Reynard

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]Follow our curator page: [b]IndieGems[/b] if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.[/url][/quote] [i]Reynard[/i] is a roguelite dungeon-crawling action RPG with tower-defense sections that is now out on Steam in Early Access. This is a game that has pretty addictive gameplay and cute graphics, along with plenty of randomized variables from run to run to keep the game fresh for the potential player. The developers state that their influences for this game came from some classic titles, such as [i]The Legend of Zelda[/i], [i]Final Fantasy[/i], and [i]The Binding of Isaac[/i]. Playing through this game so far, I can definitely see where the developers clearly translated some of those points of inspiration into their realization of this game. Early Access means that the developers are actively working on improving and adding to the game, and this is a great opportunity for any potential players to jump in and contribute their ideas and thoughts. The developers are active and listen to the suggestions of the players in the discussion boards and they are very appreciative of any feedback. It's great to know that they want to make this the best possible experience for the players while still maintaining the integrity of the game as they envisioned. Of course that also means this game is far from being perfect, there are some bugs that may cause you to have an unexpected crash, though fortunately this is a roguelite and runs aren't expected to last all that long. In fact there are speedrun achievements for this game on the order of 30-40 minutes, so I imagine a completed run on average should take about an hour. I haven't made it there yet, but I definitely plan to keep trying! This game has quite a learning curve, and is not casual at all. The gameplay is fairly fast-paced and there are many items that you can find. I just learned that there's a crafting system in the game that I have neglected completely that would change the gameplay and some of the decisions I would make a great deal. I will definitely head back into this game when I have a chance and check out this aspect of the gameplay. The many items means that your runs will differ greatly from each other, allowing for a significant amount of replayability. The dungeon floors are not very large, and there are rooms of varying sizes with different enemies and other hazards within. I can tell that the maps undergo procedural generation, I am unclear whether the room contents do as well. Though it does seem that everything does go through some randomization process. Speaking of randomization, the boss encounters are also very different. There are some other roguelites that do this as well and gives the players a chance at a different boss from run to run. So even in the early learning stages when killing a boss seems far and few in between many deaths, the player still gets to learn about the different boss encounters that this game has to offer. I really like this aspect of things. There is a daily challenge mode, which is fairly common among roguelikes. This game is a roguelite given there are some permanent unlocks available to change how your run starts. [h1]Positives[/h1] +Excellent game design in terms of gameplay +Nice retro-style graphics +Fantastic music +Roguelite and thus short runs with lots of replayability +Bosses shuffled each run, so to introduce more variety for the learning player +Quite a few different regular enemy types that each have their own movemnt and attack patterns +Multiple in-game game styles and thus will keep you on your toes +Simple crafting system with more recipes being implemented by the developers still +Daily challenges +Developers active in community discussions +Reasonably priced to cheap (EA price is $8.99 USD) [h1]Negatives[/h1] -Some bugs exist, as expected, as the game is in EA -Learning curve perhaps too steep for the very casual players [h1]Gameplay[/h1] There are action RPG levels within dungeons where you hack and slash away, reach an exit, or head in to exterminate a boss monster. There are levels that are more like an active tower defense, where you build your defenses and need to prevent waves of enemies from reaching the stairs going up. The fail states are when your HP reaches 0, or if you let your enemies reach the stairs in the tower defense sections. You start with a standard sword and a bow, and your attacks and movements are limited by your stamina. There are cooldown times for ranged attacks and any special items that you may get along your run. You may find runes with which to modify some of your weapons or armor, while you may also encounter other instances where you can take a risk in order to get a stat upgrade at the expense of something else. All of this is fairly straight forward, and given the random items on each run, you will find that the experience will differ greatly from run to run, allowing for more replayability. You should be careful about picking up weapons in this game, because you can only have one of each type of weapon, melee and ranged. Picking up a new one will automatically cause the old one to disappear forever, not into your inventory for later. It simply disappears. Getting to and beating the boss will earn you boss coins, which can be used to unlock permanent upgrades in between runs. There is a duck in the game that you should speak to in order to use your boss coins for unlocking perks with which you can adjust how your game starts. There are also other defensive upgrades that you can purchase with boss coins at the vending machine with the same coins. [h1]Controls[/h1] Keyboard or Controller. The controller I used is a XBox One controller, and I had no issues with it. Apparently there are some difficulties with the confirm button on the Steam controller at this time. There is currently no Keyboard + Mouse in the standard twin-stick control scheme, though this is on the list of considerations of the developers. The main reason for players to ask for this consideration is that the ranged weapons requite a certain amount of precision in order to fire, and there's very little, if any, aim assit. There is an arrow on the ground next to your character so you can kind of see where the projectile is going, but the accuracy is not too high. [h1]Graphics[/h1] Graphics are adorable and pixelated, the perspective is top-down. Cute game. (The font currently being used could use some improvements, we have found out.) [h1]Music[/h1] The music is fantastic, and appropriate as well. It's so catchy and invokes the same era of video game feel as the graphics do. I do not think I will ever get sick of the music tracks. [h1]Audience[/h1] This is a game with a steep learning curve and is not considered casual by a long shot. There is only one difficulty level and someone who is not used to playing this kind of game will find a bit of trouble to get better. You may wish to watch some gameplay videos before you dive in, though I still think if you are interested, that you should. [h1]Pricing[/h1] Reasonably priced to cheap for this game, EA price is $8.99 USD base. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] [i]Reynard[/i] claims to draw inspiration from some big-name classics, and it does not disappoint. There is much to see and plenty to do, with many reasons for the player to want to go back to experience more after each run. Even though it's in early access, it gives the player quite a significant taste of the finished product, which is positively enticing. [quote]I received the product for free. I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.[/quote]

[h1]Video (gameplay + commentary):[/h1] https://youtu.be/p_zRATCTO2Y [h1]Summary:[/h1] We're really enjoying it! The graphics are charmingly retro and the chiptunes music is super catchy. Gameplay wise, it's kind of a fast and loose mix of old school Zelda and Binding of Isaac. You delve into dungeons, collect some coin, and most of all, try not to die as this will result in having to start over (we think) since it's a roguelike. You'll run into bosses to kill, items to buy, NPCs to talk to, and there's also a tower defense element to the game. The tower defense part is a little tricky and we're still getting the hang of it, and the whole game has something of an intense learning curve at first, but that element of discovery is one of the great things about a roguelike. Overall quite enjoyable. As Reynard is in early access, we're sure there's going to be a bunch of tweaking, and we're looking forward to how it all develops.

[h1]FoxMania: The Quest To Review All Fox Games On Steam![/h1] [i]Conditions for inclusion: [list] [*]The player character must be consistently a fox; the fox must not be merely a skin or a character option [*]Must have 100% working Steam achievements [*]Must not be a visual novel [/list][/i] [b]Game #13: Reynard[/b] What can I even say about this one? This game is an absolute fever dream of good ideas executed in baffling and bizarre ways. I had a lot of fun with this game – I’d dare say I was addicted for a while – but there’s just so much to unpack here that I’m rather at a loss for words. I’ve put off this review for long enough, so I’m going to do my best, but this is such a weird one that I can’t guarantee that my writing will be coherent. You’re Reynard, an intelligent fox who lives on a remote island, home to a mysterious spring that makes animals smarter when they drink from it. One day, an evil wizard comes to investigate the power of the spring. He kidnaps a local piglet into the “foxhole,” a deep, complex dungeon that changes every time you enter it. Luckily for you, the bad guy dropped his infinity gauntlet along the way, which will grant you the power to fight through the dungeon. And that’s pretty much all the lore there is to this game. There isn’t much, but what’s there is oddly compelling. As you might have guessed from the mention of a changing dungeon, this is a “rougelite” game. It borrows many ideas from [i]Isaac[/i], [i]Nuclear Throne[/i], and [i]Gungeon[/i] (sometimes without regard for how well they might work together). There are three distinctly-themed zones, each with two floors, one boss, and a tower defense challenge where you get to purchase towers to plant in the floor before triggering waves of enemies – a very interesting incentive to hang onto your gold! At the end of the three zones, you have a showdown with the wizard, and the run is over. There are a few different kinds of soft-unlocks to collect that will help future runs, including starting perks, towers for the tower defense mode, and items for the general item pool, so there is at least some incentive to keep playing aside from the Steam achievements. The music is certified “this has no right to be this good”-level. Especially the title theme, the area 1 theme, and the area 2 theme are absolute bangers. Major points for the soundtrack. The basic controls of the game are, at worst, rather terrible, and at best, take a lot of getting used to. You start with a ranged weapon and a very short-ranged melee weapon. The ranged weapon is very tricky to aim – it doesn’t have a dedicated aim, but it fires in the direction you walked last. You can’t spam attacks or you’ll run out of stamina and risk getting all your inputs dropped in the heat of battle. The strangest core mechanic is the sprint button, which lets you dash uncontrollably across the screen, at a steep stamina cost. This is meant to be something of a “dodge” feature, but you don’t get i-frames, and it takes a [i]lot[/i] of finesse to control. Not exactly a huge fan of this design choice, but it wasn’t an impossible skill to learn. There are Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulties, though you have to pick one from the main menu before loading a file. Easy mode gives you the best armor and a double-HP rune at the start of every run. I’m not sure what Hard mode does. I found Easy mode very enjoyable, and there isn’t really a reason to run the harder difficulties unless you’re going for achievements. The crafting system is cool! If you find the crafting table on each floor, you can dump certain items onto them to make them stronger. If you drop two of the same kind of potion, rune, or relic onto the table, they’ll combine into one that’s stronger than the two put together. You can also build weapons from scratch out of special components. Bafflingly, there is no crafting UI, and no auto-craft button. You have to be standing on a crafting table, open the inventory, and drop the items you want to craft – which you can’t even see after dropping them because the inventory is covering the screen. If you mess up, you have to close the inventory and pick up all your items again. The weapon system is quite terrible. You get four main “on hand” inventory slots: melee, ranged, special, and armor. Bafflingly, you can only hold one of each at a time… you can’t drop them, and trying to pick up a new one will simply [i]delete[/i] the current one, including any runes it had currently equipped. You’ve just got to remember to un-equip all the runes before replacing it. Also, there’s a horrendous durability system going on, where most weapons and armor break after using them a few dozen times – it’s better just to not waste your money on them, and instead seek out the infinite durability items. There’s a heavy focus on a rather awkward companion system. Sometimes you can find different kinds of allies tied up in some rooms. If you manage to touch them before the enemies kill them, they’ll teleport to each new room with you and help you out. Unfortunately, they’re dumb as bricks, and they’ll wander into stage hazards or exploding enemies and die. They’re unreliable and uncontrollable, turn the game into a rather stressful and unfun escort mission, and usually never even survive the tower defense rooms. It’s not a good idea to invest in companions unless you have one of the special items that creates them on command. After I started getting used to the game’s quirks and figuring out how it was meant to be played, I had a lot of fun. The game’s personality and art style is adorable, it’s got good music, and there’s seriously some good gameplay ideas going on here, even if they aren’t exactly polished or fully realized. I wish I lived in an alternate timeline where this was some cult classic GBA game that everyone was nostalgic over. Weird gameplay quirks and design choices aside, this is where I unfortunately have to mention this real reason I’m giving this game a thumbs-down: the technical problems. [list] [*] [b]The daily runs are broken[/b]. I don’t know if some server has gone down, but the game infinitely hangs when trying to load the leaderboards. [*] Because of the above, there are [b]three broken achievements[/b] for completing a daily run on each of the three difficulty levels. For a game like this – a rougelite meant to be played over and over again – achievements are super important, and leaving them broken is kind of a dealbreaker to me. [*] Roughly half the time, the game just hangs on a black screen when you start it up. This happens to everyone. [*] There’s just flat-out no windowed mode option. [*] Gamepad basically required. You can’t aim your attacks 360 degrees unless you’re playing with an analog stick. You can’t aim with the mouse cursor. [*] While the game is considerate enough to let you remap the controls, it applies your remapped controls [i]to the menu screens[/i] in unforeseen ways, making it a nightmare just to set your own control scheme. (Tip: the “dash” button corresponds to the “accept” button in the menus) [/list] From a technical standpoint, this game isn’t very well-polished. It came so close to just being a solid and standalone title, a weird little hidden gem of a fox game, and even might have deserved some expansions. But the developer seems to have just lost faith in the project and given up, and it makes me strangely sad. I wanted to really love this game, even for all its faults. I wanted to master this cute, annoying little game and achievement hunt the heck out of it. Sadly, I can’t even do that. The broken achievements push this into the red for me. 5 / 10; do not recommend. (Hey, Fifi! If you’re reading this, I really like this game! Would you please delete the three broken achievements? If you do, I’ll edit this review to a thumbs-up [i]and[/i] raise the score to a 6 / 10! Pretty please?)

Don't let the low play count fool you, I got the game from itch.io and the steam key was activated later on. Reynard if a fun little gem. It's a mix between Rogue-like, Dungeon Crawler and Tower Defense, with cute graphics and an awesome tune (check out the trailer... no seriously, the music is awesome) With it being a Rogue-like, you may expect a hard and sometimes unfair game, but it's pretty easy to learn, albeit the learning curve can be a bit steep in the beginning, if you're new to the genre. Another feature is the procedurally generated dungeons, meaning no two runs are the same, except daily runs, which are the same for all players, where you can compete to get the best clear time. Despite the game still being in early access, it's quite polished and the devs are making an effort, to keep the game updated and fix any bugs you may encounter. I can gladly recommend the game, to anyone who is looking for something new.

Good Game - I died to the rats a lot, and my desktop icons laughed at me - then patch 0.8.8 came, and I was unstoppable - Its a lovely friendly game but challenging and will keep you coming back for more.

Would recommend to anyone who enjoys challenging games. Despite it being in Early Access stage and a bit rough around the edges, the gameplay feels good and the soundtrack has a nice ring to it.

If you are looking for a challenging roguelike, you'll like Reynard.

If you like rogue likes, dungeon crawlers or old school RPGs, this game should definitely be on your to-do list. Through procedurally generated dungeon levels Reynard offers practically infinite replayability. The game rewards your playthroughs with unlocking better weapons and boss coins to unlock perks and tower blueprints, that can make every subsequent playthrough that much more interesting and unique. It features a plethora of different weapons and items, that can be further modified with runes, and even these runes can be forged together, to create bigger and better runes, that in turn make bigger and better weapons. The controls require a bit of getting used to, but are quite serviceable. Though a gamepad is recommended, I play it with a keyboard without any issues. For an early access game, it appears to be quite polished without any major bugs. At least none that I noticed. And the developers say they intend to implement a lot more functionality to it before the final release. They seem to be very engaged with the community and even stream the development process publicly on twitch. And last but not least, the soundtrack... it is the kind of catchy retro 8bit music that gets stuck in your head and you have no choice but to hum it throughout the day. Simply superb! But be warned, this is not an easy game! It does get a bit easier when you get the hang of it but still... If you like a challenge, this is definitely something you should consider getting. Cheers!

Its not bad, it just doesn't even come close to competing with the games it is drawing inspiration from. The mechanics and UI are just a bit too clunky and the stamina/inventory system with the combat is just needlessly awkward to manage. These are the games I would HIGHLY recommend you check out instead... -Binding of Issac -Hades -Enter the Gungeon -Monolith -Nuclear Throne

It's a below-average dungeon crawler with a rune system that adds small damage buffs to weapons that can have runes slotted in them. The tower defence sections are heavily based on luck. The TD maps are not balanced at all, so it's a matter of "Can I beat this map with a few bubble turrets?" If not, then you lose. The only one i've managed to beat is where the stairway is right next to two tower spots and there's only one direction the enemies can come from. The game is cute, but there just isn't much meat here.