The AA Report: April 28th, 2020
When I put together a Try it Tuesday for my Twitch stream, I usually attempt having it orbit a basic theme. The theme could be something simple like a similar graphic style, or a gameplay mechanic, or it could be something like the same genre, or it could even be something more abstract like the names all have a similarity to them. The last Try it Tuesday show started out being themed around a similar graphic style, then it went to dungeon crawler, and then it just kind of didn’t have a cohesive theme at all. Were I to throw one on it, I guess dungeon crawler, but for all intents and purposes… nah. Just nah.
But I digress.
Here are your first impression reviews, hot off the metaphorical press.
Mask of Mists is an adorable dungeon crawler with puzzles and combat, story and intrigue. While I truly felt like it was made with children in mind, I also didn’t feel like this was a problem – a well made game is a well made game, no matter who the audience is, right? Off the bat, I felt like comparing this to Skyrim for some reason, as if to say this was an Elder Scrolls game meant to introduce children to the genre, but …I don’t know if that’s accurate. The art style of the game is colorful and gorgeous. I’m not sure how to label this art style, if I’m being honest, but a lot of games use it lately – Sea of Thieves, Ashen, Raft, to name a few that come to mind. It’s grown on me immensely, and I found it fitting for what this game had to offer, which in all honesty was a surprising amount of content. In Mask of Mists, you’re playing a mercenary who is tasked with one simple job: finding a missing person. The narrative revolves around your standard tropes of the fantasy genre: there’s an Archmage, there’s an Academy, there’s an Abyss, and there’s something gone awry with all of them. Perhaps we should call this the triple A formula, but I digress. With sword in hand and an ever-growing list of potions at your disposal, you set forth upon a journey where you’ll solve puzzles, fight magical beasts, and dabble in a little alchemy in hopes that your efforts will solve the mystery of where the missing archmage disappeared to. What I think I loved the most about Mask of Mists was how honest it felt in its simplicity – the journal provided you with a lot of information that you find while exploring, and every page was varied and detailed. The puzzles weren’t as complex as something like The Witness, at least they weren’t within the couple of hours that I played, but they were challenging enough that, when mixed with the exploration and combat, provided an even balance of entertainment to my experience. It did seem as though the game was easing in difficulty the more I progressed, which is another welcome aspect it has to offer – it’s not just playing one note throughout, but many. The tune may be simple, but it’s still a lovely one. I think, were I to conjur up one complaint, it would be that I wish the enemies weren’t all quite so goofy and purple. Perhaps this changes the farther in you get, but I faced some sort of plant monster, a mushroom, and a slime, and all were an odd shade of purple and orange that felt like it clashed a bit for me. I can understand why this was made as a design choice, especially if this is marketed towards kids, so it’s a very minor complaint to say the least. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Mask of Mists. If you’re looking for a very casual dungeon crawl experience, I definitely recommend checking this one out.
Purchase Mask of Mists on Steam
I went into Dreamscaper thinking it was a soulslike. I don’t think this is quite accurate though – the game itself claims to be a roguelite, and that’s far more accurate. Taking place in a lucid dreamworld, Dreamscaper has you playing as an individual named Cassidy who, once in a state of slumber, is thrown into a world of beautiful nightmares and haunting dreams. Dreamscaper‘s combat is from a pretty wide-out perspective; think ARPG (like Diablo or Torchlight) mixed with roguelite standard elements. The game also tries to mix in elements of other styles, which is why I don’t think the soulslike is entirely *inaccurate* to say… but at the same time, it kind of is. To be fair though, I feel like the soulslike thing is something I saw on Twitter when this game first came across my radar. BUT AGAIN, I DIGRESS. Dreamscaper does do a fantastic job of mixing other kinds of games into its style; brawlers, dungeon crawlers, top-down shooters, there’s even a little bit of a puzzle aspect to the boss fights. Well, the boss fight – what I played for the purposes of review was the Prologue, which is a free chunk of the game offered up by the devs, but is only one level of a much larger game. There is apparently around 4-6 hours of content worth unlocking, including new levels, seeds for previous levels, and an interesting aspect of the game that I’m DYING to know more about when it comes out: the awake hours. See, what’s interesting about Dreamscaper is that you’re fighting takes place within a dream, and when you lose, you just wake up. From there, you are free to go to several different locations: a bookstore, a bar, a coffee shop; and you can talk to people at all of those locations as well. You can give them gifts, learn more about their life, and… honestly, I’m not sure why that exists right now. I have to assume that it’s just something included in the prologue as a proof of concept, but the mechanic has me absolutely intrigued and excited to see what the full release of this game has to offer. Combat itself was your standard fare to a roguelite: you can trade in different weapons or armor in each level based on your playstyle, each level is randomly generated so you never know what you’re going to get when you start, and there are a variety of enemies to keep you on your toes. There were times that I felt the game was a little too zoomed out, and that I wasn’t entirely sure where I was on the map, like I was almost weightless. I don’t know if I count these as faults to the game though, because …well, you’re in a dream. Shouldn’t you be weightless, just a little? Perhaps it’s a conscious design choice, and if so, I’m even more okay with it. My time with Dreamscaper wasn’t long, because to play through the prologue itself does not take long, but the proof of concept is in the proverbial pudding, and I’m ready for more of it. Dreamscaper is slated for a summer release. Until then, you can play the prologue yourself for free on Steam, and wishlist it today. Wishlisting really does help developers, especially if you’re excited for a title, so do it!
Preorder Dreamscaper on The Humble Store
Wishlist Dreamscaper on Steam
Play the prologue for free
Old school dungeon crawlers are so cool. I never played a ton of them growing up, and I don’t know why because I would have eaten them up. I attribute it to the times: in the 80s and 90s, you didn’t get a lot of games, and the ones you did get, you played into the ground. This is why I still have the shareware version of Doom memorized. Once again though, I digress. Ultima, Shadowgate, Eye of the Beholder… these are games I’d have LOVED when growing up, but such is life, and as a Twitch streamer, I can revisit these if I want to, and relive a slice of my youth that I missed out on. Enter Operencia: The Stolen Sun, a game very much in the vein of the old school dungeon crawler, but updated to meet the graphical and technical demands of our modern world. The story attempts, with success, to marry Hungarian folklore and mythology with historical fact, and what results is an incredible tapestry of deep lore and setting that, even from the get go, feels like you’re hunkering down into an epic fantasy novel. I’ve absolutely no complaints about graphics, or narrative – Operencia nailed this in spades for me. It’s no secret at this point that I play games for story, so this game had me salivating for every juicy nugget of it. I’ll try to focus a bit more on combat, because I only spent a couple of hours with Operencia at the time of this writing, and I feel like I can’t entirely speak to its strengths or weaknesses just yet. This is merely a first impressions review, as is the style of The AA Report. I was able to create my own character with a backstory and a class system, which is a big plus. I recently started playing Pillars of Eternity for the first time in my spare time, and the character creation reminded me quite a bit of that, albeit a little more simplistic. Movement in Operencia operates on a grid system, which was admittedly a little hard to get into at first, and didn’t entirely get much easier to operate in as I continued. As I trekked forward in the first big dungeon, however, it was apparent how necessary this system was, and I can’t really fault the game for using it – it’s actually something that grows on you, if you’re not used to it either. Combat in Operencia is turn-based, working in a 3-line/grid system like a lot of games of its ilk – the most recent entry into The Bard’s Tale series came to mind when I had my first encounter. The first four abilities were standard hero abilities, while your second half were class specific, and ran on a finite pool of action points that refresh after resting at a campfire. I enjoyed what the combat had to offer, because it wasn’t any different then what I’ve dealt with in games like Darkest Dungeon – in fact, much simpler then that. Again, I only played for a couple of hours, and I expect it to ramp up more. In addition to the dungeon crawler combat mechanics, there were plenty of puzzles to solve, loot to pilfer, and from what I understand but had yet to encounter, a bit of alchemy in this title as well. The game also passed my ultimate casual question of “is this on Switch,” meaning that I’ll likely pick it up to continue playing in my spare time, because in all honesty Operencia: The Stolen Sun is everything that I love about high fantasy novels rolled into a video game, and as I sit here writing this review roughly 15 hours after playing the game, I’m still thinking about it with a vested interest in progressing through the story. Well done, Zen Studios. Operencia is fully released and available on all platforms.