Ikenfell

Hello Friends, Today I will review the game IKENFELL. This is a indie game featuring a female protagonist looking for her missing sister in a magic school. While searching, she will discover many secrets and weird things happening at the school. With the help of other students the player finds around the school, they will discover many locations in the school. The fighting is strategy based on a grid. The players will have to decide where to move and what spells they can cast on a limited location. Sometimes it takes a couple turns to even get to the enemies. Certain enemies have different ranges too, so players must change strategies to fight them. The higher the character levels are, the more advanced spells they learn too. The story of the different characters you meet are interesting too. Some have alot of back history and talk about it later in the game to learn more about them. Even the comedy relief character has a interesting story to learn. PROS: - A indie strategy RPG. - Players must use strategies to move and use spells to control the battle. - Many locations to explore in a magic school. - Side quests and hidden bosses. - Gems to find to upgrade special equipment and to buy it. - Petting cats to heal and save the game. - Works on windows 11 OS. - Controller support. Works with Nintendo switch controller as that is the kind i used. CONS: - Many people may not like the LGBT things in the game, but there not forced down the players throats. They are in the game though. Do I recommend the game? Yes, it can be a fun indie rpg. The fact they had songs with actual voice lyrics in it really surprised me when i heard them. The story is interesting too, and some of the characters have decent back stories and history on them. The fact that some of the characters are gay and lesbians did not bother me, but i am only putting this here to let others know that they are present in this game. These kind of things bother some people. But for the game itself, it is enjoyable, and most of the achievements are pretty easy to get.

[h3] [b]Ikenfell[/b] is an incredible game, solid, fun, hard, with an amazing soundtrack, emotional story, and a combat that doesn't get stale and keep you on your toes until the end! Give this game a chance![/h3] [h3]The combat[/h3] The combat is turn based, with a small grid for tactical strategy, and every attack or defense has a quick timing system. All this together creates an interesting challenge, where all your actions have to be planned, and wih your skills all having different ranges, earlier ones never get obsolete in favor of late ones, but late ones adds more flexibility and options. The timing has 3 stages, first theres "nice", which is when you hit it, but not very precise, you do an average attack or take an average attack, you can get by with "nice" but it will be difficult, you'll want to improve your timing. If you hit it close to perfect you get a "great" which as you guessed, it's better in every way, but in some cases it can totally prevent status effects and save your fight. And then theres "Oops" when you completely miss or doesn't press anything, and this can be devastating, yes you can tank a few of these but the more you do, the harder it becomes to stabilize after that. By playing you should end up nailing down the timing of your own skills, but since the enemy variation is big and changing, the defense will keep being unpredictable, which keeps the game interesting and challenging all the way through. [h3]Difficulty Accessibility[/h3] Hard games are not for everyone, or timing might not be for you, thakfully the game has nice accessibility to solve that. If you struggle with the timing too much, i recommend you turn on just the "always nice" timing, so at minimum it will still be challenging, but not become too easy. but you can still do the timing yourself to get "great", so you don't miss on gameplay otherwise if you just wanna have an easier time with the game, you can turn on always "great". then you only have to worry about strategy. If you only wants to get through and enjoy the story there's also auto-win. There's also options to turn off flashing and sensitive content [h3]The Characters[/h3] The characters are well written, and has a lot of representation, but the story doesn't revolve around that. They just are who they are, an it's natural, and i like that. It's LGBTQ+ without making a big deal out of it, but also it has lot of importance for each character, and they are very real. Also they are all so adorable and i love the little romances! [h3]Others[/h3] The music in this game is fantastic, with some few selected vocals just hypes so much A lot of secrets to find, many not too hard to find, and secret bosses, you don't need to find anything in particular but they help a lot. You [b]Don't[/b] need to grind, if you kill every enemy you come across once, you'll still be able to beat the game, its not easy, and if you just get one level ahead, that will already makes a lot of difference, but again, not necessary. In Conclusion, i loved this game, and hope more people play it. Definitely a GEM

This game is really fun. I like gay people.

Adorable pixel art and animations. Great feeling captured in just a few pixels. Very LGBT+ friendly, with cute romance story bits between the save-the-world story and turn-based combat. Combat gets a bit samey-by the end, but changing your team helps provide interest. Plays great on Steam Deck.

Sometimes I get the blues The news gets me depressed Then I think about the clues that we’ve amassed about the past Unlocking mysteries on mysteries that tell us simple facts I love listening to history it acts like little maps Sometimes I’m feeling green with envy Of a boy or girl or enby Still no other school than Ikenfell I’d rather be attending Sometimes I’m feeling yellow Scared to make a work of art I’m destined for a medal Must be brave to get a purple heart

What a game. You can tell what a labour of love this was. Not too easy, not too heavy, just the right amount of a fun time solving a mystery in a magic school. Really really enjoyed this one.

(Note: I left it running in the background a lot which is why there's so many hours on it) Final Thoughts: It's not *great*, but it's still pretty good, except the pacing never picks up the way it feels like it should. Combat starts off fun and interesting as you learn the mechanics, but it never really gets more difficult or complex, there's just *more* of it, and the addition of traps and a few other things that keep the pacing slow left me wanting to just skip combat after a while except for the boss fights, and even then it was really just to see if I could steal some unique loot from them or see if they had any wacky mechanics to them. The story is... weirdly enough, kind of the same way. It's never *bad*, and if you like stories about magic schools and have an aching void in your life because you can't look at Harry Potter the same way anymore, this isn't a bad way to fill it. It's just that the journey to get to it becomes kind of cyclical: go to new place, fight some monsters, get a teeny bit of lore, and now if you want to know more you need this new McGuffin or talk to this other person whom no one thought to talk to prior so now we go to a new area and do it all over again. The whole thing is about 20-25 hours long, and somewhere around the halfway mark I started feeling like I just wanted to get to the end so I could have all of the mysteries unraveled and find out what actually was going on and how it turns out. So yeah, turned on Combat Skipping and just played out fights when I felt like it, and at that point it started to be fun again because the pacing sped up a lot and I was able to get through the rest of the story. Again, not a *great* story, but pretty good. All in all, it's worth playing if either the premise of young adult magic stories or timed tactical RPG intrigued you, although you'll probably want to tweak the settings at some point unless you just REALLY can't get enough of that combat, in which case, have at it I guess :)

I absolutely love this game, the story is great with plenty twists and turns and I grew to love the characters as it went on. The gameplay is fun with both strategy and skill, though can be entirely strategy with options changes which I appreciate. Each new area doesn't overstay its welcome, and brings new puzzles to solve. Also gotta address I never felt like I needed to grind, but I did fight every enemy I came across at least once, I hardly call that a level grind though.

Fun and cute game, love the art! Recommend if you like turn based combat and some nice adventure story.

I played this game to a point years ago and then recently picked it back up to start over & finish this time. It was a wonderfully deep, rich, and lovely game. I particularly liked the dungeon designs with fun puzzles and just the right amount of optional encounters. Bosses were tough and I felt like they really pushed you to get good at the battle system (at least until the very end, but by then the gear & items cover most of your mistakes as somewhat expected). The art and story are the stars of the show though. I felt so invested in these characters and the boss fights (especially the ending). Truly an amazing setting that I hope the creators return to some day! I really enjoyed the unique characterization of each party member and what they all brought to the table in skills & interests. I found myself swapping between them throughout the game because of story reasons and just wanting to try out their new spells. I loved how many secrets and secret bosses were in the game! I also adored the music (except for one or two with vocals... now I didn't NOT like them, but when they were first introduced it was during battles and was very distracting... let's just say I got a lot of Oops!) particularly the first forest theme and the somewhat creepy memory theme. My only complaints are around equipment & the harshness of misses on timing of certain abilities. If you take a full turn to set a trap, add a buff, or add HP regen then it should at least do something. Not wiff completely (yeah yeah skill diff... but still) now not all abilities are like this but a few are. I think that was a way to balance their strength, which I respect. It was just a bit frustrating and towards chapter 6 & 7 were particularly punishing. As for equipment, there is an avalanche of stuff in this game! And they are just subtly different from each other. I did enjoy some of the gem gear, which changed the way certain characters can be played, but I think having a few sets of gear to change up how spells work or prop up certain playstyles would be neat to see in the next game. The developers created something really special here and I can see myself thinking back fondly on this game. It was a rich experience and I can't wait to play whatever they come out with next! :)