The Legend of Candlewind: Nights & Candles

You finish the game in under 2 hours. I tend to expect more from a dungeon crawl. -Not hotkeys for anything, hope you enjoy clicking the mouse alot. -Premade party with no customization whatsoever, including when you level. -No challenge whatsoever, once you understand what you're supposed to be doing. -Manual explains absolutely nothing. -There are about 20 spells in the game, but i only used 3 as all the others were pointless. -Finished the game with much the same equipment i started it with. There's very little loot to be had, as the treasure chests contain mostly food, potions, torches, and arrows. -Food, potions, torches, and arrows are utterly useless. There's magic to fill your hunger bar, you level, and fill your health/mana bars way before you need potions, theres a light spell that lasts longer than torches, and theres no point in having an archer as you pretty much always miss, and you pretty much need 2 melee in front and 2 healers in the back. -The only point of allowing other characters to join you (i only found 1) is so you can transfer their equipment to your main characters, and then they drain your XP gain slightly and you can't get rid of them (unless you allow them to get killed off, which i hadn't thought of at the time). Unless you absolutely WANT to waste your money, then i'd pass on this title. I only finished it because i was determined to get my moneys worth. This game gave me no pleasure at all.

Well now, heres a dungeon crawler with a difference. Unfortunately, all the differences are massive negatives. First up is the fact that you cannot create your own characters...in an RPG. What you see is what you get... but you had better look fast as the torches are on a timer.... a real time timer... in a turn based game. The interface is incredibly clunky and unwieldy. The ingame graphics are not bad for this type of game it has to be said but it really is the only positive i can come up with. Monsters attack one at a time... no mobs allowed. Oh and they are also bizarrely proud of their 'Grind' button otherwise known as 'wait for monsters'. Also you cannot use items in combat or change weapons. Ranged weapons are completely useless. So its quite pretty but shallow, slow, empty and lacking in character, options and intelligence. AVOID 32/100

[h1]Big disappointment for dungeon crawler fans![/h1] Usually if a game trailer only shows inanimate screenshots of the game, it should be warning enough. However, I am a huge Turnbased Dungeon Crawler fan since the first Wizardries and Might&Magics, so I ignored the signs and gave it a shot. Unfortunately this game is incredibly weak. DISCLAIMER: I only played a bit more than two hours, but judging by everything I witnessed, I can't expect the game would get any better if I continued playing. However, take everything I say with a grain of salt. [i][b]Let's begin with the good stuff (And even the pros come with tradeoffs).[/b][/i] [list][*]The opening theme is nice. Too bad you will hear it only once when you start the game. When it stops, there won't be any music unless you restart the game client. [*]The artdirection COULD be nice if the dev's hadn't decided to make every character look exactly the same and paint everything - Walls, floors, HUD, menu - in the same ugly muddy brown-green. [*]The game might have an interesting aspect of resource management: You can't go to the city to stock up on resources, you can't rest, random encounters don't drop stuff, so you have to manage torches, food, hitpoints and spellpoints carefully. [/list] [b][i]And now the bad stuff. I don't even know where to start[/i][/b] [list][*]The story is delivered in textboxes and ultra-lazy. Some mischievous rogues are doing mischief and you take a band of adventurous adventurers to their hideout. [*]Even I, as a non-native english speaker notice how shaky the english translation is. [*]No character creation, although that's not even such a big issue in the context of this game because... [*]...the character progression system is a joke. Each character has 6 standard attributes and 3 skills. They level up automatically. You can cast spells if your character posesses a spell book. I have played ♥♥♥♥♥♥ diablo flashgame clones that were more sophisticated. [*]The interface is incredibly clunky. You can move the party with the arrow keys, everything else is mouse driven. And in such an abyssmal way: To load your bow with an arrow, you have to do five specific mouseclicks. And they are not documented, you have to figure it out by yourself. [*]combat is boring. Enemies appear usually in 3 tiles distance. Since your bow NEVER(really!!) hits outside of close combat, you click 3 times on end turn, then they're in melee range. There your frontliners can attack and your backliners can cast/shoot. No special abilities here. [*]You could cast spells on enemies in the distance, they sometimes even hit. The fireball animation for example looks like you throw a tennis ball at your little doggie, and it roughly has the same impact. The good news: This is the only horrible animation in the game. The bad news: This is the only animation in the game. [*]Who came up with the incredibly stupid Idea to make a turnbased game, but tie the duration of torches to real-time? [*]The dungeon looks painfully dull. There is one single texture for the walls, and one for the floor, which also is used for the ceiling. Everywhere. Only exception: Doors that lead to empty rooms and staircases that lead to another level that looks exactly the same. Needless to say, there is nothing to explore and nothing interesting to find. [*]There seems to be only one type of encounter per floor (Which you can conveniently trigger anytime with the "Wait for monster" Button). On the first floor, it is a solitary goblin, which is killed quickly but also can hit hard. On the second floor its three goblins and one shaman which will inevitably tear any level 1 characters a new one. So you HAVE to grind levels on the first floor. Now consider this: A goblin yields 20Xp per character. A character needs 1000Xp for level 2. Basic math: You need to kill 50 goblins first. And better do it quick, because torches and real-time, remember? [/list] [i]Bugs. Actually, I'm not sure whether I encountered bugs or strange design decisions. These ones seem to be the former:[/i] [list][*]If an enemy kills a frontliner, you have to assign a backliner for the first row. By doing this, it often happens that your complete party skips their turn and the enemy attacks again, possibly insta-gibs the backliner you just sent forward, making you skip another turn. [*]When a character gets slain, his portrait gets replaced by a skull. If you give him a revive potion later, the skull stays. Considering the quality of the portraits I advocate against fixing this bug. [*]Not a bug but a technical issue. The game forces 1600x900 fullscreen. If your resolution is lower it scales down, but if it is higher, it stays 1600x900 borderless window and you can't move or resize it. [/list] [b][i]The Verdict[/i][/b] I am sorry. But this game is beyond redemption. The best explanation I can come up with is that it is a lazy cashgrab attempt on the Legend of Grimrock bandwagon. The game has nothing going for it, not even any entertaining values that could make up for a Let's play. Furthermore this doesn't isn't a project that can be fixed with a few updates. The devs seem to have already taken lots of wrong turns early in the development process and you can't fix bad design from the git-go with a few patches. Stay away! If you're digging the turn-based dungeon-crawler type game, I can reccomend Paper Sorcerer, Lords of Xulima, or maybe Elminage Gothic.

Okay I usually do not post reviews but I have to for this title. Do not buy this game....in fact I do not even think you can call this a game? No sound effects whatsoever. Just a few clunks at best. Random NPC's you run into havo no artwork just a wall of text. The best way to describe this title is to say maybe it could be considered as an initial build for one dungeon in a game that is gonna be released in a few years. There is not 80 cents worth of gaming here let alone $8. You have been warned. Do not waste your money...not even worth a dollar. I am serious!

Truly terrible. No full screen. Manual is useless. Not obvious how to do anything. UI is incomprehensible. No map apparently. It seems that you have to manually detach an arrow from your stack every time you want to range attack although with this UI who really knows. Can't really comment on gameplay as I can't figure out how to play.

Not worth your time despite the low price and retro graphics. No character customization, no help features, extremely limited combat mechanics and shallow story. It might look like EoTB but it´s not. Better save your bucks for something else.

[h1]Размышления:[/h1] Пошаговая RPG в которой мы отправляемся путешествовать по подземелью в составе небольшой команды героев. Описывать что-то еще - глупо... Музыки нет, настроек нет, от шрифта болят глаза, внятного сюжета нет, выбора героев нет, управление атакой неудобное, монстров мало, все уровни похожи друг на друга и можно продолжать и продолжать... Вообщем это порнография в плохом смысле слова. Крайне не рекомендую. [h1]Оценка: 2/10[/h1] [h1]Послесловие:[/h1] Если вам понравился этот обзор добро пожаловать в группу http://steamcommunity.com/groups/uojer - тут вы сможете увидеть рекомендованные мною игры, другие обзоры, а также просто пообщаться в хорошей компании.

[h1]The Legend of Candlewind - сыроватая, но вполне сносная пародия на Legend of Grimrock[/h1] Сюжет, как таковой, в игре отсутствует. Нам предложат пройти 10 однообразных уровней командой из 4(впоследствии 6) человек. Классы изначально предопределены: маг, лучник, воин. Весь смысл игры заключается в бесконечном фарме монстров ради опыта и сундуков ради лута. Баланс в игре своеобразный. Если вы докачались до 3-4 уровня - ваши персонажи уверенно перестанут промахиваться, и у вас появится шанс завершить кампанию. Не порадует и большое разнообразие сопреников: в игре их не более дюжины, встречаются либо одиночными особями, либо группами из 4-5 врагов. Однако в игре все же присутствует атмосфера "бродилки по подземелью", и немного веет от нее Гримроковскими скитаниями, может из-за мрачных красок, может из-за традиционного вида от первого лица. Не хватило тут ловушек, разнообразия юнитов, своей истории, и она смогла бы передвинутся на ступеньку ближе к трону приведенной для сравнения легенды. [h1]Гайд по самородку, вдохновленному серией "Might and Magic"[/h1] http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=660989728 Резюме: хардкорным игрокам, имеющим искать плюсы в сырых играх, брать стоит. Циникам - мимо. 7 игр про фарм не в своем жанре из 10. С уважением, badsapphire, [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamorators]Ораторы Ste@m[/url]. [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9668988/]Куратор[/url]

What can I say about this.. Simply a failure. The game wanna emulate great games like Legend of Grimrock or similar.. but it fails for everything. -An RPG in which there is not absolutely any kind of character creation or opportunity to custom them. -The plot are exactly ten line of text -After these ten line of text you begin to play in a dungeon.. Withouth knowing anything.. You dont know who are two of the four party members and dont know how to play at all.. To equip an item you have to left mouse botton and go on "use" and then drag it on the hand of the character; and if you own many objects of the same kind (like torches) you need to split them before being able to use them. -This "game" is just a set of images put togther without sense.. And without ANY kinf of animation..Really nothing! Monsters are seems made of paper -About monsters..they are almost only goblin/orcs.. and when you spot them it will take 3/4 turns before they reach you. Paralytic goblins of paper. But if you try to hit them with a bow you ll always miss them.. And you can use just few spells before being withou mana.. So you simply sit and wait for that paralytic goblin to come. Oh yes...one morething about "combats" : enemies will face you one by one.. fat paralytic goblins that cant you two or more at the same time in the tunnel -Everyrhing is a problem in this game... Even the doors: I resisted 20 minutes in this game just to understant how they work. You arrive in front of a door and you see a very big lock..you click on it and the game says to you "this door works with this lock" or something similar.. So you spend minutes and minutes to go around all the level for the keys.. But the frustration is the solution: I didnt know if I should crash a book on the screen of my pc, but I just decided to crash the bad face of my character on the door and...I passed!! The solution was walking forward like the door didnt exist! You dont need to open it and when you pass there is no animation.. So why put a door?? I wont say anything more. Please, dont waste money on this. Try some free to play or real games, but not this. Thanks for reading, -Lonewolf << https://www.facebook.com/IlTessitoreDiSogni >>

This is quite a difficult one to review - it has the core of a reasonable throwback turnbased CRPG with no hold-handing, no prologue or tutorial to get you up to speed, and it at times captures some of the feel of playing Eye of the Beholder 1 or Bard's Tale (not so much the (relatively) modern PC version!), but with better graphics. There will be a few hurdles to overcome to even start to like this game, such as if you just explore the dungeon and kill what you meet you will arrive at a goblin shaman still level 1 and get wiped out. So you have to know to grind to level 2 on wandering monsters to actually progress, and this happens in a few places - there isn't really hard fights in this game, you either win easily or get wiped out, and there is no flee function if you do get in over your head, so save often would be the advice to any but the purist. Your adventurers are provided to you rather than generated yourself, which normally indicates the predefined characters will have well developed fixed characters/roles which will come out during the game, and thus requiring the player not have flexibility. None of your characters ever speak to each other, only a few interactions with NPCs during special events. The only real advantage then is it means it is faster to get into the game, as in, you start immediately in the dungeon with a formed and equipped party after a one page wall of text intro. You do have a bit of flexibility in that some of your characters start off multiclassed (mage/thief etc.), although once you level up once or twice that option seems to disappear and your choice becomes permanent. This attempt to throw you in at the start without any need for setting up doesn't work very well though, as your party is very ill equipped to go adventuring - you are short on torches to light the way, food to eat, potions to heal up/recover mana (only out of combat as you have no inventory access any time monsters are about), etc. Your main fighter has no weapon and starts off attacking monsters with his bare fists unless your archer/mage gives him her dagger. One character has a shield they have left in a backpack while having a hand free to use it. The UI is idiosyncratic, you have to nock a first arrow in order to use a bow, which requires splitting a stack to get one and putting it in your offhand. Casting a spell requires dragging upwards from the spell icon. Locked doors tell you they need a key, but in fact the only thing that opens them is the unlock spell, you will never find a key in this dungeon. Changing the marching order requires you to right click one character, then left click the other you want to swap. Unless you immediately go to find a quide of how to play (there is one good guide here on steam that should cover it) you are likely to spend a lot of time being frustrated as the game doesn't help you at all. Then you have the last and main problem - as noted it has a core of an okay retro-CRPG game. But that is it, it is very bare bones, there aren't any different looking levels, there aren't any puzzles, there are a few NPC encounters through the game but they are very basic text (not even a graphic of the NPC!) with a yes/no option of whether to give them gold/torches/healing potions in exchange for healing/xp (and a couple of achievements). The combat is one dimensional, nearly all mobs are just basic melee with more or less hp/damage. The only exception I can think of is the goblin shaman who curses you (not sure what this does, sometimes I did entire levels with it before casting the cure and it didn't make any obvious difference). There is no story development or plot, you have no choices to make when your characters level up, you have no NPCs/neutrals you can either fight or help for different risks/rewards. So there is very little here to recommend it to the vast majority of people. However I did like it a bit myself, as it was a puzzle to be solved of how to actually progress in the game, and given the current £1 price tag for an evenings entertainment for me it was worth it, but I wouldn't recommend it to most people hence the "No" below.