Rudra: A Tale of Time

Kudos to the guys that made this. The concept & the graphics are good enough, the only thing that is lacking, compared to the level of everything else in this game, is the combat. I am not complaining since it is a free game and for what it is, it is a plenty good showcase. If it is polished well, it will sell decently

Was fighting 2 melee enemies and a ranged one at once. Spaced them out so a building was between me and the ranged one. The ranged one shot THROUGH the building and killed me. Absolute trash.

This game handles like Dark Souls, the combat at times can be VERY unforgiving. That being said, the boss is WAY too difficult for the average player.... Taking all this into account, I'd still happily give this tile a 8/10!

"Rudra: A Tale of Time" is a student project from the University of Utah. It's a third person brawler with lightweight RPG elements, and borrows from Indian religion for a theme. The game looks pretty good even for a student project, but the control and handling make this look like it was designed for consoles, and for that we must blame the instructors... this is Steam, for PC games. Developers must be aware which platform they are developing for, and the instructors should have made sure of that. The instructors failure becomes that of the student, unfortunately. The graphics in this game are really quite good, which at least makes the game look more appealing. And while it's vital for any game to have impressive visuals (gaming is a visual medium, after all), there's more to a game than just the graphics. To be worth a gamers time, the game must match top tier visuals with top tier gameplay, and that's not happening here. Not every "free" game really is. There's often MTX, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of things that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game. Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 3 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? This is a "maybe" experience... if you have a lot of free time on your hands and nothing else to do, why not? But for the purposes of a review, this isn't something I can say everyone must try. It's not quite there. Valve doesn't give us a "maybe" option in reviews, but if they did, that's what I'd choose for this.

Y'all need to get rid of the invisible boxes in the middle of playing areas because that is annoying when trying to avoid the enemies in the one section after you get your second or third ability. Happened in the final boss area as well. I don't know how everyone else avoided the one-shotting final boss either, I can't. They did address my concern regarding certain mechanics and combos being improperly explained and made a cheat sheet available. However, you don't even get a real healing ability until the end of the game at the boss fight so you have little to no experience incorporating it into fights previously. God help you if you're surrounded and not playing this game on potato settings because of the game's lack of optimization, or you will have to wait for the enemies to move in a way for you to walk away otherwise you just roll and get blocked by their character boxes. Also, inputs should equate to outputs. I shouldn't have to use absolute potato settings to play the game and see immediate outputs to my inputs (especially when I'm sure the creator(s) intentions are to experience what the game is supposed to look like while telling this type of a story). I know this is a student project, so it has room to grow and works as a great proof of concept. I think this could be a good game, but certain things need to be fixed, and better emphasis on the story needs to be told - meaning it would need to be longer and need to be given more world-building aspects. Overall I wouldnt recommend it currently because it needs TLC, but if it ever gets updated, definitely try it. It's also free and this is my opinion on a game that may sadly never be updated again, so ignore me and try it out if ya want lol.

this game is removed all my will to live and fun from normal games 10/10 on please just stop and -99999999999999999999999999999999999999999/99999999999999999999999999999999 on fun is big hard never play

i fully support student projects and this is definitely something to be proud of but I'm glad it's free. the ideas are there, the environment is cool, the weapon changes are cool, the shrines are cool, so much lore to pull from which is cool...BUT the combat feels forced and is really clunky and the animations are awkward. I expect a bit of jank, but this is mostly unplayable. I would love to see this fleshed out, but as it sits it's a hard pass.