Songs of Rats

Alright. [i]Songs of Rats[/i] is done and dusted? In reality, there are quite a few potential endings to go along with a good amount of character background choices that shape your adventure to an extent. With that in mind though, I've seen four endings so far. I'll just say straight away that I think this might be my favorite choose-your-own-adventure style RPG as of now. It really does feature well thought out branching paths that allows you to really make your own decisions while still offering the randomness that can make or break a run. And in case it isn't clear, the Rats being sung about are you and your fellow humans and the songs are the details of your lives. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3614371119 This game leans heavily into horror-centric sci-fi luminaries such as Pandorum, Mass Effect, Dead Space with maybe a splash of Metro as influences that inform the writing here. And it also has some Alien series vibes, especially with the general aesthetic/look of the game. With I'm sure many other influences of course. You begin by choosing a character avatar, a backstory, and assigning five attribute points between body, mind, and spirit. There is no right or wrong way to approach attribute development. Whether you minmax or prefer a more uniform approach is more about personal preference. However, special events often require you to have six points in a specific category, so my own approach was to get one to six, work on the next, and then the last attribute until all were at six. After that, building them up as you see fit it great and does offer a lot of other advantages such as new dialogue outcomes, research outcomes, better loot, etc... From there, you will set off on your adventure. Each day features a random amount of AP (action points), which you can spend on movement decisions. You will be presented with nine options each day, and each option chosen costs an AP. These include finding gear, special encounters, exploration, story moments, traders, and battles. After your AP is exhausted, and assuming you survived your choices, you rest overnight only to repeat this the next day and every day after until you die or find an ending. The game is also broken up into chapters depending on your backstory. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3614140490 Combat is a feature of the game of course, and is also the best way to earn experience, which allows you to increase your attributes. However, it is also a convenient way to end your song (die). Your attributes to contribute to your success in battle. Additionally, you have armor, weapons, medkits, and food. Your armor score deducts that number of points from your enemy's attacks. Your weapons score is the damage you do each turn. Food and medkits can be used at any moment to heal. All characters have 15 hp when fully healthy, and that won't increase as you play. Combat each round is resolved after you choose to either attack or flee, but your actions do always happen first. Exploration and combat are the entirety of this game at its core, although obviously the various decisions you make within will determine the outcome of your run and how long your song will be sung. While this is a fairly simple system, it can be at times brutal, and you will alternate between being frail and being unstoppable depending on your luck and your choices within each run. One thing you will do as well as you play more is begin to understand what each decision has to offer. And as such, you will learn to spend your AP in ways that favor your character having a better outcome and potentially even getting to see one or more of the endings. So, the more you play, the better at this game you will inevitably become. There are two game modes available: Story and Sandbox. Story is really what I've been describing above. Sandbox is more like an endless mode. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3614617732 So yeah, that is pretty much the game in its entirety. There is a lot of nuance when you play, but the core experience is what I've described. I found it to be a very engaging game with enough variety to keep me from getting bored and enough challenge to keep wanting to get one more run in. I'll be keeping Songs of Rats downloaded on my computer for a while yet. The game does provide plenty of content for the $14.99 asking price, but it's also seen a fair share of sales, so that is probably the way to go. Either way, it's definitely worth a look. [code]If you found this review helpful and would be interested in supporting my Curator group, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32549618/]Robilar's Reviews[/url], it would be appreciated. Cheers.[/code] [code]Also follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]IndieGems[/url] for more reviews like this one.[/code]

Far too easy and repetetive. A run is completed in less than 30 minutes, and each run is the same. In addition it strongly depends on the luck of what location shows up early (when you get a good armor and weapon a run is super easy, if you dont get it early a run is almost impossible). i played less than 2 hours, completed 2 runs and failed few times. Game got boring quickly. I returned the game.

Do you like adventure books like Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf? Do you like roguelites? Do you like Space Hulk and STALKER? If yes, then this is indeed the game for you. Mind you, it's hard as balls and will kill you several times before you manage to get anywhere. Such is life in The Wreckage. Oh and the DLC with the novel is pretty good and gives some insight into the games world. The artbook can be skipped tho.

3 hours of mindless rng that goes nowhere. They could have done something with this, but didn't.

I love the art style and the cyberpunk narrative is pretty good, but I think the game could use more polish and an update to the game play loop. Polish: I noticed several typos and grammatical mistakes in the English text, not enough to ruin the narrative, but enough to mildly annoy me. I played on the Steam Deck, so maybe it works better on PC, but it would not load my saved game, forcing me to start over. The end goal for each story line isn't always clear. You randomly get assigned action points and it's not clear why sometimes you have more and sometimes you have less. Gameplay Loop: The balance wasn't great, with randomization sometimes making it incredibly easy and sometimes you die immediately. I chose one story line which had a goal of bringing some orb of death back to my camp to save my people. The orb seemed very evil so I destroyed it. I appreciated the option to choose my own path, but then the game-winning goal changed to collecting an absurd amount of some resource. I was so OP by that point that I just kept clicking through each stage, but was only getting a tiny bit of the resource each time. It would have taken me at least 40 minutes of mindless clicking to get the win screen. After a few playthroughs it gets rather predictable. The dog comes with you every time, certain characters are the same. Overall, I love the art style and narrative style. I think this game could be really good with some updates, but I wouldn't recommend buying it at full price as is.

[b]Playtime:[/b] ~3 hours — finished the first campaign [b]Platform:[/b] Steam (Linux, Manjaro) [b]Input:[/b] Mouse/keyboard + controller [i]Songs of Rats[/i] is a cool little narrative roguelike with some real charm. The art and mood are excellent, the tone is strong, and it clearly has a creative identity. You explore a decaying world by picking from encounter options based on stats like combat, morality, or exploration. It's kind of like [i]FTL[/i] if it was darker and more story-driven. There’s light resource management (food, health kits, scrap), a few companions to recruit (including a very good dog), and some strange enemies to fight. I had a good time, even though a few systems feel basic or underdeveloped. Shops are rare and don’t offer much variety. Scrap doesn’t feel important. Combat logs are always the same. The story is very linear, and your character’s emotions are assigned to you at the start, which breaks the roleplay a little. But it’s still fun, and I appreciated the vibe and design. It plays like a very polished MVP. I get the sense the devs care about it, and I hope it continues to grow. There's room for more variety, more expression, and more surprises. If you like narrative-forward roguelikes with light systems, you'll probably enjoy this. I'm glad I played it. [b]And yes, you can pet the dog.[/b] 🐾

Rating 2/5 ★★ It looks great and promising but is too simple and repetitive in its current state.

The game isn't difficult to complete once you understand how to exploit its mechanics. You'll quickly learn which actions benefit most during your run to help you level up and gain resources. Then, it's all about achievement hunting, which I managed to complete within 7 hours of playtime minus the day 1 bugs, that kept me from gaining the last 2 achievements, and play testing, to share errors with the developer. I'll say this, I really like the game's initial presentation and art style. I can also see the love for post-apocalyptic sci-fi poured into the game's story. I love this stuff! However, the novelty quickly wears off once you've seen and explored everything within, similar to those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books we used to collect back in the day. The developer is actively responsive to player feedback and has been quick to fix issues and is considerate of making changes/updates voiced by players. I recommend playing Songs of Rats because it offers a break from traditional video games and the story is a good read if you're into sci-fi fantasy. Though, the RPG elements are minor and there isn't much substance once you've beaten the game, it still is an easy pick up for achievement hunters.

Songs of Rats est un jeu minimaliste qu’on pourrait tout aussi bien qualifier de livre interactif non linéaire sophistiqué. Il plaira immédiatement aux nostalgiques des Livres dont vous êtes le héros (LDVELH) (« single-player roleplaying gamebook », en anglais). Mais il ne faudrait pas réduire son public potentiel à cette seule niche. En effet, étant donné son univers sombre et dystopique, c’est aussi un jeu qui pourra parler aux joueurs de STALKER qui veulent explorer une autre « zone », selon une autre forme de jeu. Les amateurs de SF cyberpunk et de pixel art trouveront aussi en Songs of Rats une friandise à se mettre sous la dent. Personnellement, j’ai aimé l’esthétique générale du jeu, tant des décors que des objets et des personnages présentés à l’écran. J’ai aussi aimé la mécanique du jeu : simple et efficace. Naturellement, étant donné que le jeu s’occupe automatiquement de la réalisation des différents calculs, on est sur des parties bien plus dynamiques que si on jouait avec un livre papier pour support de jeu. Cette mécanique de jeu ne veut pas dire pour autant que le jeu est simple en lui-même. Ce n’est pas vraiment le cas. Le monde de Songs of Rats est dur et impitoyable : on meurt souvent, parfois de manière injuste – car la vie, ici, est particulièrement injuste. Néanmoins, à la façon d’un Balatro, on relance partie sur partie en recommençant de zéro et en essayant de ne plus tomber dans les mêmes pièges... tout en priant pour avoir cette fois-ci un peu plus de chance. J’ai joué en langue française et j’ai trouvé la traduction de bonne qualité. J’ai même apprécié le petit effort accordé à l’aspect littéraire du jeu. En ce qui concerne les points moyens et points négatifs, je dirais, dans le désordre : la présence de bugs (exemple : je croise un personnage qui me demande de l’aider en lui offrant de la nourriture, or je n’ai aucune nourriture dans mon sac, mais, en cliquant sur le bouton « aider cet homme », je me retrouve à lui offrir de la nourriture que de fait je n’ai pas, et à empocher la récompense pour ma bonne action.) ; la musique de fond qui, trop douce et calme, ne colle pas bien à l’endroit ; le manque de variété en matière de musiques et de bruitages ; le système de sauvegarde, dont je n’ai pas compris l’utilité ; et, enfin, le prix. Parlons un instant du prix de Songs of Rats. Je pense que le jeu est vendu trop cher en l’état. J’ai conscience qu’il y a eu du travail à l’œuvre pour la réalisation de ce jeu, et que ce travail mérite une juste rétribution, mais il faut aussi se mettre à la place du client. Pour 15€, et même pour 10€, il est possible de s’offrir sur Steam un jeu triple A qui est sorti il y a 3 ou 4 ans. Partant de là, une partie des clients qui aurait pu laisser une chance à Songs of Rats ne finalisera pas l’achat, préférant au dernier moment compléter sa bibliothèque avec un gros jeu soldé qui jusqu’ici lui manquait. Pour convaincre les éventuels curieux, Songs of Rats doit – selon moi – passer sous la barre des 5€. 4,99€ en prix de base et 2,99€ durant les soldes. À ces prix-là, je conseillerai le jeu à n’importe qui.

Excellent chaque choix et chaque chemins que vous aller prendre auront des conséquences, combattre, fuir si vous réussissez pour survivre, trouver des compagnons a qui faire confiance a vous de faire votre propre histoire. Une excellente histoire narrative 10/10