Doko Roko

I'll separate this review into two sections: kickstarter expectations, and the actual game. [h1]Kickstarter Expectations[/h1] I'm not factoring the kickstarter expectations into the review score, as it's more important for the game to just be good. People purchasing after the kickstarter don't care about that anyways, but I think it's still important to note them. The first thing you'll notice - the artstyle is very mixed. The kickstarter showed it as pretty pure pixel art, but the reality is that it's an amalgam of mismatched 2d and 3d elements. If you've seen 3d animated monsters in anime, you know the kind of mismatch I'm talking about. That combined with a huge amount of particle effects (I'll get to that later) is your artstyle. It is what it is. Gameplay wise, it's pretty purely an arcadey combat game. Artifacts, transformations, the legacy system, and most other side mechanics are gone. The swords system is the main survivor, along with some npcs and shops. It's enough for a gameplay loop, but don't expect anything extra. The soundtrack is good. The sound effects are a blob of bitcrush, which is ok. [h1]The Game[/h1] As mentioned before, it's a pure combat game. You get a little item management that supports the combat system. You can carry a few swords, and they each have durability. The various swords have pretty extreme power level disparity. Swords that shoot projectiles are ridiculously better than the other swords, though they chew through durability pretty quickly. There's a mechanic where you can whack projectiles back at enemies, but the hitboxes are frequently too stingy and the projectiles too fast for it to be terribly reliable. You also have a dash move, which I think is too limited. It's very fast and short, appears to have iframes, and you can only do it once every few seconds. It's mandatory to dash or you'll take damage during certain boss moves, so I'd really like it to be slightly more generous. I think it'd feel a lot better if you could dash twice in succession before waiting for recharge. It could also be pretty good if the amount of dashes you could do depended on what sword you had out, to help balance them out. There's wall jumping, which you need to climb the tower, and there's something a bit off about it. Character constantly gets stuck while doing it, only making tiny little jumps. Enemy balance and variety so far is fine besides a few outliers. There's a flamethrower casting enemy in the first zone that's pretty annoying. It adjusts its flamethrower's aim towards you while it's shooting, and there's zero counterplay besides to wait, or shoot it with a projectile sword. Its time in between bursts is very fast, and it's just way too strong compared to the other enemies. One balancing grievance is health pickups from enemies. They're so small, unnoticeable, and seemingly random. I'd much rather you get health after gaining certain amount of currency or something than these obscure, random, but so very important pickups. Lastly, a huge problem is just how many particle effects the game uses. You can barely see a lot of the time. You can't tell if an enemy exploding is going to damage you, or if that's just its death animation. It doesn't help that the cursor for aiming is extremely small. [h1]In Conclusion[/h1] It's a janky game that has potential to be decent with a large amount of minor tweaks. I really hope the dev will take the time to make such tweaks with updates. I really don't think it'd take much, the base is there. I'll definitely update my review in the future if the game ends up feeling just a bit better to play in the future.

Let me preface by saying I love the genre and I've been waiting for this game, like everyone else, for seven years. Lets start with the positives: + The music is good Okay! With that out of the way, lets get down to it: - Gamepad unplayable, character keeps running left and right constantly and switches directions seemingly at random. Turning off the gamepad, game doesn't register ANY keyboard inputs whatsoever. Have to turn on gamepad to get to the menu and choose to disable the gamepad, before turning it off. - Movement is incredibly floaty, it takes a good full 2 seconds before the character stops after letting go of inputs. - There is no pause function whatsoever. Talking to an NPC or going into the menu to change volume or anything invites damage taken. Speaking of volume, the door opening at the start of a run is incredibly loud compared to everything else. - No sense of direction or aim as to where to go in the game. All buildings look the same, there's no mini map or map, no way to tell where I should be going. Just roam aimlessly and pray seems to be the way. - There is no meta progression, no checkpoints, no save feature. - In terms of visual clarity, I can't tell what's going on during combat against multiple enemies most of the time. Before people start screaming 'git gud' - check my games library, I'm not a bad gamer. This game has been a huge disappointment. I guess you deserve a pat on the back for at least releasing this utter mess of a game.

I waited 7 years for this?? Looks a lot like the beta from years ago... I'm guessing the dev was waiting for all the people who kickstarted it to forget about the game entirely before releasing it. It's not finished, and it's not very good. The soundtrack is nice tho.

Doko Roko is an amazing roguelike with fast paced combat. The art style and music are brilliant! Playing it for the first time was a challenging, but great experience. Simple gameplay but definitely hard to master. I just wish there was an easy mode with checkpoints on each level as it really is difficult for me to get better at it! I hope this game gets the attention it deserves! Congratz on the launch!

I really, really hate to leave a negative review because I know this project has a ton of love poured into it and it's aesthetically gorgeous, but there's just something about it that doesn't click. As it stands the gameplay is just too shallow, not to mention gamepad is nearly unusable. No matter what controller I use, the character will just sprint to the left. It doesn't seem to be a drift issue, either. There's something in there that's super cool and interesting, but it's buried under a somewhat barren gameplay loop, gamepad issues, and simple combat. Maybe in the future I can come back to it and feel differently or some tweaks can be made to really add to it, but right now it just isn't engaging enough.

It's gonna be pretty quick on my end, and pretty much a rehash of what the others have said better than me : The controls of the game 1) don't work 2) cannot be remapped even if 1) Won't even going to go to the whole kickstarted shenanigan. It's actually a bit depressing to realise that this game was better off never actually going out (at least in the current state). Makes you question the fabric of reality.

I backed this game 7 years ago, and had not much expectations. But at release, I tried it and was surprised about the presentation - the graphics, the design, music and sounds. Unfortunately this game is unplayable due to controlling issues, and the developer had not written any word about that issue or released a fix. In fact Eric Mack didn't show up anywhere since the release of the game. Seems to be abandonware right from the start. So no recommendation from me. If you look for a similar but way more rewarding experience, I suggest you take a look at the game 'ScourgeBringer'.

The music and art are good. Those are its only redeeming qualities. Controls are very floaty, there is no pause menu - you can die when talking to NPCs or in the escape menu, there are no checkpoints, and the gameplay becomes repetitive especially given the lack of checkpoints. I waited 7 years for this.

As someone who doesn't play these types of games often, I've had a really fun time playing Doko Roko. It has beautiful graphics and music, an interesting lore / setting, and very smooth action, although bugs do appear on occasion. The game has a fairly linear learning curve, but it can be frustrating starting out, as there are no saves or checkpoints (at the time of writing this) and you don't have a clear indicator of how long the game truly is until you've reached the final boss. One run can take less than 30 minutes, but it took me over a dozen hours before I was skilled enough to reach the ending. Like I said, though, I'm inexperienced with these kinds of games, so take this with a grain of salt. I'm not sure if the game has much replayability once you've reached the ending, because while there are a ton of different weapons you'll still generally run into the same types of areas / enemies -- to this end I think greater area and boss variety could have been beneficial -- but regardless I've been having a lot of fun attempting challenge runs for achievements. Although the game may not have Isaac-tier replayability, it's still a very fun experience. Having backed Doko Roko in 2015, when I was barely a sophomore in high school (now I'm a junior-senior in college), I can safely say that it was worth the wait.

Seems rather flawed and half-baked in its current state. Especially the controls are a complete mess. When I first started the game, my character was just running around automatically because by default, it reads the analog stick without any dead zone. Thankfully the dead zone can be configured, but I can't remember any other game where I ever had to do that. The continue screen only works with the mouse apparently, and in general the menus are terrible to use with controller. The character also slips around constantly instead of coming to a proper halt. Starting the game, there are also literally zero instructions or guidance for anything as far as I could tell. Just run around in a nice looking, fairly empty environment and try to fight some enemies with not particularly engaging combat. I haven't played much so far, and I'll probably try it some more because I'm stubborn like that, but the "it's a mess" impression hits pretty hard right at the start. Maybe this could be good with a bunch more work, but in its current state it's not great.