Immortal Darkness: Curse of The Pale King

It’s hard not to snicker when you see the goofy little character models here, especially once you realize the story is 100% serious. It’s like watching a Lego production of Macbeth. Kind of charming, though. Turns out, your lil’ Lego-looking guy is a real badass. You’re a legendary vampire hunter who was bitten during some kind of huge human-vampire war, and now you’re trying to take down their king before you turn into one of them. In order to do that, you can plan on about half exploration/platforming–not jumping, but avoiding traps, navigating moving platforms, opening hidden passages, that kind of stuff–and half fighting. They describe the combat as “tactical,” which seems like a stretch to me. Maybe it’s true in the technical sense that you could spin pretty much any course of action as a “tactic.” Well, here, you be the judge. This was my basic gameplan: The best thing to do is line-of-sight pull enemies one by one. Then when they chase you around a corner you just get in their face and attack as fast as you can, since they can’t counterattack with you wailing on them. That’s Plan A. As for Plan B, there are a lot of pits everywhere, and usually the enemies are insta-killed if you push them into one. At some point you get an item that can aoe stun. That’s pretty good on its own, but there’s also another item that can aoe knockback. You see where I’m going with this. When that works, it’s comedy hour. Or else (Plan C) just hang way back and plink away at them with fireballs. I guess those are all tactics, but they’re not very satisfying ones. Well, knocking guys into pits was pretty hilarious when it worked, I have to say. That was probably the best part. What did they expect, though? These enemies hit like a truck and your special attacks don’t have much punch. If you get swarmed by three or more guys you’re in deep trouble. That’s when the real-time tactical combat usually devolves into a chaotic melee while you run around and pray for your cooldowns to recharge. They never seem to give you quite the right tools to deal comfortably with scenarios like that, and a result I always felt like I was incentivized to game the system rather than play the game in-character. It’s not terrible, but going out of their way to call it “tactical” is like some twiggy guy walking around flexing in a tank top. It just draws attention to the shortcomings. The overall pacing is what saves the day here. It may not be perfect, but at least they keep things moving along pretty well. Like I said, it’s about 50-50 platforming/fighting. The platforming parts were surprisingly fun for a game like this. There’s this one section, for example, where you have to align a bunch of light beams all around this huge zone. It’s pretty intricate with all the various obstacles, yet manages not to be annoying, which was an impressive feat. They’re a little thin on variety, probably due to limited resources, but they mix things up enough that you don’t feel like you’re ever doing the same thing for too long at a stretch. In the end this is another one of those games where nothing in particular really stands out, but altogether it does manage to be a bit more than the sum of its parts. They were mostly on the right track, and with a bigger budget I think it could have been a lot more that it is. I’m still glad I bought it on sale, though. You can find more indie game reviews at [url=https://oddlittlegames.com] oddlittlegames.com [/url] or visit my [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34514756/] curator page. [/url] Thanks, and enjoy!

The world is at its downfall as nearly the whole population has fallen to vampirism. Villages destroyed, people dead or turned, you're the last remnant of the Grey Watch, seeking to destroy the vampire king in his own dungeon. Or is it his dungeon after all? Immortal Darkness: Curse of The Pale King is a pretty decent game, which I underestimated at first due to its simple style graphics. You start off just with your sword, killing the first enemies in melee fights while trying to avoid any damage as you don't have healing potions. However, being infected yourself, you can drain life from the slain corpses, which in return increases your level of evil, bringing you ever closer towards turning into a full vampire with no way to recover. As you venture deeper into the dungeon, you acquire more and more spells, as well as useful items and potions. Your powers grow just like those of your ever stronger and numerous foes. You have to fight cautiously and dexterous, trying to avoid the attention of whole enemy groups. Dodging ranged spell attacks is an essential part as well. There are many hidden secrets to discover if you keep your eyes open and manage not to haste around blindly. Some of them require some thinking, but most are based on timing and dexterity. I must say I'm surprised about how much fun it is to play this game and how satisfying it is to find the secrets and complete the levels. The balancing seems just right and there's a wide array of spells and items to customise your own fighting style. You will have to decide which of these to keep over time, as your spell slots and inventory are limited (the latter can be increased with bigger backpacks though). The controls are simple (left-click-hold to move, right-click to drain life, 1-6 keys for spells and Q-E for item quick slots). The game has a limited menu with only little graphics options (basically just windowed/fullscreen with a fixed resolution as far as I can tell - at least you can't choose one), You can save at special shrines only, which causes you to respawn there if you die, with everything reset to the state at save time. So far, this hasn't been a problem to me, it just makes you play with more caution. In summary, the game seems to be a hidden gem which positively surprised me the more I played. If you like dungeon crawlers with a more intelligent gameplay than just click-killing hordes of monsters (Diablo style) and are into hidden secrets, dodging and avoiding traps (like in Hammerwatch), you may very well enjoy this game. The price is really fair in my opinion, so I give a clear recommendation to get this game.

So far so good! It's a vampire themed hack and slash rpg, with a good feel to it. It's definitely got some Legacy of Kain/Soul Reaver influence but it also reminds me a little of the dark crystal and lord of the rings. The 3d art is pretty good, and the 2d art is GREAT looking. I'm having a good time so far. I have only minor complaints: 1. I'd like to be able to have the option hold down the basic attack button to keep swinging my sword instead of hitting it for each swing. This would be a huuuuge quality of life improvement. 2. Sometimes it can be hard to see traps because of the fixed camera or the fact that they are the same color as the general dungeon. Kinda annoying as a gameplay thing, but kinda makes sense as far as uh... traps go.

You won't die right away in this Lego-esque vampire dungeon hack n slash - but will you survive the seductive lure of your own ever-present blood hunger? The atmosphere and spell effects are righteous. The developer has ever so quickly responded to community feedback, and the game now has full controller support - and it's controller support that works like a dream, too. What's not to like? This is a great little game -one that can sneak up and surprise you with it's single grain of plodding long term challenge.

huge version of the dungeons in the original zelda game with added stuff to navigate! i liked it, although the look of each level is similar, the game itself is pretty fun. I played with a steam controller and had no issues, i've read some people having problems with keyboard setup, so i'd recommend using a controller.

Best side game ever...just remember; save often. Death happens when you least expect it.

Immortal Darkness is a hidden gem. Agreed with all the "recommended" reviewers about it being a fun RPG dungeon crawler. Thou I would like that I can trade/sell some items ( like Spells ) I don't need/want that take up space since I can't "switch over" items from my bag to the chest to use what is/was in the chest ( like health ) You can't click to use items straight from the chest, have to delete items to make space. Everytime I save game, it has 2 file ( GDS and Backup ) So if I save 10 times I'll end up with 20 files on my local folder. No blocking is not a big deal to me. I can run around to dodge. If you don't mind what I've mentioned above, you should give this game a try. ( edit the part I can't move items around. ) I was watching one gameplay ( cos I can't find the all the captive on level 6 ) and saw the player able to switch things around but with mouse click. So my guessing is you can if you play with KBM but I am not able to do it with controller.