Duskborn

Since I was a big fan of Risk of Rain 2, I couldn't pass up this game. Now that I've played through the game once, here's what I can say: Visually, the game convinces with an incredible world, classic enemies and through the light, the colors and the entire environment with a great atmosphere. An absolute highlight for me are the movements of your main character, you just have an incredibly smooth feeling while you swing through the Abyss, absolutely recommendable! The battle system is okay, although I had to get used to it a bit, but the controls are intuitive and you quickly find your way in. Another great feature is the crafting station, where you can get all kinds of upgrades for your character, while one upgrade is cooler than the other. I also have the feeling that I have only seen a fraction of the possibilities and can hardly wait to play the next round. I don't want to reveal too much about the boss fight, but you definitely have to be well prepared before you start it! All in all, I found the game very enjoyable and can only recommend it. I'm also looking forward to possible expansions! Thanks for the great experience and keep up the good work!

Was für ein feines Stück Software mir da wieder unter die Finger gekommen ist. Ein gar wunderbarer Gameplay-Loop der Spaß auf mehr macht!

Not bad for the price of FREE. Features an interestin premise of makin' it down into the abyss. I didnt quite understand the time mechanic tho. Gettin around with the jetpack and grapple hook was pretty fun. Shootin up the enemies enables you to level up and purchase new upgrades for the character. It is satisfyin to do such. Definitely could do with more content and that should come with time. Sample gameplay: https://youtu.be/_n0KPWxSvAc

"Duskborn" is one of literally thousands of student projects infesting Steam. While student projects tend to be better quality than most "amateur" made games, we must still question what value such projects have for gamers. As with all student projects, this isn't really a fully fleshed out game, it's just the result of an academic exercise, and as such it has much more limited value as a game than a professionally developed game would have. Educational institutions should not be using Steam as a dumping ground for homework assignments (especially if the students didn't even pass the course). Sure, it helps their marketing and helps the students feel good about themselves, but this is another case of a business putting themselves before the needs of gamers. The students didn't even make a complete game this time, it's just an unfinished and abandoned tech demo for a contentless (procgen) third person shooter... and Risk of Rain 2, this is not (I didn't even like Risk of Rain 2). The developers abandoned this 1 year and 8 months ago. It will never be completed. This unfinished game is just polluting Steam and making it harder for gamers to find genuinely, completely made games. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The graphics in this game are passable, but could be better. And while it's vital for any game to have impressive visuals (gaming is a visual medium, after all), there's more to a game than just the graphics. To be worth a gamers time, the game must match top tier visuals with top tier gameplay, and that's not happening here. The developer chose not to do the job of a real game developer and create meaningful bespoke levels, narrative based gameplay progression and so on. Instead, they decided that "Procgen IS content!" and lazily tried to use procgen algorithms to create infinite, samey, repetitive, soulless levels, because that's a lot less work. As a result of this poor decision, the game gets tired and repetitive almost immediately. Developers must learn that procgen is a terrible substitute for creating real content. It should not be used as "ez-mode" for content creation, as the developer tried to do here. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. It would be unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say. There's the other problem, too... as a student project, this wasn't made for gamers. There's no requirement for them to polish and balance the game properly, all they need is something to show the faculty so they can get their grade and move on. Let's once more ask... why is that good for gamers? It's obviously not delivering a solid product. Yet here it is, on the store page, and here you are, reading my review for a student demo that's going to waste your time. While genuine amateur developers who made real products get ignored because they have to compete with this stuff. In some ways, this deluge of student projects on Steam is harmful to everyone. In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 6 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Given that this free student project won't count toward your game collection or add any achievements, and because it's not really a full game and more of a homework assignment, it's not a worthwhile download.

In the little bit of time I played I enjoyed this game. There were some bugs, some missing things like audio, but I know you guys (the creators) are gonna work on polishing the game next semester. A bug I did notice was the longer I was playing, the more I got teleported while using my grappling hook. Sometimes I would use my grappling hook and get teleported a little bit away, and the enemies were a little too easy but that can all be fixed. This game is good for only 4 months of development. Nice job.

Some odd technical issues. Runs remarkably poorly This was dumped on steam in early access and I haven't seen any patch notes since it was launched, so I'm guessing this has been abandoned. It's too bad, because there's a big world here and it has promise if given some polish. But until you see some patch notes in 2024, take a pass.

this is an interesting game a little bit of the Blame! manga concept, a little bit of attack on titan swinging. little bit of risk of rain combat, not super difficult but enjoyable. id love to see where this goes. and couple more updates to some quality of life button controls like when your holding shift to zoom in if you press space you lose your line completely which kinda messed up my swings a bit. i like this a lot!