From The Dark

Since there is no reviews yet i guess ill be first. Is this game difficult. Yes. Is the game fun? Yes. The idea of being near blind walking around checking corners and always expecting something? A nice change compared to other games. For this price especially. Some downsides because i gotta (Might change but its early access so get some salt) Early game is rough when dying and losing your light source. running in the pitch dark not even a small light source is pain. Inventory management is something. grabbing every item is currently not of use since cant use weak items for anything (that i found) stashing stuff is nice but very limiting (I dont mind personally but others might i like the challenge) My 2 favourite features? Music and Enemy design. Unique enough wheres its rare. but not uncanny to be weird. just a nice setting and design. and the sound design (even if lacking outside of certain areas) is amazing.

I did not get this for free, he lies.

I’ll likely write a more complete review once I’ve played more and understood the game as a whole. So far though, it’s been fun and seems to offer a solid gameplay loop. The start is difficult and a bit scary because visibility is very limited, but that improves the further you progress. Looting feels fun and rewarding, especially when you get something new. The only cons I can think of is -No reminders in tutorial which can be rough if you forget the current step -First boss is very easy to cheese(havent tried other) -No sounds on fireball spell(havent tried other) and neither on successful blocks But these are things that are fairly expected in early access

This game is likely a solo developer project, so if you (the developer) are reading this then please understand that the following criticism is quite harsh but honest. Try to learn from this and improve and expand. Starting off basic, the game is not very good looking. The lighting is poor, the artstyle is flat, the user interface is hideous and clunky, the animations arent great and the effects (torch flames, weapon swings) are especially awful. If it was just one or a few of these things then it might not be so bad, but unfortunately every aspect of the game does not look good. For how dark this game wants to be (more on that in a moment), the effects are fullbright and just stand out awkwardly. The dark is its own issue. I understand it might be the vision to have the game dark and revolve around light sources and gaining more light, but it's ultimately really poorly executed and severely not fun. Most of the game was me specifically saying "I can't see a damn thing" and like I said, the lighting style is really bizarre and looks out of place for the artstyle. A huge lack of sounds also exists in this game, with almost no ambiance, breakable objects in the environment just vanish when hit, the sounds that are used are questionable sometimes as well, with walls doing nothing to muffle or mute sounds, giving the entire thing a confusing audio experience. Combat is basic, just point and click like it's minecraft to do damage. Weapons almost entirely feel the same from one another aside from range, damage and speed. Some weapons have random stats like "lights enemies on fire" but I was actually baffled to see that the flames on enemies dont actually cast any light. Ranged attacks feel weak and inconsistent unless you're cheesing. I killed the first boss by standing in the corner and taking a picture of them about 80 times with a camera. It didn't do much damage but the boss was rather confusing to fight and this was significantly easier than trying to understand the poor animations. I had an equally poor time with the second boss who seems to be a sand worm and the sand worm just kind of falls from the ceiling and hits you and the only real way to fight the boss is to backpedal fast enough to hit it in the split second that it appears for its entire healthbar. The NPCs in town seem useless and poorly written and I never actually found a use for any of them, but this could be a lack of understanding on my part. The classes seem rather poorly designed as well with paladin seeming like the best choice by far. Every class you can pick limits your playstyle heavily to using specific items, but the items appear to be RNG loot drops or treasure chests for the most part which means you're at the mercy of what you get. Paladin is the only class that isn't limited in this way *and* you get health regen and more light. I won't be refunding this game as I would like to see it improve in the future. Hopefully it'll reach there some day.

I'm enjoying the game so far but we need a storage box in town.