Everblade

Wow. Terrible controls - attack with ctrl (!). Cannot rebind them (!!). And my biggest pet peeve - an absurdly tiny range of your weapon. (!!!) Such an easy skip on this one with the holy trifecta of bad design.

Great game.

An arcade platformer with retro visuals and light metroidvania features plus some questionable design choices. The plot is a cliché that can be found in almost every game. A tranquil village coexists with a big cat deity that serves as its defender. Suddenly, an evil wizard attacks the village, seeking one of the protector's horns. By demolishing the majority of the community and killing the lucky residents, he achieves in his goal. Those who are unlucky are transformed into skeleton warriors. You play as one of the few survivors who happens to pass past the protector and receives his other horn, as well as its abilities. This ability is a magical dagger that has a basic slashing attack with very short range or it can be thrown up to three times before requiring recharging. This takes a few seconds and prevents you from repeatedly spamming throw from a safe distance. The other ability is to hit enemy shots that can be either destroyed or deflected back to the attacker. Later on, you'll get elemental daggers, which help you solve puzzles and make some opponents easier to defeat. Bringing insanely rare ingots to the smithy in the main hub will unlock more skills. Several characters in the hub offer enhancements for a fee. The most crucial are skill coins, which are hidden in stages and give game-changing upgrades like more jewels in chests or a grappling blade that allows you to reach new areas. The skeleton, who requires completely different tokens and opens a door to the challenge area, is the one I disliked. The fact that you have to spend three tokens each time makes this a pain. If you fail, you'll have to look for them again or get lucky and find a cat that drops a nice bundle of tokens. These challenges need to be found in the game’s stages before they show up in the room. They’re a single-room and timed mini-games where you need to survive long enough to earn a gold medal. In the main hub, stages are represented by portals. While some are locked and only become active when a certain amount of progress has been completed, you typically have an option of which one to tackle first. Each portal features three gem slots, which fill up as you discover items and secrets. There’s no saving because the stages are played as an arcade game (but there are checkpoints). There are also no significant branching paths. Except for secret walls that lead to a plentiful chest or a collectible, it's a mainly straightforward adventure. The game has an unhealthy obsession with secret walls, with one in virtually every room. The problem is they look only slightly different from the rest of the environment. As a result, you'll be hammering on every possible wall since you don't want to miss out on any valuable jewels. This currency is then utilized in the main hub to buy limited-use potions and items with passive abilities that break upon death, such as the antipoison potion. I enjoyed the game’s puzzles. These usually entail throwing your dagger at glass surfaces and getting it to bounce at the perfect angle. They serve as a welcome distraction and don’t overstay their welcome. The stages themselves are difficult but not impossible to complete. They have the classic themes like frozen world and jungle. Although there are numerous enemies that can make your life difficult, particularly the various skeleton warriors who are too fast and fire cheap shots at you (get a freeze dagger and the tables turn), the main cause of death is still the numerous hazards found throughout the stages. Some examples include poisonous waters, thorns, and exploding rocks. Despite the nimble protagonist's ability to jump on walls unless they're covered in slippery material, I recommend going slowly. By the way, the hero has a problem with ladders. To be able to climb down, he must be exactly in the right spot. There aren’t that many of them, but it was funny how I continued kneeling rather than climbing just because I was a few pixels away from the area. Fortunately, dying does not mean the game is over because you have multiple lives and your health may be easily replenished. If you find a level too difficult and want to quit, you can do so but you will lose all the acquired gems. Re-visiting completed stages is possible. This is actually encouraged because some areas are blocked off by obstacles that can only be removed using tools that you will get later. The already unlocked doors and shortcuts make subsequent exploration considerably easy. During boss fights, you will almost certainly die. They strike hard and necessitate accurate jumping while waiting for an opening. The good news is that they only use about three attack moves during the fight and don't throw anything random at you. When half of their health is gone, there is no unexpected attack or increased difficulty. Some are even fun, such as the massive stone colossus. The worst thing is that if you return to the stage and want to keep the new loot, you'll have to beat them all over again. The exit portal appears only after the boss has been defeated; this isn't entertaining, and I'd prefer a portal outside the final room. Later bosses are even less fun because they can only be hit with a particular elemental dagger. These battles drag on far too long because you have to wait a few seconds after throwing three daggers. My recommendation is to grab the skill that shortens the recharge period as soon as possible. ([b] UPDATE - Fixed in the latest update [/b]) I encountered one of the few bugs during the first boss fight. When the bony fist punched me into the ground, I thought that being stuck in the ground was part of the game’s mechanic. It turns out I glitched inside the terrain and couldn't get out. I had no choice but to wait until the boss killed me. The other bug occurred later when I had to light a lantern by throwing a fire dagger between two moving rocks. An enemy died right between the rocks and dropped a jewel that stopped both rocks and completely blocked the lantern. I had to quit the game and restart the whole thing. Despite the slow and hard start, the game opens up and becomes more enjoyable the more you play it. You start getting some upgrades, the stages become more complex and with certain mechanics – such as the desert stage where you need to cool off in the water regularly – and even the main hub starts revealing its secrets. The achievements are fair for the most part; just collect everything and progress the story. However, the no-hit achievements for every boss are a nightmare. If you ignore the fact that you have to progress through stages each time just to fight them, most have a cheap attack that makes the entire run pointless and frustrating. I don't want to rely on luck. First boss drops random rocks at spots that allow you to hit the boss, one in the water stage swims faster than you, the next in the desert sends a swarm at you, etc. You can forget about using the shield ability, it won't work. No-hit means no hit! Also, at least one isn't working properly: the "Breaking the Bank" is stuck at 99,999. The last boss encounter, where the limited battle system rears its ugly head, receives criticism. The the weak points are located out of reach, so you have to dodge the insane attacks that require pixel-perfect precision while waiting for the grapple points to appear. Then you get one shot to reach the weak point that requires several hits. Once you finally do that, you can hit the boss once, twice if you're lucky, for tiny amount of damage.

The game combines some of the best elements from many classic games and still makes it fresh. Great platforming and lots of puzzles. Combat is straightforward and easy to get good at but the varied enemies keep it interesting. Each boss fight is unique., unlike many other games in the genre. Pretty challenging, but not extreme.

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☑ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☑ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☑ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☑ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☐ 9 ☑ 10

This game is terribly off balance. Basically everything is fine until the last boss. Apparently developers thought it would be hilarious if difficulty level jumps into the stratosphere when you fight the final boss. I switched to easy but to no avail. Had I spent 6-7 hours more on trying to beat him, I would have done it but I just value my time too much. It's bad practice to do such a thing - in the end player feels unsatisfied even if the rest of the game is great. Shame on devs. Not recommended, steer clear of this game.

Everblade is a fantastic hidden gem of a game. While it certainly has some rough spots, there is more than enough polish elsewhere to make up for its shortcomings. The main factor Everblade has going for it is variety. The game is divided between a hub area and 9 levels which generally unlock in sets of 2 or 3 (plus a final level). The level themes are diverse and range anywhere from underwater ruins to a church and graveyard crawling with undead. Beyond the aesthetics, each level has a unique feel as they all focus on different mechanics. You'll be dodging plenty of boulder and riding along on the wind in the mountains, jumping between falling tree branches and swimming around thorns and poison in the swamp, and mostly solving puzzles while trying not to drown in those underwater ruins I mentioned. Several of the levels are even broken into two distinct segments, such as the desert level which first has you platforming across the desert while periodically dipping into water to avoid heatstroke and later has you fighting your way through a trap-filled pyramid. The underwater level does go on for a bit too long, but otherwise the levels stay fresh and interesting from beginning to end. Secrets are another aspect Everblade excels at. There are a truly *ridiculous* number of breakable walls and hidden passages in this game. If a wall looks even a little bit suspicious, chances are high that you can break it or crawl through it for a prize or a challenge. While many of these secrets result in relatively minor amounts of treasure or a 1up, there are also plenty which grant more valuable prizes in the form of skill coins, max health upgrades, lore books, or minigame portals (which in turn unlock another upgrade when you find and complete all of them). The hub area itself also has plenty of hidden paths to gradually uncover as your skillset grows. If you get a sense of satisfaction every time you find something hidden in a video game, chances are you'll love Everblade. Level progression and backtracking is handled rather well here too. The path leading to the boss of each level tends to be straightforward, but finding every permanent upgrade hidden throughout a level is rarely going to happen on your first run through it. In fact, it's outright impossible to do so in a single run for all except the final few levels as many of them have paths you can only reach with upgrades found elsewhere. Thankfully, Everblade does several things to make backtracking fun instead of tedious. Each level entrance has a marker to let you know if you've found every important item inside it. Doors and other shortcuts remain permanently open across visits, with a path leading to the later areas of a level almost inevitably right near the start. Lastly, you can leave a completed level at any time with the only penalty being the loss of half the treasure you obtained on that run, which is likely to be next to nothing if you're focused on seeking out missed upgrades. What this all means is levels are long enough to feel like satisfying challenges on an initial clear while having enough permanent shortcuts open up along the way that you rarely need more than a minute or two to reach any part you want to investigate while backtracking. The combat system itself is decent. You have a standard slashing sword combo alongside a set of 3 weaker, regenerating throwing daggers for ranged attacks. I found myself relying on the daggers most of the time as most enemy types can take quite a few hits and often deal plenty of close-range damage. This does mean combat can feel tedious early on if you like to play it safe, but it picks up in the back half once you get more utility between decreased cooldown on dagger regeneration and elemental daggers which let you freeze most enemy types or leave behind fiery damage areas. Enemy placement is also handled well, with enemies often positioned in locations where they can make effective use of their attack patterns rather than being haphazardly tossed around. While combat in Everblade generally falls under "decent if unremarkable", the boss fights are more noteworthy. To begin with, every single boss and miniboss has its own combat theme. Many bosses are immune to dagger attacks, so learning how to dodge their attacks and when it's safe to get close enough for a few quick sword slashes is vital. This isn't to say that daggers are completely useless for these fights though, as many bosses summon in weaker enemies (which can drop valuable health) or shoot destructible projectiles and daggers *definitely* come in handy against the bosses who don't have immunity. Bosses also have enough health to put up a good fight without having so much that the fight drags on. Furthermore, most bosses either have a fixed pattern they change up in some way around the halfway point or pull from a large enough pool of potential attacks to ensure the fights feel satisfying and tense from start to finish. The only boss I didn't like was the one in the mountain level, which was a neat concept for a sort of 'summoner' fight, but the execution was a bit tedious. With all that said, it's time to get around to discussing some of those rough spots I mentioned. To begin with, the visual language of Everblade has some issues. For example, the castle level has plenty of thin, grey, rectangular platforms whcih look like they should crumble beneath you and, while they do disappear upon contact, it turns out they're bounce pads. You can jump up most walls, but the walls you can't jump on have a thin line of green moss which blends in so well with the environment that it took me a moment to understand why I couldn't jump on some walls. These visual issues are rarely a problem other than the first time you encounter something, but they do mean otherwise simple mechanics can sometimes feel oddly confusing to understand. Treasure and 1ups don't feel valuable for most of the game. The inclusion of a lives system in the first place is a strange decision, but it's made especially pointless when there's a hidden 1up you can farm in the castle (one of the earliest levels) within 30 seconds of the entrance once you open a shortcut; I spent a good chunk of the back half of the game hovering at or around the maximum of 9 lives thanks to how easy this and other 1ups were to obtain. As for treasure, it's virtually everywhere and finding hidden treasure can in and of itself be fun, but the only things you can use it for are a skill reset token, a single max health upgrade, dirt cheap consumables (you can only have 3 copies of a single type at a time), and passive items which all either go away upon death or do something upon death (you can also only have 1 passive item at a time and they are all so expensive that it makes more sense to simply save for consumables). Lastly, Everblade does have something of a U-shaped difficulty curve. The reason for this is nearly all of the skills related to exploration are found in the first 3 levels in the back half of the game. The result is you spend the first few levels getting a tiny handful of skill coins for permanent passives and a few max health upgrades and then the number of health and skill upgrades you can find skyrockets once you get these new skills, making damage largely trivial until near the end where the game starts becoming balanced around the assumption that the player has found most of the health upgrades. It would have made sense to distribute these upgrades more evenly across the game. When all is said and done, none of Everblade's issues are particularly severe. Ultimately, Everblade is a wonderful game full of plenty to like from start to finish and I'd say it's easily worth the asking price. And if you're still on the fence, I strongly recommend checking out the demo as it lets you play through the entirety of one of the early levels (it certainly did a good job of convincing me to take a chance on this game at least).

This is a real hidden gem, I can't believe it's only got as few reviews as it has. A wonderful pixel adventure, you play as a mage on a quest for revenge. The bosses and minibosses all have interesting designs, if fairly simple patterns to remember. But this is not a game focused on challenging bosses, the focus is on the bright and wonderfully detailed environments. The levels are always bigger than you think, full of secrets and treasure ala Shovel Knight, but with a focus on shortcuts and puzzles. You'll unlock new abilities that will open the path to even more secrets and treasures. If you like exploration focused games, this is def one to check out. You start off with simple sword slashes and some magic daggers for ranged combat, but you will gradually unlock spells and new attacks to mix things up. Enemies can sometimes be challenging, but are often placed in ways to make you consider your platforming. Most enemies also don't respawn, so it's easy to backtrack if you think you've missed something. A death will restart you very close to where you died, but after you lose all lives you must restart. Shortcuts and items found remain in your possession though. There are also fun minigames to find and unlock for even more treasure. In between levels you find yourself in a hubworld which is just as full of secrets of its own. Everblade is overall a really great action adventure game, if you like metroidvania games consider giving this one a try, even if it isn't a true metroidvania. It's such a polished and fun adventure, with a unique feel of it's own that it really deserves a bigger audience. Curator page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39780758-Cool-Indies/

A mi me gusto!

Отличная игра, платформер с элементами головоломки, метроидвании и кучей секреток! от выбора сложности зависит наличие и расположение тех или иных противников; разнообразные локации не делают игру надоедающей... боссы хоть и заскриптованные, но интересные, многои так же с элементом головоломки, надо понять что и как делать! из недостатков могу выделить отсутствие русского языка и то, что игра иногда крашится после поражения на боссах и приходится заново до них доходить, благо хоть открытые сокращения остаются открытыми! игру рекомендую!