Stained

Tags: Platformer Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library TLDR: The flow, pacing of movement and action is all sluggish. The tone and narrative are all butchered. Assets are recycled. Xbox pad detected correctly. Game looked okay-ish but thats about all it got right. Storyline does not match protag's sprite. I am supposed to be a disenfranchised king but I am playing as the grim reaper. The lore says the castle has stained glass monster attacking me but they only show up when I break the stained glass not when I try to invade which is backwards. Game has a lot of puzzles that involve guessing what the developper planned along with a lot of brute forcing by button mashing. Combat is very very floaty with yourself and the foes going through their animations in a hit and get hit affair. Slow controls make dodging difficult and the game is inconsistent in how it spawns foes sometimes allowing you to take one at a time while at other time swarming you with them. Walk animation, attack animations and jumping behavior does not feel like they were planned or designed for a sidescroll brawler or platformer. The animations are too drawn out. Assets get recycled quite a fair bit, kind of surprising to see how many background stained glass window have the exact same pattern in them, which is not good news for a game that has the whole theme of it centered around stained glass windows. It almost feels like someone bought a castle asset pack saw the window decided to make a game around that and bought a grim reaper asset as protag and at the end could not put those two akward halves together competently through writing but decided to release it to Steam anyways. Those horrible hand drawn cutscenes do not belong in a product sold for money

Stained monsters are really charming. Its a good effort by a indie developer.

Well, I created this game and I like it very much!

its a very good concept, and the creatures are charming. You must try it atleast once!

The game's aesthetics are based on a great idea: an abandoned castle full of monsters made of shards of stained glass. The visuals look great. Unfortunately, Stained's gameplay is too excruciating to experience its beauty properly. Controls are unresponsive, and the player character moves so slow it feels like you are walking through thick jelly. Battles require some precise jumping and attacking, since every enemy has its week spot and attack patern, but the controls make seemingly trivial battles frustrating and unwinnable. I have struggled with the first boss for about fifteen minutes, then, when I finally killed it, the game crashed. I decided it was a sign from above and dropped it like a jagged piece of broken glass.

It was fun, somthing different than the crowd.

If you like dungeon crawling side-scrollers, enjoy tales about kings, queens, and all things medieval, or you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to play as the Grim Reaper in The Sims, you will love this game. Full review here: http://indiegamemag.com/stained-review-death-is-only-the-beginning/ (link is no longer functional)