Shadows Of Thornkeep

[h1]Rolling Through The Bramblepatch In Your Underoos[/h1] [b]Shadows Of Thornkeep = Darkest Dungeon + Diablo + Legend of Grimrock + The Eldritch Horrors of Vibe Coding[/b] This game has only just hit Early Access, there is sure to be jank, and perhaps it will improve, but I wouldn't feel right about not at least warning other potential buyers about what to expect with this game. There is janky Early Access, and then there is borderline unplayable Early Access. Thornkeep is very much nestled deep within the latter. Some [i]thorny[/i] situations I came across: [list] [*] Thinking the game was bricked out of the gate due to being allowed to enter a dungeon WITHOUT A PARTY and not receiving intuitive direction as to how to build a party. [*] Endless typos and corrupted text strings. [*] An eternity of broken/bugged UI elements that resulted in things like "holding" a party member in my cursor and walking away from the party recruitment screen, "carrying" the picked up party member with me wherever I went. [*] Nonsensical enemy spawns/visibility that prevent you from moving in a strategic way through the dungeon, doing which is sort of a hallmark for every blobber since the 1980s. [*] So very much more... [/list] Apart from the bugs, I just couldn't understand the appeal for what seemed to be the loop in this game despite enjoying both roguelites and blobber dungeon crawlers immensely. Party members seem to be completely disposable despite being able to level them up. You only have access to gear in the shop that is not even worth buying. Your party WILL get wiped more than half the time, and your dungeon delving time will have been wasted unless you managed to find loot (you won't) to bring back. Worse, characters that fell in battle will now have a massive debuff trait applied to them. This makes them not worth keeping what-so-ever and not worth waiting the several days it will take for them to slowly heal at camp and take up valuable camp fire spots, so you just strip them of their gear and dump them down the garbage chute and recruit new party members to use up. Eventually, after churning through party members with the shelf-life of a banana, you will upgrade the camp enough so that venturing into the dungeon isn't always guaranteed death. But the dungeoneering itself isn't appealing. Visually, the dungeons are uninteresting. Your automap doesn't update with any POI you come across. And enemies seem to spawn in at random, you rarely get a chance to see them before they are a square or two away, Combat is very stripped down to its basics and the abilities I tried were not exactly exciting. The game also uses AI slop music, which the developer has said is place-holder, and I could have forgiven that if anything else about the game held up. There are so many royalty-free music libraries that are either extremely cheap or entirely free, so I don't think AI slop is acceptable even as a place-holder. Especially when it is actually ear-pain to listen to. Finally, at some point, a party of 4 enemies appeared two squares ahead of me, and when I tried to back away another party spawned right behind me in an area I had just barely cleared. I Alt-F4'd and uninstalled. [i]Walk into this thorn bush if you...[/i] [list] [*] Like the concept enough that you're willing to wait and see if it becomes something playable. [*] Want to play something made by cursed interdimensional AI deliberately designed to torture you. [*] Want to play a game where a party member's first name can literally be the word "Eldritch". [/list] [i]Take a weed-wacker to these brambles if you...[/i] [list] [*] Don't want to play a game that doesn't seem to have fully gotten a handle on its gameplay loop. [*] Don't want to play a game that seems like it was made by AI to troll you. [*] Don't want to play an RPG where you have a character named something like Lemony Snickett and he has broken ankles. [/list] [u][h2]VERDICT:[/h2][/u] [b]Thorndiscard[/b]

The game is great. You can choose the difficulty of quests, manage two squads of warriors, and upgrade your base.

I like the game. Neat old school RPG that creates immersive atmosphere. Regarding mechanics: you get 4 chars at a time for the journey, choosing from 6 (is it 6?) different classes with 2 different abilities. For the journey you only get to decide position of your heroes and in the fight when to use which ability which is limited by cooldown and mana. You ll be collecting resources in order to upgrade your camp, weapons and armour. And that is it, pretty simple, but it works. I would prefer more options in the combat (more skills and tactical actions) and some kind of char development, but for the given prize I guess it is nice little RPG developed by a single Czech (greetings from Czechia :-)) dev.

作品のデザインは良いが、早期アクセスのため改善点が山積みです。 小一時間プレイしただけなので、誤解している部分があれば申し訳ない。 1. その場足踏み（１ターン消費）が無いので、有利に接敵する状態に持ち込むための無駄行動が増える。 キーボードのスペースキーや、ナンバーパッドの5キーなどで使えるようにして欲しい。 2. レイヤーの重なりが依然として気になる。文章を読んでいる最中に割り込んでくることがある。 3. 戦闘時のエフェクトやダメージの数値が画面上に残ることがある。2.と同様に動作が重くなる原因になりそう。 4. パーティーメンバーを解雇するシステムがない？雇用できるジョブが偏ると厳しい。 ※（自分の誤解でした、申し訳ない。キャラクターシート右下に解雇アイコン有。） …日数経過はゲームをプレイする上で何に影響を及ぼしますか？ 作品を応援したいので判定甘めですがサムズアップにしておきます。頑張れ作者！ ーーー以下後日追記分ーーー 作者さん、素早い返答ありがとうございます。 返答内容について承知しました。 ご自身のペース配分で無理なく開発・修正されると幸いです。

I am doing this review pretty early into my playtime, sort of a first impression review. This is also being done in Early Access, so if anything major changes, I'll update that, too, and I'll do an update once I've played more of the game. The first thing that popped into my mind was: this is very much a game like Darkest Dungeon, although with somewhat less content. That is to be expected, of course, at this point in development, from a one-man dev team, all that I'm trying to say is that this game has quite a few similarities with the aforementioned game. Every time you go on a dungeon run, a day goes by, and new heroes are available to recruit. You end up with a roster of heroes, not just one party. Your heroes get fatigued, and need to rest, encouraging you to rotate your heroes regularly. As you do runs, you get resources to upgrade your camp. I am absolutely not meaning for any of these similarities to sound negative in any way, but the comparison is definitely waiting to be made, and it's a comparison that I like to think is a fair one, and is meant to be a flattering one. It made me think of Darkest Dungeon... and I loved that game. The game wears its influnces on its sleeve, and does it pretty well, just in a slightly simpler way. In some ways, this game is less stressful, and has less micromanagement, and that is not a bad thing. If you like Darkest Dungeon, or even just first-person dungeon crawlers, you'll very likely enjoy this game. DD-lite, if you will. As a fan of the dev's previous work, I have nothing but the highest degree of faith that this game will be nothing less than a pretty damn competent game, and that's my *worst case scenario* for this one. If the game never gets another update, I'm pretty sure that I'm already getting a fairly full experience here.

This is for that kid PutridMeat : listen buddy, and learn. This dev alone make this game from 0 to 1. He have a family and less time for his hearth project. If you are interest in games for your likings, then turn around, bend over and lick your ass. Pavel said publicly he using AI as a tool for this product. A pro Tebe Pavle : díky! I já vyrůstal na starých, krokovacích dungeonech (Lands of Lore, Ishar, Ravenloft, Dungeon Keeper, Eye of the Beholder 1,2,3 atd.), takže vím, co znamená ono slovo nostalgie. Přeji tobě a tvé rodině zdraví a štěstí. Jen nezapomeň na svoji vášeň, nenech si zkazit náladu od těch odplivnutých mr*ek do svý tvorby a vytrvej. Kdo ví, ten ví, a já si na ten výsledek rád počkám. Zatím to vypadá velmi slibně ;-)