Aeon of Sands - The Trail

This is a fabulous and snappy passion project. I love that your choices will mean you only see a sliver of the game on any one playthrough. The setting is wonderful and gloriously realised. There's a small lull just before the final dungeon - town sections in these games are never great, and they weren't able to buck that trend here. But it's only a small blip in an otherwise highly enjoyable spin on the blobber! Thank you!

Aeon of Sands should be getting a neutral rating from me. I'm giving it a (balancing) thumbs down, as its current "Very Positive" rating is misleading. First off, this game is as niche as they get. If you like Eye of the Beholder and "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, it *should* be a hit with you... except there's a catch. It's brutal and masochistic for all the wrong reasons. + The simplified Eye of the Beholder combat is great. I went in knowing stats weren't going to play a huge part. Player manual dexterity and character equipment tend to win the day in combat, and there's a ton of combat due to: + Huge maps and many dungeons. I loved the variety. + I found the humor to be one of the positives of the game, though admittedly the main character's attitude did get stale eventually. - My biggest gripe with the game is NPC acquisition and retention. One of the things I was sold on was this: different NPCs lead to different dungeons and different outcomes in encounters. Sounds amazing! Except that getting the really interesting characters feels impossible without a walkthrough or a ton of time on my hands to bull-rush through it using trial and error. Getting NPCs isn't intuitive in the least! Keeping some of them around also sounds like a chore. [spoiler] I played through taking Harro and didn't betray him, which locks me out of getting Harima and Circe immediately. I couldn't find Lindsey (probably killed it). Xuni Thirtytwo's insane and I decided to pass on him. Getting Courtney seems to involve getting through The Pit dungeon AND having some sort of item on hand. (I guessed the faucet. Couldn't verify if I was correct due to another issue I had, explained later.) Harro leaves after causing a diversion, leaving my main going solo for the final dungeon. [/spoiler] - Dungeons are often more aggravating than fun. They're large but I don't think they're well-designed. Progress is often locked behind hidden switches and invisible walls. If that's not enough, another dungeon locked my progress because apparently I chose the wrong alcoves for the pieces I had acquired. No hint was provided that I was doing anything incorrectly. Design decisions like this are frustrating, not fun. You're forced far too often to bang into walls and check for switches and buttons everywhere. (***NOTE*** There are other options besides banging into walls to locate false walls. The false walls are slightly faded. It wasn't the easiest thing for me to see, however, and it quickly became more efficient for me to bang into them.) Despite being as thorough as I can be, some doors stubbornly remained closed for me. - A few of the dungeons had switches that affected walls on the complete opposite side. As if trekking back through over and over again looking for secret buttons and false walls isn't enough. It's another example of design that's aggravating and not fun. - I hate thorns. They're everywhere outdoors and they're just rude. Ugh. I often had to wait around for HP to slowly regenerate when my characters were surrounded by thorns. (***NOTE*** You're never forced to trudge through layers upon layers of thorns. My desire to search everywhere and leave no stone upturned did me no favors here.) - "Simple wooden doors". It would've been nice to have an alternative to finding the hidden switches and buttons often hidden behind false walls. Sticks of dynamite, for instance. If there is a way to blow up stubborn doors with a common item, that would've made things a bit less frustrating. This game has some neat ideas. I didn't go in expecting DND. I resolved to accept the unbalanced combat and the many inevitable character deaths. After beating it the first time and feeling fairly disappointed, I gave it a second try. My reward was getting locked out of the very first dungeon I went to. I've seen enough. Many design decisions could've been a lot more player friendly.

fantastic dungeon crawler that somehow didn't get as much recognition as it deserved. aeon has that old-school "choose your own adventure" feel in a very memorable post-apocalyptic desert setting with great art and a great color palette. It's exploration focused, non linear, and full of tasty grid-based combat.

Unique and cool first person dungeon crawl. Larger and more complicated than you might expect at first. Definitely worth $13 if you like the genre.

Fun game if you enjoy classic dungeon crawlers - this one has a narrative focus with choose your own adventure aspects. Some of the levels do start to feel repetitive and could benefit from either being smaller or having more variety in the art. Some reviews criticise the tone of some of the writing but I found the tone to be a good balance of seriousness and self reference. There is a mode to play with less story too if you don't want to read as much but given a lot of the world building happens in your head I recommend the full text.

Guter Dungeoncrawler der mehr wie ein Fighting Fantasy Gamebook ist bei dem man die Dungeons frei erkundet und das kämpfen etwas mehr Spaß macht. Ich persönlich mag dieses blobber Kampfsystem da es etwas aktiver ist als bei ähnlichen Spielen die auf Rundenbasierten Kampf setzen. Story,Welt und Athmosphäre kommen sehr gut durch die schönen Artworks und den stimmigen Soundtrack rüber. Auch Optisch gefallen mir die Arten der Gegner sehr gut. Am ehesten erinnert mich die Welt an Dark Sun,einem älteren DnD Setting. Das einzige was stört ist dass Gegenstände nicht stapelbar sind,aber das wurde wohl bewusst so gemacht,irgendwann merkt man auch dass man Gegenstände nicht horten muss. Wie schon erwähnt ist es aufgebaut wie ein Gamebook,dh mehrere Spieldurchläufe mit unterschiedlichem Ausgang sind möglich. Skillsystem fällt vollständig weg,die Charaktere lernen durch die nutzung von Gegenständen. Auch das Magiesystem ist ziemlich interessant gestaltet. Idr spiele ich selten Magier,doch hier macht es mir spaß auch Magie zu nutzen. Wer ein Spiel wie Wizardry oder Might and Magic erwartet wird hier schwer enttäuscht,lässt man diese Vorstellung jedoch auf der Seite eröffnet sich einem ein Fantastisches Spiel mit Interessantem Setting und hohem Wiederspielwert.

Aoens of Sands is an old school realtime dungeon crawler. Combat is in real time, you and the enemies move while in combat. That makes the combat rather easy as long as you do not get flanked. There a boss encounters, there a easy mechanic puzzles, many illusionary walls. The story seems a little straight forward, not really that engaging but good enough. The main pro points for the game are the art style, dungeon textures, enemy design and world building. It is a fun and strange world to explore. You explore dungeons in 3d and a 2d overworld with points of interest, you can not move freely around the overworld. You have to follow certain paths between the points of interest. There are little text adventures to have at certain points, followed by 3d fights or dungeon exploration. My main critic point is that the dungeon exploration is somewhat samey and uninteresting. There is only one hard dungeon in the game, and it is only hard because there tons of stairs and you can not access all areas of the dungeons from all directions, you have to circle completely through it to advance. That can be very frustrating. It is a very good game, a casual dungeon romp like Eye of the Beholder, with awesome artstyle and a fun little story and interesting world to explore.