Gloomwood

This game is phenomenal with a lot to love, but it has some rough edges that just give me the ick. Really great when you sink your teeth into it, but I can't even disagree with some of the negative reviews when the game's three years into EA and still has some amateur fumbles inside. I'd like to write about those fumbles real quick before I can get to praising the game proper, because the devs really need to fix these if they want this to be the masterpiece it deserves to be: [list] [*]Watchmen AI is [i]unnatural[/i] and difficult to predict in the bad way. Their "vision indicators" are a complete joke and a lie, with stealthing around them feeling like a game of pretend where they secretly always know where you are. One glimpse is all that's necessary for the entire region to know your exact location - It's incredibly limiting and frustrating. [*]Basic movement like climbing is inconsistent with no indicator of how or why it works, climbing a rope is muddled by baffling controls where your climbing direction when holding up/down buttons can [i]reverse[/i] depending on the direction you're looking. Why couldn't we have simple climb up/down buttons? [*]Melee combat is clunky and incapable of handling more than one enemy, probably by design, but this makes stealth be the [i]only[/i] option to tackle groups of enemies and limits options for no reason. Even when it's a valid option, I feel miserable beating the enemy with my stick while he lazily snaps between his sprinting and attack animations. [*]Those three points kind of ruin the "immersive" part of the sim for me, so I dearly hope the devs take the feedback to heart and make some much needed changes. [/list] If all of that sounds really harsh, especially for a game I just called a [b]masterpiece[/b], it's because the idea that basic issues like that are present in this game so far into EA kind of frustrates me, I love the potential this game has, especially with how much love and care the developers put into it, but just because the game does some stuff really great doesn't mean those issues should be disregarded. That all being said... Let me actually talk about the great stuff. Gloomwood is a game about patience, strategy, and knowing your place within its world and how you can affect the things immediately surrounding you. From the very beginning, you're tossed into a world where threats are already present and you have to be sneaky and clever to survive. Each enemy is a mini-challenge to figure out the cleanest way to rid of them, and progressing through the starting area feels like the beginning of a covert, hostile takeover as you learn your surroundings, unlock shortcuts to previous areas and save points, and make your claim over this small part of the world. It feels incredibly rewarding. The scope of each area gets grander and grander as you continue through the story, and the situations you find yourself in get more interesting too. Each location makes sense in the context of the world, and you often leave them feeling like you've conqured the area. Each of them are distinct with some defining feature to set them apart, too. You find more options to sneak around and fight enemies in the form of different tools later on, but you're often forced to use the environment to your advantage. And you'll be finding tons of keys that unlock new areas when backtracking - You'll be carrying a lot of mental load thinking about the ways your new tools will help you reach areas you couldn't before. Now, this the best thing about this game: There are always, and I mean [i]always[/i] multiple solutions to a problem in this game, I am genuinely not confident enough to come up with a situation where there isn't. I have avoided encounters, instakilled bosses, and skipped entire areas in Gloomwood through sheer cleverness alone, and it's a shocking moment of discovery and an intrinsically rewarding experience every single time. The way this game makes you feel connected to its world through natural exploration, connections, and solutions that surprise you at first but make [i]perfect sense[/i] when you think about it is really special. I struggled really hard with a boss fight early on in the game, my choices were to either swipe a key off it's back and leave undetected, or fight it to the death. I was stuck trying both options for an hour when I discovered a secret third - Lure it underneath an elevator and crush it. This solution didn't come easily and still required soeme trial & error, but it worked and I felt damn good. It's this feeling that I play Gloomwood for. [list] [*]I also found an area in that boss fight that gave me access to an explosive, a valve to open a gate that'll help me unravel a loose thread from a previous area, and a peek into [i]another[/i] room that I still don't know how to get to. [*]Once I spotted a completely random, out of place lever in a building that did nothing. It confused me until I spotted a strange barred staircase with four lights, one of them not like the others. I immediately drew the obvious connection and went hunting for three more switches to open this gate into a secret area with a valuable item. I almost had no idea this existed. [*]I still don't really know how, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I swam through a pipe and ended up in the scariest area of the entire game and I didn't even realize it was part of the main progression. I felt like I went completely out of bounds and started seeing stuff I wasn't supposed to, but then I realized after some exploration that I actually got [i]past[/i] the section that I was trying to reach. So my unrelated exploration of a random pipe threw me to the next major part of the game. Incredible. [/list] So, despite my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ earlier, it's needless to say that this is a great game still worth playing. If you love exploring a world, treating the map like a puzzle that you have to piece together yourself, then you will love this game. If you love feeling rewarded for cleverly exercising your problem-solving skills then you will also love this game. I might love this game.

the quality of this game absolutely deserves its overwhelmingly positive review score. its absolutely incredible. easily competes with dusk and ultrakill for the best game in the New Blood catalogue. BUT when i buy EA games, i usually play a little bit to get a refundable-sized taste, and if i like it, my personal rule is that i dont play it again until its a complete game so i can get the full uninterrupted experience as intended. 4 years later, and i havent played a single minute past the 2.6 hours i put in back when it released. the development of this game is ridiculously slow. the first major chunk of development videos on dillons yt came out in 2019 and by early 2020 it was being published by NB with a playable demo. 6+ years later, and only a portion of the game is complete. i understand this is a complex and ambitious indie game spearheaded by dillon and a tiny team. but i also know that New Blood is a multi-million dollar company. how do they not have the resources and manpower to complete a low poly stealth game in less than 6 years? this game is amazing. it just needed more time in the oven before revealing itself and trying to garner hype. once finished, it will likely launch to no fanfare. kind of reminds me of the plight of halo infinite. many such cases.

Видя темпы разработки, не могу рекомендовать этот проект, видимо все деньги с продаж они тратят на дополнения к blood west, бухло и телок, просто не понимаю какого хера проект так долго стоит на месте, делая шаг раз в полгода.

Excellent stealth game with some really fun immersive sim interactions, 10/10 would nuke an entire room of bat people with a barrel I stole from a gun store. I pirated it because I'm poor, got up to the Hive section and realized my cracked copy didn't have the latest few updates. I bought the full version both to see the new sights and because the devs deserve more money to finish this wonderful game.

The game itself is good, the atmosphere and immersion is well done and I found it to be an enjoyable experience. However if you are looking for the next dishonored game this is definitely not it, I understand it is an indie game so it won't have nearly the same depth but with the amount of content despite 3 and a half years in early access is honestly pretty dissapointing. The recent hightown update was just meh in my opinion the area was hard to navigate and didn't really give you much choice in how to approach it. I find the scaling of the enemies to be a bit skewed I understand stealth should be your primary goal for progressing but making it so a majority of enemies cannot be stealth killed just makes the game so slow. I genuinely enjoyed the game so I will give a positive review but if I could I would give it something neutral. My biggest gripes with games such as this is their insanely long development times, for a game from a notable indie publisher and dev with a decent playerbase the updates should not being coming out this slow. I find this develop with the community mindset often hinders development rather than makes it better as it encourages the developer to stay in early access rather than push for a full release honestly I prefer a complete game with a couple rough edges to something really polished but takes years to get a couple hours of content.

Gloomwood is a game many (the devs included) have compared to Thief, a legendary and foundational stealth game and Immersive Sim that came out all the way back in 1998. That is high praise and a lot to live up to. Thief is one of my all time favorite games and one of the very few I would give a perfect score to, even in spite of its dated mechanical clunkyness. To be frank, I don’t think the devs should be encouraging these comparisons, because Gloomwood does not live up to them. Since I am going to be harsh about Gloomwood, I will start with the positives. The art style is good and obviously takes tons of inspiration from the Thief series. Seeing as that series is dead and Looking Glass shut down more than 20 years before Gloomwood went into early access, I don’t think anyone should see this as a problem. The game is very atmospheric and the music consists of good ambient tracks that successfully induce the type of mood the devs are going for. The highest praise I will give this game is for the level design. Some of these levels are really interesting, with a lot of ways to progress through them. They’re not universally excellent, as some of the areas are a little too linear for my taste, but overall I would label the level design as “very good”. I also like the System Shock style inventory system (NOT Resident Evil style. System Shock came out in 1994 people, and was made by Looking Glass just like Thief.) I enjoy this style of inventory management and think it is appropriate for Immersive Sims. I also really like the System Shock 2 inspired research system. It is the one mechanic they’ve cribbed that has been improved upon rather than poorly copied. This decision by itself justifies the interconnected nature of the game’s levels which otherwise is not as fully realized or necessary as it is in either System Shock game. The areas are all fun to explore with bits of loot and lore to reward the player’s curiosity. Now for the harsh part; Mechanically this game is awful. Movement is sluggish and far too slow. Mantleing is taken directly from the first Thief game, and is not adequate in the context of modern gaming. The sword fighting mechanics are dreadful and barely feel better than Thief, which is not a game that EVER encourages sword fighting. This game is much more action oriented, so the awful combat mechanics are a huge problem. Enemy melee behavior is incredibly basic and it is quite easy to bait out sword swings and just move back and forth to dodge and attack. The block mechanic feels so sluggish, that it is only worth using if you badly miscalculated and got backed into a corner. The guns are better than the terrible sword mechanics, but bad overall and there are no damage model differences for hitting different parts of the body. A headshot is the same as a foot shot in Gloomwood. (You can research one of the enemies and it gives you increased headshot damage against that one enemy type) That is just a missed opportunity to introduce much needed mechanical complexity. Enemy combat behavior is also quite poor. They do not take any advantage of the environment. Instead they just beeline to your location as if this was Serious Sam. That is not acceptable for an Immersive Sim, or even a modern action game. However, by far the biggest issue with the game's mechanics is that the AI is so bad that enemies act as smart as a bag of rocks. Enemies will sometimes walk right past you when you’re not even hiding. You can back stab foes two feet away from their allies and they will not notice. You can pick up items and move them in full view of enemies, while standing two inches behind them and they will remain completely unaware of your presence. Enemy scripting is more of a mixed bag. Some sections have good scripting that present reasonable stealth challenges, while others have paths so wide and enemies so oblivious that it almost seems like you would have to try and get their attention for them to notice you. I have also come across multiple sections where stealth is close to impossible if you want to explore to collect lore and loot. You can certainly just walk around any of these areas, but that removes quite a bit of the fun from an Immersive Sim game. In these instances, if you want to collect lore and loot, you must engage with Gloomwood’s awful combat mechanics. The stealth mechanics are more of a mixed bag. The Thief and Splinter Cell-esque shadow mechanics are engaging. I also like how they implemented the player visibility awareness as a ring the player character wears. It lights up when you are visible and dims when entering shadows and fully turns off in darkness. The problem is how inconsistent the system communicates if you will be seen or not. Sometimes when the ring is off, enemies will walk right by you, as close as several inches, and remain unaware of your presence. Other times, while you are in complete darkness and the ring is not shining at all, enemies will spot you from 10 feet away and if there are more than two of them, you will almost certainly die. In the end, I think it is just janky. The detection awareness mechanics are so inconsistent, that I would never consider playing this game without quick saves enabled. I also take issues with the objectives, or lack thereof, in Gloomwood. You are mostly just tasked with going from point A to point B. It would be hard to implement anything more complicated in the linear levels, but the more open ended areas (Fishery, Market, Hightown) could certainly give the player a goal to accomplish before leaving, rather than the goal just be to exit the area in the only possible way you can. The devs could take a cue from Thief and have the harder difficulties include more objectives, and Easy only have the move from A to B goals. This would be more engaging and IMO make the game vastly more replayable. And lastly there is quite a bit of what I would call interaction jank. Bodies and items placed by the player will clip through the environment pretty often. I have seen enemies activate traps when they are behind locked doors. Enemies can see through some objects like crates and barrels and even through doors in a way that makes absolutely no sense. Enemies also sometimes react to sound in a way that is inexplicable, like running the opposite way away from a sound. After being spotted enemies will often shout about their comrades being killed, even if none of their comrades have been killed. This isn’t the charming type of jank, and is frequent enough to negatively affect the experience. These issues are more excusable due to the game being in Early Access, and hopefully the devs can get some of these issues ironed out before full release. This game has been in early access for 4 years after the devs originally predicted 1-2 years development time for 1.0 release and has been in development for at least 6. I therefore do not hold out much hope that they will fix the core issues of mechanical jank plus stupid and inconsistent enemy behavior. The level design is good though and there are interesting support systems, so if you are a stealth junkie or Immersive Sim fan like me, it is worth playing. And there is enough content now to justify paying for the game, especially on sale. But, if you are looking for an expertly designed, engrossing and immersive game like the OG Thief games, the System Shock games, Deus Ex , Dishonored or Prey, this game is not that and has absolutely no hope of matching any of those games without a massive overhaul to both AI behavior as well as all of the mechanics. I think Gloomwood has been, understandably, a little overpraised for the simple fact that we don’t get enough games like this, but we still need to be honest about the actual quality of the experience. Score 7/10 +Good atmosphere and style +Very good level design +Fun research system -Awful combat -Stupid AI and janky stealth -Lack of interesting objectives -Generally unpolished

Man... Idk. It's good, of course it's good. But 3 years of EA? At this rate? And it's not like the game is there and it's just feature set that's being added, we're getting 1-3 hours of game a year, so far it feels like 1/3 is there. And it's great, it's like Dusk great, nearly perfect. I just can't help but feel like I was robbed of one of my all time favorite games by being drip fed an 1/8th of that game at a time. I would say if the ratings weren't already Overwhelmingly Positive that I do recommend it, but I think somebody needs to express that this game has kind of kneecapped itself by releasing SO early. I check back less than once a year and play through what's there more or less, and I feel like I'm playing the same game. If they go quiet for a year and drop a full 3-4 hour back half of the game I think it'll be worth it, but I think if we get the game in bits and pieces, it'll be the dull thud that the Hitman games were for people who played those on release.

Gloomwood really hits the spot that no other game can in the current state of the industry. You may find games that are "similar" but don't hit quite the same as Gloomwood. If you enjoy stealth games: Gloomwood. If you enjoy horror games: Gloomwood. If you enjoy player freedom: Gloomwood. You may think that player freedom and horror are at odds with each other. You'd be wrong! It's due to the player freedoms that lead to the greatest horrors! If you play on the most difficult settings, you realize the errors of your ways, and you can't fall back on a quick save to take you back 1 millisecond before you botched your current situation. It really is the modern day Thief that we never got, and I hope Dillon Rodgers (Lead Developer) doesn't tragically die before this project is finished, because I need to see the end of it before I wither away and die myself. Due to this game being in EA, there's quite a bit that's not fleshed out or unfinished, specifically the Sanity meter that's located in your journal. There's literally nothing in the game that takes away from your Sanity. Sanity might as well not even be in the game at all at this current point, since there's no actual change that the player can ever see and compare against with future playthroughs. But even with that, this game is truly something special, and it deserves every piece of feedback that you can give it. If you're into older stealth games like Thief or Dishonored, I implore you to try Gloomwood.