COVEN

A truly terrible contemporary boomer shooter. I wasted an hour and a half trying to find the fun, but can now succinctly explain why you shouldn't waste your time here; there's no designed 'difficulty' to the game - just frustration at the incredibly amateurish attempts to reduce the player's health. As soon as you make any progress on the overly large, empty maps - find a key and head toward the locked door, say - floods of mobs (the same two or three enemies ad nauseum) spawn in from already cleared areas. Constant ambush is not a cleverly thought-out challenge, it's just frustrating. So you can spend ages eating the corpses to regain health - but more likely you'll just re-load and (now armed with foreknowledge) easily defeat the goons. That's IT, the game had nothing else to offer but ambush after ambush. It would be another matter were the combat fun, but you'll find yourself on boomer-shooter auto-pilot it's so bland and uninteresting - and the less said about the attempts at melee combat the better. With many infinitely better value (and actually FUN) one-man FPS games like VoidBreaker and Pigface available, I can't recommend anything other than avoiding this one.

- Short Version: Even if the game is in early access, there are some design choices that were made from the start that will never be fixed, only buy on discount if you're interested. - Long Version: I feel that while the game has had a lot of love and care put into it, but the developer doesn't understand what makes a boomer shooter "fun", and has focused on the gore/limb damage mechanic as the gimmick of this game in hopes to make up for it. Even if i didn't play much, the design choices are immediately apparent, and the game for sure does not present itself well if the first part of the game is like this. Something that is a fundamental part of boomer shooters is making sure the player is always aware of what's going on, even in the most chaotic fights, you the player should always have a general idea of the situation and where enemies are, for example games like Dusk take this to the extreme by having every single enemy or projectile glow, and you can immediately know what enemies are around by just hearing them, on the other end of the spectrum we have Coven, where even at full brightness you have completely black and dark areas, just for reference, there are a lot of "dark" boomer shooters that still allow you to see around (Cultic, Dread templar, Incision, Graven), but in coven everything is pitch black and the lantern is the usual videogame lightsource that does basically nothing. Not only you are not able to see anything, but the voicelines of the enemies feel like they were recorded from a dude on the street with a sore throat, they just feel so out of place, and do not help with distinguishing enemies. If visibility was not bad enough, generally good map design has some subtle details that tells you where to go, in coven you have glowing green lights in the dark that often are just decorations and are all over the place, it was legitimately one of the first times playing a retro shooter where i found myself lost so often in the first few levels. Another fundamental part of Boomer Shooters is the WEAPONS and COMBAT, and this game surely disappoints a lot, the first line in the info section of this game is "Coven is a fast-paced retro fps/slasher", this is straight up not true, it feels like that since there is a limb/part system that you have to destroy, the enemies were made slow to give you time to break them apart, this not only slows the game down a lot but also makes your weapon feel soo incredibly weak. You can clearly see how this is a focus of the game in the trailer up here in this page, they make sure to show you every painful slow death, the player is often standing still while killing, you can judge for yourself if that looks fast-paced at all. Other than weapons you have magic that you can use to shoot enemies, and honestly i feel like if this was the central gimmick of the game instead of the gore it would have been so much better. First of all, you don't regenerate mana, and you find soooo little to go around, i often forget i have it unless i'm out of bullets, and while you have a weapon out this serves as the "secondary fire", but it's a magic shot unrelated to the weapon you have, it would have been so much better if the secondary fire was a magically charged shot, not to mention that its wayy too scarce for the amount of damage it does, if you hit the basic enemy in the chest it will take you 4-5 shots to kill him. I don't know if these things change further into the game, but even if they do then why? the game should hook you immediately with fun mechanics, maybe not all of them at once but at least SOMETHING should be present from the start to give you motivation to unlock more. In conclusion, i only suggest you buy this if you are someone like me collecting all the boomer shooters, or if you want to support the developer as i see written in many other reviews, otherwise if you just want to shoot at some stuff then there are better options for similar prices.

To the point ==================== One of the most improved Early Access boomer shooters I've had the pleasure of playing recently. Completely worth your money and I can't wait to see the final release! +Cleared on Hard difficulty+ Good Stuff ================== - The combat encapsulates the 'glass cannon' archetype. it's incredibly fast paced and frantic with you being able to kill most enemies in 1-3 hits while also dying yourself in about as many blows. Really makes the more crowded combats a fun and intense experience. - The dismemberment system is both fun and well thought out. Do you eat a corpse for a quick return on health? Use a spell to drain mana from a corpse and destroy it? Try to preserve a head as opposed to going for a headshot so you can make a skull into a bomb? It adds a lot of choices to the simple process of mowing down your enemies. - The spells are a great addition ( eventually, as the first few spells kind of stunk ) and it's great to mix up the moment to moment combat. - Enemies really seem to reward taking them down with the proper weapons. For instance, the helmeted shieldless knights die in 2 headshots with the pistol. I assume this is because the pellet gets inside the visor and scrambles it all up. Some enemies have exposed legs or torsos. It adds another choice in combat to spice things up. - The levels, which are kind of 'meh' in the first few, really open up and get a lot bigger and more involved the further you get in. I appreciate the design though I do feel like a lot of exploration spots were either not walled off properly or didn't really reward the exploration. Still, they're very well made - The story has some very unexpected twists with regards to the places you'll go. Don't want to spoil it but I loved these additions and the extra arsenal you get from visiting there. - Tiny note but I played the one level demo forever ago and was super unimpressed with this game. I couldn't be happier with how it's shaping up though, can't wait for the final product! Bad Stuff ================== - As an early access, there are some bugs that aren't real show stoppers. Mostly I found lots of interesting places to jump up to in maps that will probably be walled off eventually and lead to places you can't get out of but that's really it. - On hard some of the enemies are comically fast and when you jump over obstacles where they have no pathing to they start going nuts. Fun to watch. - Your character has an ability to vomit but I never really found it useful in any capacity. A small gripe but I think it could be tweaked to be more useful.

Witches but they're actually as powerful and cool as the church says they are

you can eat people, reminds me of cruelty squad i like it

Good game in oldschool style. Shooting at guys who burns women is satisfying.

I love the dark Samhain feel. I love the color pallete the gentleman used for the game. Weapons are fun. I was plesantly surprised to find out you can eat the gonads of the victims as food and gain health. The props in the levels are fun. Love the green fire and glow. The atmosphere is great. I hope that Mr. Gator Shins continues putting the passion he has into it. Very respectable job here as it is not an easy task to create something like this. Great gameplay so far. Has a cool slow time feature as well. I played the demo a lot before I bought this. i do like the change in pace with having a female character. Thanks for creating such a dark, fun, and sinister game.

Was really enjoying this game. It's has cool weapons, cool levels and cool graphics. It's just most of the time the eating to get health mechanic doesn't even work and the cast enemies in level 6 just ruin it for me. Also enemies literally either won't attack you until you're directly in front of them or see you through walls and chase you down. Hopefully this game gets fixed with future updates. Oh also the final boss is complete BS. Barely hurt him, have to keep rotating statues to even damage him, mea while hordes of enemies chase you and you have limited health pickups, since the eating mechanic never works or even helps. Just sloppy

Solid retro shooter, nice premise and theme. And for some reason witch with a gun have the most fun explosions i seen in a long time. A bit scatterbrained on ideas, but there is always something new.