Trails of the Black Sun

After testing the first level, I think the game is promising, it reminds me a bit of the atmosphere between SUPERHOT and the ANIMUS phases of ASSASSINS CREED Valhalla. I think that after a few improvements, including increasing the distance visible in front of the player, and some retouching in the shooting phases, it will be good enough for the public.

Lots of fun to be had here as well as quite a bit of replay-ability. If you've played other Parkour style games then there won't be much of a learning curve for you. The visuals are sharp. The locations are fun to explore and there are hidden caches to search for. If you are on the fence, I'd say take a chance...this is a real adrenaline rush.

the parkour is already oddly giving me assassins creed vibes lol

This is an interesting game. I tried it on my SteamDeck to see how it operates. There were no issues at all running it, although I had to assign a few keys to the controller (for instance the CTL button), which was a quick and easy fix. The game ran pretty well and seems like a mix of a couple of games, but it reminded me of Mirror's Edge. You are constantly surrounded by Matrix-esque floating text all the time, to remind you are in a VR world. I didn't find the controls clunky but at times it was very hard to pass some objectives, and you only get one shot to read what it is. The hardest one for me at the beginning was when you had to wall run and then jump off in another direction, took a few tries to get it. Follow that up with Wall Running to swinging on a pole, wall run, pole, then long jump. It was not that it was difficult it was the fact that you had to start the whole thing off from a long-distance checkpoint, took more than a few tries to get this one. Once you get through all that I had some fun with the game and enjoyed playing it on the SD.

~ DIFFICULTY ~ 🔲 My grandma could play it 🔲 Easy 🔲 Normal ✅ Sometimes get angry 🔲 Hard ~ GRAPHICS ~ 🔲 Bad ✅ Normal 🔲 Very Good 🔲 Beautiful 🔲 Masterpiece ~ MUSIC ~ 🔲 Just filling noises/No music 🔲 Trivial and uneventful ✅ Good and/or fitting the game's artistic dispositions 🔲 Memorable 🔲 Transcending whispers of a forgotten world ~ INTEREST ~ 🔲 I would rather watch paint dry 🔲 Hard to enjoy 🔲 Repetitive and/or uninspired ✅ A good moment 🔲 Sticking out of the pack 🔲 You will remember it long after ~ BUGS ~ 🔲 Never heard of ✅ Minor bugs 🔲 Can get annoying 🔲 Impacts the player's experience badly 🔲 The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ~ REQUIREMENTS ~ 🔲 You can run it on a microwave 🔲 Low ✅ Average 🔲 High end ~ PRICE ~ 🔲 Free 🔲 Perfect Price ✅ Ummm!! OK 🔲 Overpriced 🔲 Complete waste of money ~ WORTH PLAYING ~ 🔲 No 🔲 If you have nothing else to play 🔲 Wait for sale ✅ Yes ~ EXPECTATIONS ~ 🔲 It's a completely different game 🔲 This game is a scam 🔲 It's missing many features they announced ✅ Looks very similar to the steam page 🔲 Better than expected and/or announced 🔲 Masterpiece, no patch or feature has to be added.

Received a free copy to try this out. It has promise. Some things I'll note off the top, the FOV was set at 85 by default on a 1080 display. I felt like I had some "tunnel vision" going on, like I couldn't really tell what I was doing on wall jumps as much as I would prefer. I cranked the FOV up as far is it would allow, and it actually felt a lot better that way to me. Some of the move transitions/animations are a little too interrupting for my tastes. For example, the ladders. I really wanted it to be smoother, but instead I get a little inner rage going when I watch my vision bob around and wait for the character to get *moving* already. I found myself slamming the spacebar repeatedly, not sure if it was me for not timing it right. This might seem little, but it's a nag that prevents the gameplay from feeling fluid and seamless. If it's going to thrive on parkour elements, it probably should try its darndest to smooth that aspect out, and not make the player feel like they have to wait, run, wait, run, wait... etc. But it looks like it could get better as it goes with updates.

So. You found Trails of the Black Sun. What can you expect? Maybe a great future. It feels like a combination of Mirrors Edge, a little Assassins Creed or maybe Prince of Persia. Thats a really good idea with a lot of potential. I really loved the first Mirrors Edge. Parcour elements with some gunplay parts, some secret rooms and a little mystery story. It works. But theres still some room for improvements. Graphics are minimalistic ... but its working perfect together with the setting. No big problem with the sound as well. But it would be a big bonus to hear the lovely voice of the narrator more often. :D (Just read out the texts between the missions!) Most of the time the movement works perfectly. I just experienced wallrun-slowdowns at some parts of the last mission. The game didn't slow down. It seemed i froze down. Reloaded from last checkpoint ... it worked as intended again. Its just a little flaw. But ... lets go to my biggest problem with the game. The gunplay. I tested every weapon (i think?) ... i like the upgrade system and the design is really good enough for me. I don't need fancy skins or anything else. But the functionality is really limited. The hitbox system of walls / enemies seem a bit off for me. Sometimes it is impossible to hit an enemy next to a wall. The shots get registered by the wall much to often. I really hope thats not my bad aim! :D The second problem is the damage system. Well ... Sometimes the enemy drops dead after one headshot from your pistol / assault rifle. The next time ... the same enemy gets 10 headshots from close vicinity ... and stays alive ... while killing you. The last part ... isn't a big problem. I'm just not quite sure if the checkpoint system is working well enough with enemies. After your respawn every enemy still knows where you are and they will start shooting as soon as you are close enough again. After every reset to the last checkpoint ... all killed enemies stay dead. (That can be good) But i would prefer to be able to test another solution to the given problems when loading a checkpoint. Alle enemies shouldn't be alerted and alive. Its a lot more fun to test different approaches. Just my few thoughts about the game. Yes. I had a lot of tun. YES. There could even be more fun! But its worth a look. :) Just give it a try! :D

Before leaving this review, I did 100% complete the game. First impressions.. its like Mirrors Edge, fun platforming, depending on play-style enemies can be difficult. This was a very unique platforming game, very different from the norm. I would recommend others to try it out. There's some really fun parts where you get to slide and maneuver like Mario, racing the penguin in Super Mario 64, but you get a gun... You can die in a cut-scene and lose the ability to use your gun.. and sometimes you can collect the points infinitely... so I ended the game with around 486,902 points Messing around I found out if you grab a ledge, with something sticking out, at the correct angle you can clip out of the map and see the entire level. This is kinda hard to do, but neat when it does happen. --- Two issues with the game: 1. Controls are very clunky and they don't flow together when you need to platform... sometimes you will jump to grab something or you will go flying past it by 1 mm and miss it completely.. Pressing Q to turn to look is a neat mechanic for this game, but you can ignore it completely and just use your mouse.. While platforming if you have to run across walls you need to hold down the space-bar, using WASD, pressing Q, aligning with the mouse, and releasing the space-bar all in this order.. this would not be an issue if the controls didn't feel clunky.. The clunky controls would not be an issue... if there was no time trial levels... Slight miss click or if your mouse wasn't aligned perfectly, you have to reset the entire puzzle. 2. I completed all achievements but they never unlocked...

Jogo legal, visual interessante, controles fáceis. Acho que precisa de mais checkpoints, porque não sou tão hábil para realizar algumas manobras, e voltar tanto me desanimou de jogar mais. Os inimigos são bem burros, achava melhor nem ter. O jogo tem quinhentos idiomas, mas não tem português. Gostei de que quando anda numa plataforma muito estreita, fica meio bamba, precisando estabilizar.

Very bad game. Don't buy it.