hat that let you swap places with it returns, but there's also some new powerups you can find, like a hammer that can turn the mouse into a solid block, or a cape that lets it jump between walls, or the floor and ceiling depending on where it's standing. Some levels even allow you to have multiple mice to work with. There's even some levels that are almost entirely reliant on the mouse. Overall the game does a great job of taking advantage of using these new abilities to make some interesting puzzles.

Fire can slowly spread through crates.

Just like the previous game, Escape goat 2 has a good difficulty curve, steadily ramping things up without too much in the way of sudden lulls or spikes in difficulty. This is helped by the games size. Compared to the roughly 50 levels of Escape Goat, Escape Goat 2 is twice the size at about 100 levels long, and they take advantage of this, letting the difficulty rise at a slow, steady pace. The game is also harder then the first, several levels had me stumped for quite awhile, none of the stages seemed impossible, save for one or two end-game levels that had me stumped badly enough to look up the solution online. There's even some secrete levels, judging by the game telling me I haven't found all the rooms, though they're very well tucked away as I've yet to actually find any on my own.

The level editor also makes a return from the previous game, along with some good news and some bad news. The good news is this time the level editor has Steam workshop support, making user made levels readily accessible and while there's not a massive level making community, there's a good number available on the game's workshop page. The bad news is that's on the Steam version and this game is not exclusive to Steam. I'll note I only have the Steam version, so I'm not sure what the situation with the level editor is outside of Steam. I did do a little Googling to try and find places to download user made levels, but couldn't find any. So note user made levels might not be readily available outside Steam. Fortunately, the level editor isn't the primary focus of the game, so it's not a major loss if non-steam copies can't readily access it or levels made with it, but it's something to keep in mind when deciding where to get the game from.

The map is a stained glass window, that slowly fills in as you complete levels.

One of the biggest changes between Escape Goat 1 and 2 is the graphics. While the first Escape goat used simple Pixel art. Escape goat 2 get's rid of the pixel aesthetic. Instead, the game uses a very detailed art style that seems almost hand drawn in places. Areas look much more distinct from each other compared to the first game, including detailed backgrounds and some nice lighting effects to top things off. It's also very readable, even when levels are zoomed in or out I can readily recognize everything I'm looking at. I also liked the stained glass motif used for the map, with parts that fill in as you free sheep and complete levels. overall This is a very nice looking game.

What Escape goat 2 got rid of the first game's pixel art, it fortunately kept the soundtrack. Escape goat 2's soundtrack picks up form where the first left off, giving more catchy, epic sounding chiptunes. The soundtrack's only a bit longer than the original games, 14 tracks instead of 9, but they're all good, especially Caper Erratus, the track that plays over the end credits. I'd highly recommend that if you don't get the game, at least give the soundtrack a listen on Bandcamp. Sound meanwhile is pretty good. There's not a lot to the game's sound, mostly you'll be hearing the sound of turning gears and moving stone, backed by the occasional fwoosh form a reapers fireball, or the sound of breaking wood, but sound quality is nice across the board and doesn't detract too much from the awesome music.

You're ultimate goal in each area to free sheep, like this one.

So, overall this game is pretty good, though one flaw with the game is that the levels don't always seem as tightly designed as they could be, namely a handful of levels felt like I didn't beat them quite as intended. There were spots where I made a weird jump I wasn't sure I was supposed to do, or I'd get passed an obstacle in a way that while it worked, didn't seem like it was what I was supposed to be doing. it's not horrible, and I could just be flat out wrong and everything I did was intended to be possible, but it is was something I noticed.

Also, there's a couple points in-game that require you to do things either very quickly or with some fairly precise timing and those were likely the games weakest points. Escape Goat works best when it plays somewhat slowly, giving you time to look the level over and think things through. So when they need you to time things or work quickly, it's kind of jarring and just doesn't sit well with me, especially when the game usually gives you some margin of error, or at least makes getting stuck in a level more a matter of doing things improperly rather than simply not being fast enough. Though as bad as these moments are, they're fortunately rare.

Overall, This is pretty much a no-brainer, almost everything Escape Goat 1 does, Escape Goat 2 does much better. If you liked the first game, defiantly get this. If you haven't tried either game yet however, you might want to try the first game and see if you like it before getting into this, as it's cheaper, and the core gameplay is pretty similar.

Escape goat 2 was developed by MagicalTimeBean and published by Double Fine Productions. It is available on Steam and GoG. It's homepage is available here. It's soundtrack is available on Bandcamp.

Exploration of an infinite world - A Valley Without Wind

Here's a game with a bit of troubled history. It started life as an exploration based top down RPG with a lot of crafting and some city building features. As time when on however, it changed. Features were reworked and cut, it changed from a top down game to a side scroller, even up to and past release it was undergoing changes, so many that The developers, Arcen games eventually decided to just up and make a sequel (which I will hopefully be covering sometime in the near future EDIT: you can read the review here), then sell both games together, giving the sequel to owners of the original game for free. The whole thing was a rough, confusing ride, so what exactly are we left with?

A Valley without wind starts with an Unusual setting. The world of Environ is suffering form a major problem: Reality has shattered. Rebuilding the world as a patchwork mess of different places and times, covered in unending windstorms and ruled over by overlords. Only glyph bearers can withstand venturing out of the safety of various settlements to look for supplies, build shelters to fight off the wind, and hopefully taken down the overlord that rules the continent. It's an interesting set up that mostly works as an excuse for the gameplay, though there are additional story snippets to uncover by exploring the game, they uncover more back story and fill out the world a bit more. It's interesting, and worth going after for those interested in the setting, though you can just as easily ignore it.

You'll be exploring several different environments in game, the layouts of which are randomly generated.

The gameplay of A Valley Without Wind is odd. Mostly it's a open world platformer, you can explore massive randomly generated worlds looking for weapons or other items you can use in your quest to beat the current continent's overlord. Which unlocks a new continent for you to tackle, the game is actually endless, and will generate an unlimited number of continents for you to explore and liberate, constantly getting harder as you go.

With that in mind, most of the gameplay for each continent is based around preparing to handle the overlord. you'll explore the world for supplies, attacking lieutenants to weaken the overlord, putting up wind shelters tot keep the wind storms at bay, or just searching the land for better spells and enchantments to fight with. Spells are your main weapon in the game, there's a lot of them though many are very samey, mostly they're simple projectiles or melee attacks that do different elemental damage, enchantments meanwhile act like equipment, doing things like increasing projectile speed, increasing damage with certain spells, or even more interesting things like double jumps or the ability to safety enter the acidic water that covers the world.

you get a lot of your rewards in the game through missions. They're also randomly generated and there's quite a few different ones you can find scattered across the world. Such as clearing a tower of bosses, protecting supply crates from falling meteors or even dodging obstacles as you fall down a tall building or cave. They do a good job of breaking up the random exploration and finding and completing them makes a good short term goal in game.

Missions  can have all sorts of objectives, such as falling to the bottom of a tall building.

There's also your settlement, you can survivors to live in your settlement, as well as buildings that give them or yourself some sort of bonus, such as extra movement speed or damage resistance. You can also send survivors out on dispatch missions though admittedly, this is perhaps the weakest part of the game. Settlement management is mostly about making sure there's enough farms to feed everybody, then dumping mood and skill improving items on people before sending them out on missions and hoping they succeed or at least not die. Fortunately, you can change the difficulty for various parts of the game individually, so if you don't like something like the settlement management, you can always drop it to it's easiest setting and not need to worry about it much.

Finally, there's how the game handles death and progress. The game has a sorta perma-death to it. you pick a character with semi-randomized stats and traits based on what time period they're from, and when they die, they're gone for good. But you get to keep your spells, enchantments, and inventory and simply continue the game with a new character. Progress meanwhile, is based mostly on a system of unlocks: doing things unlocks more things, both good ad bad. Kill a lot of enemies? new enemies of that basic type show up. Missions gain new features as you complete them. Killing all enemies in a section of land might add a new crafting ingredient and so on. There's a lot to unlock as well, more than enough that it should take a few continents at least to have unlocked and seen everything.

wind shelters are an important part of the game as you need them to push back the windstorms that cover the land.

Graphically... I'm not going to mince words and just say it's horrible. Terrain is basic, characters are poorly done CG. background elements stick out from the rest of the world like sore thumbs. When you're inside buildings, the walls and floors are pure black, there's no texture or detail to them. The whole thing just doesn't really want to come together. This is an ugly game, even the developers seem to think this, given how they made a point of completely redoing them for the sequel. To some people there might be a sort of charm to it, but this is honestly not a game you get for it's amazing graphics.

What it lacks in good graphics, A Valley without Wind more than makes up for with it's soundtrack. The game has a massive soundtrack with dozens of songs, ranging from chiptunes, to piano pieces, even a bit of synth music for good measure. The music is nice and varied and it'll take awhile for the songs in it to start wearing thin, which is great given the size of this game. Unfortunately, while there is a soundtrack available on Bandcamp, which I linked below. It's not the full soundtrack. In fact it's only a volume 1 but I never saw any further volumes put out which is sad as the game's soundtrack is easily one of it's stronger points.

Overworlds like this help tie the game's many locations together.

Outside of the graphics, the game has two other notable flaws, the first is that the controls are somewhat awkward, the game works best with a mouse and keyboard, but between all the hot bars and using various spells and abilities it's a lot to manage. You can adjust the controls and it helps to a point, but it's hard to play the game without having to occasionally rearrange hotbars, to say nothing of thumbing through the games various menus. The bigger problem is the games random nature. The world is absolutely massive and doesn't do much to guide you, which is nice when you're just wandering around, but when you need something specific, like a certain building or adventurer with a certain skill, trying to find it in that near infinite landscape can be a major pain. There is a store in the settlement which lets you buy this stuff with an in-game currency call consciousness shards, which you can find scattered around the world or off defeated enemies. It's meant to help alleviate this problem, and it does to a point. Though the prices for the bigger things like the all important wind shelters are quite expensive.

Overall I'd recommend this game, but with a small warning: There's a lot of weirdness and rough edges to this game. If you can work with that and look past all those rough spots I've mentioned in this review, there's a massive game you can sink dozens of hours into, and you get the sequel as a bonus. Otherwise? It's probably best to skip this unless you wanted the sequel, since the two games are sold in a two game bundle and can't be brought separately.

A Valley Without Wind developed and published by Arcen Games, LLC. It is available on Steam and Desura. It's homepage, which includes a direct purchasing option and demo is available here. It's soundtrack is available on Bandcamp.

More spells than you can shake a wand at - Magicmaker

With the rise of games like Minecraft and Terraria. Several games have followed in their wake, offering large, randomly generated open worlds with complex crafting systems and plenty of character customization. Even when games aren't trying to follow directly in the footsteps of those titles, some games have taken those ideas and incorporated the into their own designs. One of the games to do this would be Magicmaker, a platform game that uses procedural content and a simple crafting system to create an amazing amount of content.

Magic maker sees you as an unemployed wizard who's taken on a temp job as a security guard at Dörwall Community College, being sent out on various tasks, risking life and limb in the name of a steady paycheck. The game actually has a fairly quirky sense of humor, the game's text includes a lot of wit and sarcasm, characters are weird when they're not being smart-assed and the game very obviously does not take itself seriously. That said while this can be amusing it should be noted that story is very much not the focus of the game and what story the game has exists simply as a cheap excuse to make spells, then go out into the world and hit things with them.

There's a lot of interested spells to play with.

Gameplay in Magicmaker is fairly straightforward, you choose a randomly generated level to take on, using the spells you've made to fight off enemies as you search for new spell materials and make your way towards the exit. The game is actually good at keeping levels interesting, there are several zones you can visit to complete missions, each of which has it's own enemies and gimmicks to deal with, such as the desert zone's periodic sandstorms, which require you to hide indoors. Missions are also rarely if ever a simple case of beating the boss and find the exit, and often require you to search the level for hidden objects, or avoid killing a certain kind of monster.

A big part of the game is customization. You're allowed to carry three spells and a single robe into each level, making these spells and robes is actually fairly detailed as there's millions of possible spells and robes to make and use. going beyond simple mechanical effects, you can even tweak their appearance, and there's a lot of options to change the look of your character. The game even lets you save what you've made to reload later. This is actually somewhat important as the game's levels make good use of this customization: you'll often have to tailor your spells for the mission ahead. for example, if a level doesn't want you to kill a certain kind of enemy, you'll likely want a spell more controlled than the one that rapid fires exploding projectiles that home in on enemies and bounce off walls.

You have a lot of options for editing your character.

One of the game's biggest strengths is how it handles making spells and robes. While the game offers a wealth of options for making the perfect spell or robe. Actually making them is surprisingly simple. Each of your spells or robe has a number of slots, and you fit the materials you gain from clearing levels into them.  Each material has 2 effects, one for use in spells, and one for use in robes. You simply simply pick the materials you want, limited by the number of slots you have, and the game will create the spell or robe by combining their effects. There's no special rules or complex systems to deal with, as long as you have the materials, you can quickly throw a new spell together and get right back into the action.

Perhaps even better than how the game keeps it's wealth of options simple to handle, is how quickly it gives you access to them. Most game that make heavy use of crafting tend to save the interesting things you can make for later. Spending most of the early game with fairly simple, straightforward things. Magicmaker wastes virtually no time on getting to the good stuff. Even in the tutorial, you'll have to make a projectile spell that lights things on fire to deal damage over time, and has a limited ability to pass through walls, and it only gets better from there. Almost immediately, you'll be making spells with crazy abilities. Even better, you can freely replace the materials used for spells and robes without penalty, meaning not only can you readily make fun and interesting spells, but are free to experiment and try out new things. This is a game that wastes no time in getting to the good stuff.

Each level ends with a fight against a gigantic boss.

Graphically, the game's art style is made to look like paper cutouts, complete with little folds and crinkles. The result is a actually pretty nice looking, everything is bright and colorful. Characters, bosses in particular are nice and detailed. The few things that don't look like paper, namely your spells, are nice and flashy without sticking out much. While the game isn't a graphical masterpiece, it's a very cute style that makes a nice change of pace from all the pixel art out there.

Along with the graphics, Magicmaker has a lovely soundtrack. The songs all fit the light tone of the game, though they do get a bit more serious for the boss fights, each zone of the game has several songs to use, so the soundtrack avoids getting repetitive. Everything holds up well wither your exploring or fighting, and it again makes a nice change of pace from the usual chiptunes found in a lot of indie games. Sound effects meanwhile are unfortunately fairly minimal. There's a handful of sounds for firing spells and enemy attacks, along with effects going off, Everything works and sounds more or less like you might expect but there's nothing really exceptional about any of it.

The game's levels are spread between several different zones.

While playing the game, I haven't encountered any major bugs, but I did encounter some issues. namely, when saving spells, every time you click save, you save a new copy of the spell, you can't overwrite saves, so when you adjust or add to a spell, you have to remember to delete the old version, otherwise you end up with a bunch of redundant spells in your list. A larger problem is, at least going by the requirements on Steam the devs seem unsure of the game's ability to readily run on any operating system besides windows 7. Fortunately there is a demo available to make sure the game will run properly, and the GoG version claims to be compatible with Windows 8 and Vista. If in doubt, remember to try the demo first.

In the end, this game is very good at what it does: Allowing the player to set about making various crazy spells to go blasting enemies with, and it wastes virtually no time in letting players get to the good stuff. While the main campaign is only a small handful of levels, random level generation, and plenty of side missions along with a new game+ option ensures plenty of replayability. If you like tinkering with options and trying various equipment loadouts, there's a lot to love here.

Magicmaker was developed and published by Tasty Stewdios LLC. It is available with a demo on Steam and GoG. It's soundtrack is available on Bandcamp. It's homepage is available here.

Gravis Gamepad Not Incluided - MURI

NOTICE: please excuse the windows borders in the screenshots. the game had some issues with me taking screenshots and this was the only way that didn't upset it.

As someone who plays a lot of indie games, I see a lot of 'retro' homages. lots of games with chiptunes and pixel graphics meant to mimic old 8 or 16 bit systems, usually the NES and SNES. I don't mind this, and some games manage to do an amazing job with mimicking the look and feel of these older games but I prefer it when developers decide to base them game on something more unusual. For example, 80s DOS shareware games.

MURI is a platform game about the disappearance of Mars, the game actually has more story than you might expect for a simple platform game, told through cutscenes at various points through the game. it's not a massive story or an insanely complex one. That said, since a big part of the story is finding out what's actually going on, I can't give any actual details for fear of spoilers. I will say however, that the story felt like something out of and old 80s anime, which does a good job of fitting with the retro tone of the rest of the game.

cutscenes like this tell the story

Gameplay is fairly simple. This a classic run and gun platform game, you job in each level is to simply find the exit. levels however are fairly open. you do have to explore a bit as the exit isn't always simply to the right. even when you do know where the exit is, exploring is still worthwhile as levels can be full of side passages and hidden areas which include powerups and extra lives on top of bonus points. there's also a cell hidden in each level, which you can use to get extra powerups to help fight the boss at the end of each episode. So it pays to thoroughly explore each level.

Each level also has plenty of enemies, and there's a good variety of them in game. ranging from wall turrets to combat robots to tiny flying drones. Each enemy can come in several variants, these variants are not only tougher than the original enemy, but have extra abilities like jumping or shooting. to fight them, you actually have a decent selection of weapons. Weapons are mostly straightforward but get the job done nicely, wither it's rapid fire or a spread shot. Some of the later weapons however, can have some interesting abilities, such as a laser that splits and bounces off of walls.

you can even bounce off enemies Mario style

Each episode in the game ends in a boss battle, and the boss battles are pretty good. They're nice and big, take some effort to beat, and finish off each episode nicely. boss stages are also where the cells I mentioned earlier come into play. Before the boss you're presented with some doors blocking the way to various powerups and the cells unlock them, meaning if you managed to find some cells in the episode, you can get some extra help with dealing with the boss. it's not required as the bosses can be beaten without having any cells, but it's there if you need it and a good way to reward exploration.

While MURI is a solid platform game, it's greatest strength is easily how well it captures the look and feel of an old DOS game, the game is broken up into episodes, each of which is played separately and you can tackle them in any order, just like in old shareware games. The game's story feels like something out of that era and the gameplay does a good job of supporting this. If you've played any older DOS games like Commander Keen, Duke Nukem 1 and 2, or Bio Menace This game will feel very similar. it even has keyboard only controls, no mouse input, though you can use a gamepad if desired.

Each episode ends with a boss battle like this one.

Graphically, the game mimics the look and feel of dos games perfectly, The game uses large sprite graphics with a minimal color pallet like an old EGA game, the game can even be made to run at 16 frames per second and when run this way it looks exactly like an old DOS game. If it wasn't for the 2013 copyright, you could readily pass this as something from the 80s, it does it's job that well.

The game's sound is authentic as the graphics, which is both good and bad. It's PC speaker only which fits the game perfectly, Everything sounds exactly like what you'd expect from an older game and nothing is out of place. This is great, but it does have one major drawback: the game is fairly quiet due to a lack of a soundtrack, there's a small tune played for the title screen, but that's it. What you here fits the game perfectly, there's just very little to hear.

Levels are fairly open, and readily reward exploration

The game has a few minor flaws. Namely, weapon selection is automatic and can't be controlled by you at all. the way weapons work makes this mostly a non-issue, though it's a touch annoying if you wanted to use a specific weapon to save ammo for later. The other problem is the game is short. I beat all 4 episodes in one sitting and that took about 2 hours. It would of been nice if there were a few more stages, though the inclusion of high scores and multiple difficulty levels does give a decent reason to play through the game multiple times. Finally, and this is just a personal thing, the game does not have a demo, as the game is based on old shareware titles, it would of been great if there was a shareware demo of the first episode, and the lack of one feels a bit like a missed opportunity.

In recommending this game I'll have to note that what you get out of it depends a lot on where you're coming from. If you grew up playing those old shareware games, this game is an awesome throwback that's definitely worth picking up. If you didn't, it's still a solid game that could be worth a playthrough, but you might find it hard to appreciate what the game is doing.

MURI was developed by Ludosity and Remar Games and published by Ludosity. It is available on Steam.

Not Half Baaaad - Escape Goat

Escape Goat has a little history to it, it started life as an X-Box live indie game, and from what little I've heard it was a decent success there, enough at least to see a PC release, and later a sequel. While the game was well praised it seems to have fallen off the radar somewhat. as of this writing no curators recommend the original, and the sequel only has 2, one of which is the game's publisher. sounds like good material for here.

Escape goat sees you as a magical purple goat - yes, really - trying to escape a prison with the help of a small mouse, rescuing sheep around the way. to do that, you'll have to travel through about 50 some odd levels. each one a puzzle that takes up a single screen. The game is actually somewhat non linear here, levels are grouped into different areas, and you can tackle these areas in any order, with more areas unlocking as previous ones are cleared.

your ultimate goal is the rescue sheep, like this one here.

Another interesting thing about the levels is they consist of a lot of moving parts. puzzles mainly revolve around hitting switches or holding down pressure plates to rearrange various parts of the game world. Part of what stands out about this is that things don't just move, there's gears and pulleys and other things to show how and where things move, it can get very complicated and it's pretty neat to see large sections of a level move a shift about as you try to solve them.

Alongside the goat you control, you have a mouse. The, which you can summon and un-summon at any time can climbs up walls and across ceilings, as well as fit through tiny spaces and activate most buttons and plates. There's even a powerup in some levels that give you the ability to swap places with him. The little guy actually allows for a lot of possibility in lever design and the game makes full use of him without making things overly complicated.

swapping places also destroys whatever is between you and the mouse

The game also has a surprisingly good difficulty curve. While the game might seem like it's insanely hard and rage inducing, that's actually not the case. The game starts out fairly simple, saving the crazier stuff for late game when you have a better idea of what you should be doing, and most levels don' rush you much, given you all the time you need to look things over and think about how to tackle them problem. The exception to this are the post game levels, which is where the devs pull all the stops out in favor of some utterly brutal challenges, but since they're fully optional, there's no need to really worry about them. They're there if you want that extra challenge, but easily ignored if you don't

The game also has a custom level editor which allows you to make your own campaigns, I'll admit I didn't tinker with this very much so I can't really comment on useability, and unfortunately the game doesn't have any sort of built in level sharing. I was however, able to find a forum here where people can share levels, and while there's not a lot on it, there's enough to help extend the game a bit.

Levels also contain various traps, such as the one I've fallen into here

Graphically, the game goes for a simple but effective 8-bit aesthetic. Graphics are nice and colorful and everything is readily recognizable, and there's a decent amount of detail to the artwork. Overall I might have seen better pixel graphics elsewhere, but what's here is pretty decent and at worst is perfectly serviceable without being ugly.

The music however, is incredible. The game has an incredible chiptune soundtrack. While the soundtrack only contains a handful of songs, each one is well done and very catchy to listen to. It's easily one of the games biggest strengths and I highly recommend at least giving it a listen at the Bandcamp link below

Explosive crates and barrels can take out enemies for you, or yourself if your not careful

As good as the game is however, it does have one major flaw: it's short, VERY short. I beat the game, doing all levels except the bonus levels, in just under 2 hours. You could likely beat this game in a single sitting if you wanted. it's unfortunate, and it would of been nice if there was another set or two of levels in the main game to play through. Though what's there is VERY good. Also, as of this writing the game is only $4.99, which is a perfectly fair price for a game this length.

Overall, Escape Goat is a perfectly solid puzzle platformer with a difficulty curve that keeps the challenge just right. While I'm told the sequel is even better (and I may yet play and review that somewhere down the road EDIT: I finally reviewed it here), I'd say the first is still worth a playthrough. At the very least? The soundtrack alone makes it worth getting.

Escape Goat was developed and published by MagicalTimeBean. It is available on Steam, GoG and Desura. It's soundtrack is available on Bandcamp. It's homepage, which includes a direct purchase option is available here.

The Good, The Bad, and The Steampunk - Steamworld Dig

Steamworld Dig started life as a downloadable title on 3DS, and was later ported to Wii U, Playstation 4/Vita and PC, given upgraded HD graphics and some platform appropriate features along the way. As a game it's a little hard to describe as it takes some ideas from a somewhat random set of games, though the results are undeniably unique.

Steamworld dig is a Metroidvania style platform game, mixed with bits of dig dug and Minecraft or Terraria. Gameplay is based around digging downwards through a semi-randomly generated world in search of ore, which you can use to get upgrades that allow you to explored deeper underground leading to more upgrades for more digging for more upgrades and so on. All of this is accompanied with a simple story, that starts with your robot hero taking over a mine in a old western ghost town out in the desert.

The town is pretty empty when you first arrive

when you're not digging, the game also has a lot of side caves you need to visit to progress in the game, along with a few side areas you can visit for extra resources. These caves focus more or platforming than digging and as a platformer the game is decent. while it's not as good as a straightforward platformer, the game was able to provide a few interesting puzzles and challenges in the caves and there wasn't anything broken or frustrating about the mechanics, though it's clear the game is more focused on digging than traditional platforming.

You'd expect a game about digging downwards to be fairly boring, But Steamworld Dig manages to avoid this. There's plenty of traps and enemies hiding underground. At first it's nothing but the occasional set of spikes in the ground or small critter wandering about but as you get deeper, the game gets steadily more complex as you end up running across things like acid, or explosive barrels. right until the end of the game, you'll be constantly coming across new things to deal with in your quest for more money, so things never get old.

There's all sort of creatures hiding underground.

Of course, all the cash you earn by selling ore in game has to go towards something. and while most of your major upgrades are found in the caves underground, there's also plenty of upgrades to buy in stores on the surface. the upgrades are mostly straightforward things like more health and better pickaxes, or enhancements to things you found in the caves. They are however useful to have and there's also a lot of them, enough that by the time I beat the game there was still some things left to buy. The game also includes some consumables, things like ladders or dynamite that can help with your efforts underground. I didn't use them very much but they were a major help the few times I did.

Graphically, the game is very nice looking, graphics were improved from the original 3DS release and looks perfectly fine on PC. They even did a surprising job of making areas in the game look unique and interesting despite the majority of the game being spent basically looking at dirt.

There are plenty of upgrades to buy with the cash earned in game.

The music in the game is somewhat sparse but does it's job nicely, the title theme to the game fits the game's western setting. The rest of the music is atmospheric, and fits the lonely, almost desolate feeling of mining at an old ghost town nicely. There is a soundtrack available on steam, and while the music fits well with the game, I'm not sure it's the kind of music you can readily listen to on it's own outside the game.

What the game really does well however, is it's sound. this is a game about steam powered robots and everything clangs, whirs and hisses exactly like you'd expect it too. Underground you'll hear dirt crumbling as it's dug away or the rumbling of boulders as they fall into place. Everything is crystal clear and sounds exactly like it's supposed to. This is a very nice sounding game.

The game starts with a nice animated intro

 Everything in the game works properly and I didn't encounter any major bugs. The game does however have one major problem: It's short, very short. I beat the game in just over 4 hours. The game does manage to make the most of this time however, as it felt like there was plenty to do in game, and it quite the trip to reach the end, but it would of been nice if it could of done just a little bit more.

Still, despite it's short length I'd say the game is worth a playthrough. It's a very unique title with it's mix of digging, upgrading and platforming and while it only took a couple of hours, it managed to readily keep my interest the whole time. if you get a chance and want to try something a little different, definitely consider giving it a try.

Steamworld Dig was developed and published by Image and Form. It is available on GoG, and Steam. It's soundtrack is available on Steam. it's homepage can be found here.

+5 AWESOME! - Freedom Planet

Retro 2D Platformer. Three words that a lot of indie developers seem to be in love with. There are a LOT of retro 2d platform games out there, and more are cropping up all the time. For the more jaded amongst us it's pretty easy to dismiss all of them as not worth playing, and even for the more forgiving amongst us, a game really needs to be something special to catch our attention.

With that in mind, Freedom planet is a 2D platform game with some very heavy 90's influences. Sonic the hedgehog being the most obvious, but for older gamers who grew up with a Sega Genesis/Megadrive, you'll readily find bits of rocket Knight Adventures, Ristar, even a little Gunstar Heroes for good measure. While it may initially sound like pandering to the retro crowd. In playing the game, it's clear the Developers know their stuff, and this game comes off as more a labor of love than cheap nostalgia.

Carol is capable of throwing out some rapid fire attacks

The game sees you playing as one of three characters: Lilac, Carol or Milla, as they travel through various locations in an attempt to save their planet  from an alien invasion. There is actually a story, told through multiple somewhat lengthy cutscenes. I'm not going to devote much time to talking about the story, but I will say that while it does dip into the cheesy at points, It was fun, and given the game's heavy 90s roots said cheesyness comes off as more fitting than annoying. Still, for those who'd rather skip the talking and just get to the action. cutscenes are skippable and The game has the option for a Classic mode, which cuts it out almost completely and lets you run through the stages with minimal interruption.

One thing that quickly becomes obvious with the gameplay is that it's not as fast as you might think. While the game looks a lot like a Sonic game and there are points where you can really speed up to run through some loops or up walls. The Gameplay overall is somewhat slower, with levels somewhat more open to exploration and combat, and that's not a bad thing. In fact, the game goes to decent lengths to avoid being a Sonic knock off, even Lilac, who's very obviously inspired by Sega's speedy blue mascot, has several moves to distance herself from being a simple clone, such as her dragon boost. A single burst of speed that can send her skyward and bounce her off walls. The end result is something that feels as much a game in it's own right as it is a throwback to older titles.

Lilac's dragon boost is defiantly not a simple spindash

Stages in the game are pretty decently sized and broken into several segments. The game does a great job on level design, even in the later stages you'll be coming across new stage gimmicks, traps and enemies to deal with. There's also a good amount of variety within stages, rather than given each stage a single distinct theme, the later half of each stage takes place in a different, but related environment from the earlier parts, such as old ruins that lead into a crystal mine. or a city stage that ends inside a mall. At times it can feel like each stage is really two and it keeps things feeling fresh throughout the game.

Then there's the bosses. There's plenty of bosses and mini-bosses throughout the game, and they're as varied as the stages themselves. The bosses themselves are suitably epic, giant foes that take some honest effort to take down, especially near the end of the game. The only drawback with the bosses is that some of the bosses can be rendered trivial due to the games various shield powerups, that grant immunity to certain types of attacks. However, setting up a situation like requires knowing what shield you need ahead of time, and at least some conscious effort to both find the shield and not loose it ahead of time. so you shouldn't readily break things unless you were deliberately trying to.

There's a lot of bosses in this game.

The graphics on the game are very nice. Everything's very bright and colorful and the game's rendered everything in a pixel art style. Interestingly, unlike most games, while Freedom planet does use pixel graphics they don't appear to have constrained the art to mimic an 8 or 16-bit system, the end result is despite the gameplay being heavily influenced by genesis titles, the game's graphics look more like an old Playstation 1 or Sega Saturn game: Pixelated, but with more detail then what you normally get from "retro" graphics. It's honestly a nice change of pace and I wish more indy games would do something like this. Annoyingly however, the game runs at a fixed resolution, you can double or triple the window size, but full screen simply makes everything around it black. Depending on your monitor and screen resolution. you might have to play windowed or deal with a potentially large amount of letterboxing.

The music is catchy and upbeat and fits the graphics quite nicely, interestingly, like the graphics while it has the feel of an older game, they didn't try to mimic older systems by using chiptunes. The end result is much like the graphics: the soundtrack feels like something from a PS1 or Saturn game, the only really bad thing I can say about it is the soundtrack doesn't seem to be available for download or purchase anywhere (EDIT: A soundtrack has been made available since this review was posted, the link has been added below). The game's sound is also pretty solid, with special mention going to the voice acting, which is surprisingly solid given the game's indy background. It's rare that an indy game bothers with voice work and most only voice a narrator, or one or two characters if not that, for the developers to do full voice acting with a decently sized cast and still have it come out as well as it does like this is honestly quite impressive. Hats off to GalaxyTrail for pulling it off.

Milla has a shorter health bar, but can make shields and blocks to fight with.

While the game is mostly pretty solid, it does have a few flaws. I've encountered several minor bugs in the course of playing the game. nothing game breaking, but weird things like characters getting stuck in the level for a second or two, or some instance where the music suddenly stops. it's annoying at times, but nothing to get worked up over, and the developers are dedicated to patching these things out. The most obvious flaw however, would be the physics. Your characters are supposed to be fairly quick and will be running through loops and up walls and doing other gravity defying stunts throughout the game, however, the game is weirdly lenient with how fast you need to be going and you can readily do all of that despite not moving very fast at all. It's not a major problem, but it can be somewhat awkward to see your character almost casually jogging through a loop or along the ceiling rather than blazing along at full speed like you'd expect.

Overall, This game manages to pull off an incredible feat in being both a sendup to classic 90's platformers and a perfectly solid game in it's own right. There's plenty to see and do and while the game is released and not in any way early access, the developers aren't finished with it yet. Thanks to the booming success of the game's kickstarter campaign, they actually plan on expanding the game with a few more playable characters, including making Milla, currently playable in classic mode only as of this writing, playable in adventure mode. All as free DLC. you're definitely getting your money's worth with this, and I can't recommend the game enough.

Freedom Planet was developed by GalaxyTrail. It's available on Steam and GoG. It's homepage, along with a downloadable demo, is available here. The game's soundtrack is available on Steam and Bandcamp.

I will play you the song of my people! - Crystal Towers 2

One of the reasons I started this blog was it gives me a way to point people towards games they might have overlooked, and Crystal Towers 2 is a perfect example of this. Released in 2011 and not available on Steam, GoG or any other major distributor besides Desura, it's pretty easy to miss this game, which is sad because it's really good.

Crystal Towers 2 is a retro platform game that takes a few pages from games like Super Mario 64. You have a single, massive hub where you can access all the games levels from, each level has a series of goals that you unlock one at a time, and completing these goals and finding abilities in levels allows you to open up news sections of the hub and new levels with it. Interestingly, Crystal Towers 2's levels are unlocked with three different things. Orbs, which come form beating bosses and beating levels for the first time. Rainbow gems, which you get by completing extra challenges in each stage and keys, which are hidden in some levels and each stage needs oh so many of each one.

The hub is where you access the rest of the games levels from, and it's huge.

Another thing the game does differently is it's spells. Instead of the usual ability upgrades, you gain most of your upgrades by instead finding new spells, and there's a good number of them, ranging from attacks to unlocking doors to using warps found in some levels. all of them cost varying amounts of mana that you replenish by collecting vials found in some stages, it's a unique idea but it also suffers from a little weirdness, like the fact that double jumping is now a spell that you need to cast that only lasts 30 seconds, rather than something you simply unlock. Also, while you can change your equipped spells whenever you want, you can only have 2 equipped at once, which occasionally brings the action to a halt when you need to go into the menus because you need to cast unlock on something.

Finally, there's the rainbow gems, each level has 7 and they act as extra challenges for each of the games levels, and the challenges are quite varied, with things like beating the stage within a time limit, destroying all of a certain kind of enemy, ending with a certain amount of health or scoring a combo worth so many points. There's a lot of them and even in later stages you'll still run across new challenges.

The game has a fun little combo system, though you don't always have a chance to make large combos like this.

Graphically, the game goes for a retro look although with a slight twist. Despite the game's mechanics having some similarities to Mario, it doesn't actually mimic the the look and feel of Nintendo's old 8 and 16-bit consoles. Instead, it mimics the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Namely, here the game takes some obvious influence from the older Sonic the Hedgehog games. Levels begin with an overlay showing the level's name and levels have A, B, and C stages, much like how Sonic's zones have multiple acts. The levels cover a large variety of terrain, from volcanoes to industrial centers to jungles to ancient ruins. The graphics can feel a bit primitive at times, even when you account for the game's retro aesthetic, but it never degrades into the truly horrible.

The game makes a bit of a deal about music. The story, what little there is, is about music disappearing from the world, the hub is called the Music Castle... you even craft items using a synth! With that in mind, the soundtrack is awesome. Much like the graphics, there's some definite Sonic the Hedgehog influence here, and the music here would be right at home with a game in that series. Tunes are catchy, cover a decent rage of genres with each levels theme very distinct from the others, and sounds like something you'd hear in a Genesis game. Where the graphics might falter a little here and there, the music nails that retro Genesis/Mega Drive feel perfectly and if nothing else, I'd recommend at least giving it a listen from the bandcamp link below.

Each level starts with an overlay like this. Not pictured: catchy stage music.

While the game is mostly solid, it does have some flaws, one of the most obvious ones is that it's difficulty is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, it is a proper old school challenge, and that on it's own is not a bad thing. The problem comes form the fact that it can be a little too rough at times. Some rainbow gems can have fairly exacting challenges, like completing a level without picking up any of the shards that litter the stage. Also, while levels are not massive, they're still fairly sprawling and have no checkpoints, death or failure means starting over from scratch. There will be times where you carefully navigate a hard level or challenge only to make that one little mistake near the end that immediately kills all your progress and sees you starting from square one yet again, ow. Fortunately, you have unlimited lives, so while it might get frustrating you at least have as many attempts as you need to push through it.

Another problem would be the game's hub, it's a fairly large hub and unfortunately not as well organized as I'd like. While levels might be grouped into A, B and C stages, the gates for them aren't always anywhere near each other. On the same note the hub also doesn't really theme areas much if at all. so there's nothing in the terrain to guide you towards the gates. Gates are color coded, and you do have a sort of radar that points you towards where the gate are, but it only points to a small number of the closest ones you have unlocked, and then by simply having an arrow pointed directly at them. Finally, you need to find things like new spells, health and mana upgrades to progress, but the game tends to treat these pickups like secrets meaning you have to go a bit out of your way to find them, and you can't tell if you need a particular spell or upgrade until you play a challenge and see you can't do it. The end result is it's possible to find yourself lost, with no clear idea of where you can or should be going at the moment.

There's several bosses in the game, and they can be a real challenge

Finally, I encountered an odd crash bug with the game. Apparently the game will just up and crash after you die a certain number of times. It's a large number, but with the difficulties mentioned above, the deaths tend to pile up unless you're REALLY good and I'm... not. Fortunately, I've never lost any real progress due to this bug and it doesn't seem to be damaging anything in the game or my system as a whole. Still if you decide to try this game, you might want to close and reopen the game every few levels, especially if you just completed a hard stage that took a lot of attempts to beat.

Overall. I'd Say Crystal Towers 2 is worth a look, the problems I've mentioned can be annoying or frustrating, but despite this it's still a very fun platform game, with a surprising amount of content and one hell of a soundtrack.

Crystal towers 2 was developed by DavidN, it's available on Desura, and directly from the developer, along with a demo here. It's soundtrack is available on Bandcamp, and it's homepage is available here. Finally, you can vote for Crystal Towers 2 on Steam Greenlight here.

Versimos School for Witchcraft and Weirdos - Magicians & Looters

At first glance, Magicians & Looters is a very unassuming game, a 2d metroidvania in a fantasy setting, full of fantasy and rpg tropes. Even it's name is unassuming: it's a game about Magicians and Looters. Straight, too the point, nothing too eye-catching. It's really a shame because past the unassuming exterior is a really good game.

While a metroidvania at it's core, Magicians & Looters does have some interesting ideas going for it. The first and most obvious is that you have to control three characters: Sword and shield wielding Brent, martial artist Vienna, and dual sword wielding Nyn. Each character has their own set of abilities needed to progress through the game, and each plays at least a little different from the others. and the game does a very good job of giving you good reasons to use each one, nobody feels too useless or overpowered.

Characters will gain plenty of abilities throughout their adventure.

The game also has an interesting approach to both leveling and equipment. You don't get experience from kills, instead, you level up by finding experience orbs scattered around the game world, as a result there's virtually no grinding in the game. There is however, no stat or skill points in the game, instead, every character gains some sort of bonus when they level up, like extra spell damage or attack speed.

Equipment in the game is based mostly around trade offs. Almost all of the equipment in the game has some sort of drawback on top of their bonuses, form something as simple to slightly less health or slower attack speed, to big things like no enemy item drops or disabling magic. The idea is that equipment is less about straight upgrades, and more about tweaking things around a certain stat or play style. While you will get stronger during the game thanks to leveling and ability unlocks, for the most part the game is less about linear upgrading, and more about opening up new options, it's an interesting approach and keeps the game form revolving around powerleveling or finding the definite "best" equipment.

Amusingly, death results in all of your hard earned loot being thrown around the room.

It's also worth noting that the game is funny, and I actually mean funny. While some games like to shotgun random internet memes and pop culture references everywhere and call it funny. Magicians & Looters, white not completely free of references, doesn't strictly rely on this and instead tries to be funny by, in a surprise twist, actually being funny. Characters play nicely off each other, the story takes more than a few silly turns and there's a few moments in the game that honestly made me laugh. I've beaten the game and even now I can still recall some of the funnier moments in it. it's a comedic game with some actual comedy in it and it's kind of sad that I have to make that distinction here.

The game has a decently sized map that goes through multiple areas, from valleys to caves to inside a castle. The world, like any good metroidvania, also has lots of little secrets and hidden areas, I managed to find all the items in the game on my own and doing it felt like an honest accomplishment. The game is also fairly challenging. There's some tricky platforming and combat sequences set in several of the rooms in the game. Boss battles are particularly hard as bosses can pull out some surprisingly nasty, hard to dodge attacks. Fortunately death doesn't cost much in game progress outside of losing some gold and being sent to the last camp you visited, camps acting as the game's save points.

Camps like this act as the games save points and are where you can change characters.

Graphically the game is nice, most of the level graphics are pretty solid, and the backgrounds in some rooms are quite beautiful, though it has a few problems. Items like gold or experience orbs are bit on the small size and can be a bit hard to see, though fortunately all of the really important stuff if it isn't simply given to you will basically drop into your hands from destroyed chests, so there's no really worries about missing important items, the sparkle effect on pickups also tends to help with this somewhat.

Sound and music in the game are also solid. The games sound has a nice, solid feel to them, weapons hit with a loud clang, spells impact with a nice loud thud, everything comes through loud and clear and sounds exactly like you'd expect it to. The music is also good. Every area has it's own distinct music and several tracks are actually very catchy, castle looter most immediately comes to mind, and worth listening too on their own.

Backgrounds in the game can be surprisingly beautiful

The game unfortunate has a handful of flaws. To start, you have three characters and can only change them at save points. Save points are usually frequent enough that it's not a major problem, but it's still a little annoying when you reach an area, then immediately have to turn back because you need a different character to handle it. The game is also a little on the short side. I beat it in just under 7 hours, I don't think that's horrible and the game makes good use of this time, but it almost feels like the game wanted to be just a little bigger.

Overall I'd recommend Magicians & looters to anyone who's a fan of Metroidvanias, especially if they want a decent challenge. The game offers a lot more than it initially seems, and is definitely worth a full playthrough.

Magicians & Looters was developed by Morgopolis Studios, it's available on Desura and Steam. It's soundtrack is available on Bandcamp.