Lost Sea

This is a game that comes close to good but fails to hold together. There're just a lot of things that aren't explained well, or are poorly designed--for instance, there are crew members you can pick up. That's cool, but you can only have one at a time initially, upgrading to more is /extremely/ expensive, and a great deal of content is gated behind their abilities. You can't even store a few different ones to tediously return to the ship for--all crew not currently assigned as direct sidekicks are lost when you change islands. You find anywhere from 2-4 crew members per island and nearly all of them go to waste. Crew members can take damage and die, including from your own sword--and the way you move and swing and their idiot AI means you are hitting them /constantly/. Once, I had a crew member get stuck behind an obstacle and be unable to follow me closely. No problem, I figured. Surely the pathfinding algorithm will eventually teleport them back to me. Nope! Traveled to the next island, and they were gone permanently--because of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ pathfinding. There are items available for pickup as well, but you can again only hold one--and the game won't explain to you why you can't pick up or interact with a second item. Items themselves are much more rare than crew and often require crew gating skills to retrieve, and this can make healing complicated since you don't auto-heal between islands. The enemies are very repetitive, particularly given that you can't upgrade or change your weaponry. There appear to be a couple of special attacks buried in the obtuse upgrade menu but they cost a huge amount of XP. There's a ship upgrade in THAT obtuse menu that reduces XP costs but again it costs a huge number of coins. Have fun grinding the same five creatures forever! Lastly, the bosses are gearboxy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. By that I mean they sit on their invincible ledge and you get to dodge around until they show a weak spot for a brief time. Repeat. Yawn. The graphics are nice enough, even if the tile elements repeat a lot, and the music is alright. There's just a lot of gameplay flaws that make this one fall flat. I got it on sale for $3 and had an hour or two of amusement with it, and I think that's all it contains for me.

[h1] Lost Sea is a rogue-lite adventure game in which you explore procedurally generated islands, fight monsters, purchase upgrades for both yourself and your ship with the treasure you find, and recruit allies with a range of skills to assist you on your journey. [/h1] .Story. You’ve been marooned on an island by a convenient turn of events. You meet a scientist who explains to you that, by finding magical tablets, you can travel from island to island and hopefully escape. So… You do just that. .Gameplay. The game can be played with either keyboard and mouse or gamepad. I used the latter simply because it was far more comfortable than the keyboard setup. You begin each playthrough by selecting 1 of 8 characters. These are merely aesthetic and have no bearing on how the game will play. Then, you hop onto your ship and sail to the first island in the first zone (unless you have warp, but more on that later). Islands have a varying enemy difficulty from easy-hard. On them, you’ll hunt down tablets, which can be found at random, so that you can move from island to island. One tablet means you can move to the next islands in the chain of islands. You’ll continue doing this until you reach the large island at the end—the one with a huge skull and dark, ominous clouds hanging above it—where you’ll face a boss. If you die, you’re given a statistical breakdown of what you’ve done in game: Regions Discovered XP Gold Deaths Crew Recruited Enemies Killed Items Used Time Played Then, you choose a character and dive into the game with a fraction of the resources you picked up during your last run and none of the skills you’ve unlocked. Rinse, wash, and repeat. Once you clear a zone you unlock the ability to Warp between them freely. There are four in total, not counting the starting area. The islands also contain collectable treasures and pickups with a variety of effects. These pickups can heal you, add more stats, and the like. Unfortunately, there’s no telling what items do until you use them. Once or twice I’ve tried a mysterious potion that miraculously drained all of my HP or some other awful thing that put me at a horrible disadvantage when fighting the foes on the island. .Atmosphere. The islands are rather uniform in appearance, despite their procedural generation. Every area has its own biome, which is visually interesting at the very beginning of the chain of islands, but quickly loses its luster. The music is nothing special, just a repeating loop that gets lost in the background. .Longevity. There are plenty of upgrades to unlock and treasures to discover while you travel the isles. Dying results in you losing all of those upgrades, but the amount of resources retained after you die is pretty generous, so you should have no problem regaining the skills you lost. There isn’t a story so you could go on playing indefinitely as long as you’re willing. .Pros and Cons. [list] [*] Boss fights are fun in the classic learn-the-attack-pattern-in-order-to-win style. [*] A good mix of upgrades available for combat and exploration. [*] Crew members have different skills, which allow for some strategizing. [*] Character selection has no bearing on gameplay. [*] Procedural generation doesn’t create any particularly different levels. [*] Your crew members aren’t very intelligent. They will cower and take damage from both enemies and yourself (yes, friendly fire is a thing) and will oftentimes die. They won’t fight back and they won’t try to get away. [*] It takes quite a bit of grinding to be able to afford new skills. Until then, combat is monotonous. [*] There’s no description of items. It takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what does what. [/list] .Bottom Line. Lost Sea is a fun, albeit repetitive experience. Newcomers to the rogue-like genre will find a good starting place here, though veterans will likely get bored with the basic combat and the lacking arsenal of pickups/equipment. All in all, a title I’d suggest getting at a discount or avoiding entirely.

[h1][b] Introduction. [/b][/h1] Lost Sea is an Indie Action , Rogue-like title that features Permadeath Gameplay and Procedular Generation. Your hero has been stranded onto a tropical island due to a plane crash. With the help of other stranded crew members that you find on your path and upgrades you can purchase at each island's dock , your quest is to navigate through the islands up until you reach the final one which allows you to enter a portal that leads you to an unknown place, presumably somewhere safe. [h1][b]Gameplay.[/b][/h1] When you first start your journey or everytime you have to restart due to death , you can select from 8 Equally Powered Characters. There are five male and three female Heroes to choose from. The tutorial island does a decent job at covering all the basic knowledge you will need throughout your journey. You will meet a Self-proclaimed scientist , that will explain to you your situation and how to deal with it. As soon as you are done with the tutorial island the game sends you straight to the next one. There are 5 Sections in total. Each section has its own biome theme , monsters and a boss fight on the last island. Beating that boss permanently unlocks you the next section. (Meaning if you die after reaching a new section, you can start at it's beginning as opposed to the very first Tropical Island you start the game at, if you choose to.) The idea of the game is to search these procedually generated islands for new crew members, items that will aid you, Monsters for their EXP-Currency drops (Which are needed for Player based upgrades), Crates and Barrels for their Coin drops (Which are needed for Ship Related Upgrades) and mainly for Navigation Tablets which are the only way for you to move forward to the next island. Once you require those tablets , you ought to bring them back to the island's dock and then if you decide you are finished with that island you can move to the next ones. [b]Something that will be noticeable throughout the game and something I didnt see many reviewers mention correctly (In my opinion)[/b] is the Difficulty Curve. While the game has some Pseudo-Difficulty elements which upset me at first , but then I realised there weren't that many (Talking about charging Lizards coming out of nearby harmless-looking coin boxes and Crew Members you're about to rescue suddently turning into monsters that attack you as soon as you get close). It actually came to me by surprise how the game doesn't want to take you by the hand showing you every little way to deal with things easier and that it expects you to learn it by experience by yourself. No Pickup/Item you find in the game ever has description. You have to judge what the Item does based on it's icon and use it atleast once to be sure of what it does. Attack patterns of monsters you've encountered for the first time are not visible from afar. Sometimes you have to get close and personal to learn what they do and although that experience goes away as soon as you learn the pattern , I think its really cool. [h1][b]Game Design and Controlls.[/b][/h1] The monster design while being basic has a nice variety, making the difficulty curve extremely noticeable for players. Each section you move forward you will find new monsters and revamped versions of old ones with more challenging attack patterns. While it can be said that the monster design is pleasing, the same thing cannot be said for the Boss Battle(s). Each boss battle features the same boss. An angry pirate captain that each time you meet on a later section has a new trick under his sleeve. While it's not a rule that all games should have a variety of bosses and can't have an upgraded version of the same one , this particular gameplay feature could've been executed much better. Visually the game looks gorgeous for it's theme. Everything seems in-place, the colours blend in beautifully , each biome is its own place and thats how it should feel. Something I found really interesting was that the game actually has a day-night cycle that has zero impact in the game whatsoever ,but its a feature meant only for visual purposes and I think its great. The object breaking/coin collecting animations and sounds are satisfying. The attack and skill animations could be better but its overally fine. When it comes to sounds mainly, I would say that everything is well made. Soundtracks may be decent at most but do a great job at blending in with the visual theme. The only thing I absolutely despised was the Grunts the Boss made, it felt really out of place. Other than that the characters themselves could use some more grunt sounds. (I use the word Grunt here because there is no voice over dialogue this game.) I can say that the Monster AI is fairly well made too , nothing is really that exploitable but the Crew Member AI can sometimes be really frustrating. Much more noteably later on in the game when through upgrades you will be controlling up to 4 Crew members in total. You will find yourself moving around the island with them getting stuck prety often. Another feature that was lacking that bothered me alot was the fact that you cannot recruit new crew members without manually opening up a slot. The game should offer the ability to either switch-out immediately with another selected crew member or the ability to just send the new-found crew members at the dock without using them at all. It would also be great if we had a bonus for rescuing more/all/any crew members. Last but not least. [b] A very important matter/issue [/b] with the game is the Controls. I've played the game with a [u]Controller[/u] and it played [b]absolutely lovely[/b]. [b][u]Although[/u][/b]. [u]Keyboard[/u] users have issues when it comes to camera control. The game's keyboard default keys allow you to rotate your camera with K and L, each representing a direction and M to refocus the camera back to the center. As far as I've noticed the keybindings cannot be changed in the ingame settings and can be only changed through editing gamefiles , ontop of that there is no speed adjustment for how fast/slow the camera rotates and trust me when I say its [b]significantly slower[/b] than the controller rotation speed. [h1][b]The Pros.[/b][/h1] [list] [*]A Good variety of upgrades , powerups and gameplay elements. [*]Visual Theme and soundtracks blend well and are really pleasant. [*]Game rewards you for managing your resources smartly. [*]Full Controller Support. [*]46 Achievements For You To Hunt For. [*]Steam Trading Cards. [/list] [h1][b]The Cons.[/b][/h1] [list] [*]Gameplay can be repetitive. [*]Being Unable To sprint while holding a Navigation Tablet makes the gameplay sometimes feel slow. [*]A lot of Backtracking. [*]Crew AI can be frustrating at times. [*]Keyboard Controls feel wacky [*]Boss fights while having challenging aspects its essentially a revamped version of the old boss. [/list] [h1][b] Conclussion. [/b][/h1] If you are a fan of rogue-likes and you would like to see a different base idea of gameplay the Lost Sea will most likely be a game for you. The game has its own flaws but in my opinion is an overall well made game that could use some improvements here and there. Keep in mind that the game currently plays best on Controllers. Hopefully my review will help you out on deciding whether you want to buy the game or not.

This game was way too hard for how simple it was. I finally beat the first island, only to die on the second to discover that you don't just go to the start of that island, you go back to the start of the entire game. Nope, no thank you.

A tedious game, incredibly repetitious and lacking any depth. The game's graphical style and quality are decent, and here and there parts of the gameplay show promise if further polished, but none of that promise is realized. The game's procedural generation can only barely be called that. Maps are nominally 'randomized', but because all maps are composed of a small set of pre-created map-chunks haphazardly pasted together, soon there is no feeling of exploring new places, but rather a feeling of trudging endlessly through places the player has seen a dozen times before. Even with movement-related abilities fully upgraded, movement takes place at an agonizingly slow pace that leaves the player mindlessly circling the edge of island after island, each one offering no meaningful difference from the ones before. The game's mechanics are incredibly shallow. Each enemy has only a single attack/behavior pattern, except for boss fights (and even _boss fights_ are reused from island chain to island chain; reach the end of region 2, fight the same boss you fought at the end of region 1), and the actions the player can take are similarly bare-bones and unsatisfying. The primary difficulty in the game comes from the brain-dead idiocy of the ally AI, and the strange implementation decisions surrounding it. Run forward a little too far, and allies can be 'left behind' without warning or notification, requiring you to go back an arbitrary distance to retrieve them later once you realize they're gone, and denying you their benefits in the meantime (one such benefit being revival; you can enter a battle with two revival-capable companions right alongside you and die with no revival anyway, because the game decided abruptly at the moment you entered combat that your nearby allies were no longer in your party). Likewise, despite the fact that they do not take action in combat, when there are enemies nearby, allies can 'cower' to prevent incoming damage; unfortunately they are wildly inconsistent about whether and when they choose to start doing so, frequently resulting in their suffering catastrophic damage before they begin to cower, with the player having no way to make them start defending themselves. Conversely, they can start 'cowering' while on high ground that makes them completely safe, obliging the player to leave the current ledge and go out of their way to kill unrelated enemies before the allies can be made to resume following the player. From beginning to end, ally behavior is designed to be frustrating. Everyone's game-development experience has to start somewhere, I guess, and this game's graphical designers have earned their share, but for this joyless and unredeemable game to price itself in the $20 range is an insult.

Gameplay here: https://www.twitch.tv/planktonvomit/v/109531118 Cool little game I picked up during Steam 2016 Holiday Sale. I didn't die once but from the description it seems like it has rogue-like permadeath mechanics. Fair warning: It does not support mouse at all and recommends that players use controllers 100% of the time. Keyboard controls weren't to my liking. Gameplay seems cool to me but this game isn't my cup of tea. If you are in to this kind of game, I think it is worth the price during a sale. I'm still going to recommend it since it would be unfair to downvote a game based on my misunderstanding. Cheers.

[h1] Remind of clogged throne. Don't get blast into space when pressure raises. [/h1]

A good little roguelike hack and slash. The graphics are cool and colorist, but even though there isn't much diversity of elements to see, demand excesive hardware or the screen can freezes causing the deletion of the save file if program is closed by force. Also have another issue, the Keyboard only can be binded by editing a file (check Steam forums). Very simple mechanics: by getting experience and gold coins, player can unblocks skills, space for inventory and crew that works as powerups. Combat is easy but it getting hard by stages, is based on the fact that player haven´t a ranged weapon to use at will and many foes has ranged attacks. Gameplay strongly depends on speed that player can get by upgrading skills. It has randomized maps based on modular design, but there are few varieties and are quite similar. The luck maths and dificulty curvature are very well balanced, a very rare qualities in this genre. The foes are well depicted, but some haven't much relation with the plot. The campagin has 6 stages wich at least 5 maps each, every map has from 8 to 12 random modules for explore; complete all stages with 85% of achievements takes about 36 hours of playing, majority to understood wich are the better skills and items, map system, how to beat foes and so. Wonderful for children and teenagers, or as casual game for adults. To buy with a high discount or in bundles.

из плюсов + 1. Отличная музыка, это меня сразу привлекло. Музыка шедевральная, не отвлекает от процесса еще и настроение поднимает. 2. Графика приятная для глаз. 3. Локаций не так много, но они все разнообразные. Меняются местами мобы или теже бочки с кустами. То есть, нет ощущения того что все однообразно и скучно. 4. Игра не надоедает. из минусов - 1. Сложность игры. Первый минус, который хотелось бы отметить. Если хп закончилось - начинай сначала. Учитывая что зон в игре (вроде бы как) 4. Придется подзапарится что бы ее пройти. 2. С вами бегает до 4 наемников , которые так же могут подохнуть и не важно от врага или от вашего же мачете. 3. Еще один минус наемников, они изредка любят застревать где-нибудь. 4. Иногда от игры просто начинаешь гореть. Вот сами и думайте покупать или нет. Но я бы посоветовала покупать только по скидке.

Очень красочная бродилка в духе банджо казуи по островам. Также собираем монетки, ищем всякие реликвии и открываем карту, попутно прокачивая героя. Героев тут также несколько. Очень красочная игра на русском. Также некоторые жалуются на управление. Сам же я играл на контроллере логитек ф510 и на нём всё нормально было... Есть карточки, достижения, русский язык, поддержка линукс платформы, контроллеров и облачное сохранение. Очень годная игра для детского возраста, кому нравится слишком красочная графика. Хотя всё видно на странице игры.