Skautfold: Moonless Knight

Given the experience with this whole franchise, it appears this dev has bought a game engine when it dropped down to the $12-$20 mark, and just rolled with it. Like Usurper, this game features: - Poor control layout - Sluggish game-loop In addition, you get the following bonus content: - No fun-factor in killing enemies In short, this is a game that is tedious and just not a fun thing to play.

Needlessly tedious. It's an all right game but some of the features are unnecessary. It's kind of confusing trying to figure out what you're supposed to do. If you're fine with spending hours leveling up and just wandering around in medieval weeb-land this is the game for you.

Moonless Knight is the 4th entry in the Skautfold series and yet another very solid one at that. It's set right after the events of Into the Fray: the enemy is the entire moon and the only hope for mankind to survive lies below the Shogun's castle in the Japan of this eldritch-touched alternate history. This time around we're back to a metroidvania-ish gameplay style, which reminds of the 2nd game in the series, Usurper (except it's sorta top-down instead of side-scrolling). The combat system is also an evolution of the system in that game - you have the guard-bar which is simultaneously a secondary layer of defense before you actually lose health and also is used as stamina for attacking, parrying and dodging, and perfect dodges and blocks immediately restore parts of it. It's pretty satisfying, although sometimes it could be a tiny bit more responsive. There's also parrying, kicking, taunting and you find a bunch of relics along the which usually have both combat utility and are needed to pass environmental obstacles. Bosses are very cool again, though overall it's probably the easiest game in the series so far (which is not necessarily a bad thing). Do give this series a try if you're curious, it's worth it (and if you've already played the previous ones, Moonless Knight should be an easy purchase).

[b]Recommended at full price[/b] (with some caveats, nothing major but you can see below to find out) [h1]Zeldavania: Eldritch Abominations Die Thrice[/h1] Imagine playing an isometric action game set in an alternative japan plagued with eldritch horrors while collecting metoridvania-ish upgrades and skills that allow you to travel to more and more parts of the map, fighting enemies and bosses with a stamina based fighting system (think of the soulsborne series, with parrying, dodging and all that good stuff) and level up your skills as you use them (kind of like in FF 2 or in the the elder scrolls). So yes, this is kind of a frankenstein game, but [b]it´s amazing how everything fits together[/b], the combat system is easy to learn but packs quite a bit of depth with it´s mechanics: your attacks are really slow, even the faster weapons have a LONG wind up BUT you can "feint", cancelling it just before it hits and either dodge or block or whatever you need, but if you feint at the exact time the opponent attacks then you parry it and turn the damage back at him, also it has a "guard" system that makes it so your stamina ALSO works as a a kind of shield, a shield that you can instantly regenerate by dodging or blocking at just the right time. All this makes it so [b]the game has a big focus on risk vs reward gameplay but it all feels extremely good to learn and master[/b], it also allows you to adapt your playstyle to the situation as you see fit. [h1]The 4th fold of Skaut[/h1] This is the latest game in the Skautfold series, I´ve been following it pretty much since the beginning and I love how much it changed and improved, as a sequel is pretty much all I could´ve asked for, but [b]it´s not needed to play the previous games to enjoy this one[/b], you don´t need to start with Shrouded in Sanity as all these games are more gameplay focused, but if you enjoy lovecraftian tales then I highly recommend you do so, this one continues on with the story and I love the effort it shows in some sequences and dialogues, but if you only want to experience the "game" part of it you can perfectly fast forward the dialogues and just enjoy the exploration and combat parts. This game also fixes a lot of problems of previous games (I particularly loved the sound effects enemies do when they see you, it´s a great way of avoiding off screen attacks) and expands on the "guard" mechanic from Usurper, which I still believe it´s kind of a genius idea in the first place. [h1]Some caveats[/h1] -First off I had a problem with my controller in which I needed to recalibrate it everytime I turned on the game or loaded a save, I looked it up on the forums and apparently the developer said it´s a problem with the game engine itself, it´s nothing gamebreaking but it is a little annoying tbh. -I love the map , it´s lovely, but even with it the game has a serious problem of constantly getting lost, sometimes you´ll need an upgrade or to kill a boss and finding them can be a little troublesome, not a problem if you like exploring and backtracking, and if you like metroidvanias then I´m inclined to believe you do, but it is a problem especially with... -...low enemy variety, this is a sad thing to point out since this is a nicely polished indie game but I feel the reason why it´s so easy to get lost is directly related to how many areas reuse the same samurai type of enemy, they do have different weapons and sometimes different skins, but I just wish there were more eldritch abominations waiting around the corner (don´t get me wrong, they are, but areas are large and without enemy variety is hard to remember specific rooms imo) -This last part feels wrong to even say, but this game could be so much better with more content (like most games, right? lol), but don´t get me wrong, this game took me some hours of backtracking and exploring and trying to figure out where to go and finding secrets and all that, it even packs a boss rush mode so I want to make it clear that the content on offer is quite deserving of the asking price, it´s just there are a lot of "hints" towards more content, more secrets, more relics and so on (you can even kill or spare some bosses, but this has no impact on the ending, it does change "something" but is very minor), as far as I understand they were planned on future patches but as of the date of this review this is how it feels to me. I would be happy to even pay for dlc if that were on offer (which as far as I know couldn´t be further for the truth as the developer is extremely consumer-friendly and in previous games kept releasing free content for long after his games came out) but if in future patches he adds more stuff then this is a super recommendation. Also, it´s full of cool references, I just wanted to point that out, overall I greatly enjoyed my time with Moonless Knight and I cannot wait for the next one in the series.

Edit: If you got stuck during your first couple hours and couldn't figure out how to progress, I'm putting that info at the bottom of the review. 2nd Edit: If you get stuck during the next couple of hours, I'm putting that at the bottom of the review too. This is really a thumbs-neutral. Moonless Knight is a considerable improvement over Into The Fray in terms of playability, and it seems to have mostly stuck to the top-down-shooter approach of its predecessor, but replaced guns with blades. Moonless Knight starts you off with an assortment of melee weapons, and allows you to invest runes in any of them (although honestly you don't want to split your runes, you want to pick a weapon and stay with it.) This makes character growth feel less interesting here than in ITF or any of the other Skautfold titles, but the melee combat mostly works. Granted, the hitboxes are janky and playing on a keyboard feels a little unwieldy, but you can bait heavy swings, then step inside someone's hitbox and counterattack, and mostly that feels nice. Apart from investing runes in weapons, your various skills grow through use. So to level up double blades, hit people with them. To level up your guard meter, get hit. This approach makes progression fun and frequent, which offsets the blandness of that same progression a little bit. Plotwise, Moonless Knight has some of the same issues as its predecessors. Talking to someone twice will lock you into dialogue hell, as all dialogue repeats fully each time you interact, and some NPCs are very talky. That said, the overall lore of the Skautfold series is kinda neat, and Moonless hits a bunch of fun cosmopolitan cosmic horror notes. Unfortunately, the place where I washed out of the game was its mapping and lack of walkthrough. Moonless' map is an improvement over most of its predecessors, but it still has a good way to go. It flags locked doors, and which side they're locked from, and the room you're standing in is a slightly different color of green from the rest of the rooms, but lots of doors are gated by power-ups and Moonless just shows an open unexplored door symbol for those, making backtracking frustrating. On top of that, there seems to be only one correct direction to go, despite the game starting you out with multiple paths, and I couldn't find it. Other people *have*, so if you feel confident in your ability to play blind, you'll probably get past where I did. However, this game doesn't tutorial much, and some things like weapon switching on a game controller (hold the right stick in any direction) aren't explained at all, so if there was some sort of starting technique I needed to do to bypass pits or forcefields or the like, I still have no idea what it would be. I know it's not dashing, as that just drops you into pits. Anyway, if you're interested in the Skautfold series, I recommend checking out the earlier games first. The first couple are sleeper hits. Usurper's a gem. This one might be too, but if it is it's more in the rough. Edit: To progress, you need to acquire and use relics. To acquire relics, stand under the chained purple crystals (yes, the ones without an interact prompt) and press the interact button. To equip relics, hold your right stick in any direction to go into the weapon-switching menu (don't go into the relic equipment menu, that one doesn't work) and hover over the relic you want, then press the button you have mapped to 'use relic' to equip it (pressing 'use weapon' will simply equip the weapon you're highlighting instead.) After this, using the relic with the use relic key should produce an actual effect. Use the correct effect on the correct on-map objects (such as gargoyle statues, frown doors, or levers) to progress. 2nd Edit: There's no explanation of how the first battle with the fiend works. You can use the shield relic to i-frame through his attacks, but attacking him does nothing. However, if you attack him *at the exact same moment he is attacking you* (the game does nothing to indicate this) you win the fight. The timing is extremely finicky, and the game actively incentivizes you to not do this, but it's the only way to progress.

Skautfold: Moonless Knight is a 2D retro pixel top down adventure/RPG-lite kind of game slapped together badly with the godawful GameMaker Studio construction kit. It does seem to be sincerely made, just badly. The developer dishonestly and misleadinglty refers to this as a Metroidvania, but it isn't even a platformer. It's unclear why the developer sought to mislead gamers, except to profit from deception. It's a top down "Zelda" like game (nothing to do with Metroid or Castlevania) with an obtuse and clunky combat system. While it's great when developers try new things, new things only "work" if they are decent and enjoyable. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers. Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is often used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. Skautfold: Moonless Knight didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the game, either. It has achievments, and they show us a very clear picture that the game didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is "Medic", easy to achieve, but only around 38 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game, less than half the players. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the game. Skautfold: Moonless Knight has an overly optimistic price of around $8 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam, and the developers dishonest intentions misleading gamers by describing this as a Metroidvania when it isn't. And also, seriously, charging $8 for GameMaker Studio shovelware copy+paste crap... this is not okay. [quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote] The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says: [quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote] Apart from eagerness to inform people the developer has no reguard for Valve's guidelines for developers and no reguard for quality video games, they also wanted to point out they don't understand that Metroidvania, being a portmanteau of "Metroid" (a platformer) and Castlevania (a platformer) refers to... dun dun dun... platformers. So you can see the developers ignorance as a contributing factor to the deplorably low quality this lazy GameMaker Studio copy + paste hack job. The developer then attacks my review as a "prank". Why? This is a coping mechanism. If the developer can attack the reviewer, they don't need to face and accept the harsh truth that their game was a dismal failure overwhelmingly rejected by gamers. In fact, taking an opportunity to look deeper into the game history and data, we can see the peak player count was just 9 players... couple this with the achievement data with the damning < 40% achievement rate for the most basic achievement, we can infer this game was played by almost nobody at all. There's 12 million gamers on Steam. Statistically you put any game on Steam and come up with superior numbers. This is one of the most epic failures in all of game development, [i]supported by the hard data[/i]. So we can see psychological denial from the developer who chooses to attack reviewers instead of accepting the objective truth of their sheer, miserable failure. This delusion is unhealthy. You can see how the developers attitude contributed to the low quality of this game and reinforces the very valid facts and findings of my review. Nothing in the developers pointless, delusional response changes the objective truth about this failed game, so my review stands unaltered.

В начале было неплохо, но под конец откровенно хотелось дропнуть. Чуть лучше чем третья часть, но всё ещё хуже чем первые две. Из явных плюсов только прокачанная боевая система под вдохновением от Секиро, которую автор сам же решил убить сделав ГГ инертным и тугим, и навалив всех визуальных эффектов которые смог придумать разом. Локации однообразные и с шизовым дизайном во второй половине игры, по ним невозможно ориентироваться без карты, при этом карта неинформативная, в игре уйма бэктрэкинга, а под конец автор ещё и карту убирает. Сюжет по смысловой нагрузке решил остаться на уровне анимешной мыльной оперы из прошлой части, но при этом персонажи максимально безликие и незапоминающиеся, что для аниме просто фатально. К тому же валят текста они неимоверное количество, а каждое слово отбивается звуком пишущей машинки, что похоже на садизм, и заставляет зажимать кнопку скипа. Ну и всунутый в сценарий ключевой кусок [spoiler]Хребтов Безумия[/spoiler] уже выглядит как пошлость. А больше сказать нечего. Хорошие решения есть, в том числе и в исследовании локаций, но оно всё убивается перспективой и визуалом. P.S. Вообще-то когда я только начал играть, то хотел поставить палец вверх, но прохождение растянулось на полгода, последние локации невыносимо унылые, и начав писать текст я понял что хорошего толком и нечего сказать. Как тайм-киллер побегать в первой локе понажимать кнопки норм, но ничего больше. В итоге пока в Скаутфолде две прекрасные игры против двух голимых. Осталась последняя.

https://youtu.be/4ykECiOFfvg Plenty of systems, stats, and proper nouns are immediately thrusted onto players as soon as they start the game. Without enough space for any of them to breath it becomes a muddled experience.

Had a soulslike itch, this is obviously a different thing, but it scratched it. A bit rough to start out, a bit full of typos, but a solid day or two's worth of moody isometric action and exploration, in a unique setting that I'm getting more invested in. Try the spear! It's super satisfying.

Along with the other Skautfold games a remarkable example of what a small developer can accomplish in a limited timeframe. Combat is largely timing-based and relatively simple once you get the hang of it: All of the primary weapons are available at the start and it's largely a matter of taste which you prefer, while several secondary weapons are found later on which serve the double purpose of being useful in combat and opening up later areas. What's really exciting, though, is the sheer imagination of the environments: walking along the ocean floor while the water hangs overhead, finding the remnants of ancient alien ships and artifacts, haunting voids holding nightmare memories, Moonless Knight keeps you guessing what's coming next.