Tales of Lost Ages Vol 1.

I like the graphics and the retro vibe.

I played Tomb of the Devourer on itch and it's fantastic. The other three are shorter adventures but each features a unique gimmick which is fun to explore. Love the diorama dungeoncrawl series!

I went straight in to this game after completing the original Diorama Dungeoncrawl. I absolutely adore the art style and find all the design and visuals very charming, as well as the classic pulp short story vibe that feels like the classic D&D adventures I love. Each of the four Tales here is fairly simple and straightforward, but they offer a satisfying amount of exploration that really scratched the isometric platforming itch for me. Some parts were a little rough around the edges but I honestly think the jank is part of Renegade Sector's charm: it all feels very earnest to me and I feel great supporting a solo developer.

[b]As a disclosure, I am a friend of the dev and provided some balance feedback for the latter adventures of this anthology.[/b] [i]Tales of Lost Ages[/i] is a collection of simple, retro micro-dungeon-crawl adventure games, placed in roughly sequential order of development. This does mean that they're [i]not[/i] ordered by difficulty, which caused me to experience a little bit of friction: if you want to follow what I believe is the best order to tackle them in, it goes [i]Waystone[/i] to [i]Ruby[/i] to [i]Hunter[/i] to [i]Tomb[/i], with the first game in the anthology serving as the best [i]conclusion[/i] both by way of dungeon complexity and boss difficulty (and just overall apocalyptic vibes). Each game feels like a branching contemplation on the same theme, that of a solo adventurer delving into some kind of long-forgotten ruin to smite the baddy at the center of it. The minimalist presentation helps accentuate the little tweaks between each adventure that make them feel fresh and distinct from one another. For instance, the titular [i]Hunter[/i] moves very slowly compared to the other three characters but has a long-reaching spear that promotes a "zoning" combat strategy with lots of hopping up on scenery, and the [i]Court of Beasts[/i] dungeon features a lot of low-lying cover to facilitate exactly this. By contrast, Ruby of [i]Ruby in the Mire[/i] is nimble and precise, which helps to accentuate the fact that her environment is replete with ooey-gooey pools of glop that slow her down (the titular [i]Mire[/i]). I was less fond of [i]Tomb of the Devourer[/i] for featuring a very 'skatey'-moving protagonist combined with precision platforming, but even this is obviously a conscious choice: uniquely, [i]Devourer[/i] features a lot of hidden paths behind and around apparent hazards, and so I interpreted the roguish main character's sloppy handling to be a means of intentionally throwing the player into the act of (accidental) discovery. All four games feel very at-home in that genesis of old-school dungeon crawlers like [i]Wizardry[/i], [i]Heretic[/i], and the early [i]Gauntlet[/i]s, where the game's relative opacity and the lack of an easily-accessible internet fandom lead to a feeling like there [i]could[/i] be a secret behind every wall, even despite the relatively tight technical and scope constraints of the title. A good concise, video-game-ass-video-game experience, particularly on the Steam Deck.

Love the low poly aesthetic and gameplay is fun too. My favorite: Hunter in the Court of Beasts.

Really nice retro vibe, down to the music and sounds. It's a bit janky but if you can look past that it is a really nice package of 4 indie games that feel like games you missed out on back in a time that doesn't really exist. I like the moveset of the last game the most, though all of them just need a bit of practice to get the hang out of them