Vellum

I can't believe I never reviewed this just for the positive bump. I love Vellum, the devs rock, and it's always my go-to chill-out game... though it can get intense. (: I only wish that they'd put in an option to cut back on the fog in the Epic Poetry mode. It's not very fun to play the endless mode when you can't ever see it haha. Anyway, super-super-super-super underrated masterpiece, Thanks for the incredible game, guys (:

The game has tons of different build variety, not to mention the feel of risk of rain but dare I say so SO much better. Only spent roughly 4 hours and my homie and I are hooked.

This game just isn't fun. My biggest issue with Vellum is that it constantly gets in the way of itself. There might be an interesting game buried somewhere underneath all of these systems, menus, currencies, upgrades, scrolls, buffs, debuffs, and other mechanics, but I rarely get the opportunity to actually enjoy it because the game seems determined to interrupt me every few seconds to make me interact with another menu. The tutorial is a perfect example of this. What's Tangents? What's Splicers? What's Ravings? Surely the tutorial will explain these things, right? Well, hopefully you weren't planning on actually understanding what they mean, because the game seems perfectly happy to throw these terms at you without really giving you a reason to care about them. Don't worry, though, apparently it's not important to understand any of this during the playthrough. You'll figure it out eventually, probably while you're trying to decide which debuff to pick for an enemy type. Then the actual gameplay starts. You beat something, and congratulations! Here's a scroll menu. You move to another board? Here's another scroll menu. Oh, now you have points to spend? Great! Here's another menu. There is a constant feeling that I'm being pulled out of the game to manage some new system that the game has decided I need to interact with. Even the book pages feel like a missed opportunity. You see what looks like it could be an interesting piece of lore or world-building, something that might actually give you a reason to care about the world you're playing in. Instead, it feels more like another interface for managing something. What could have been an opportunity to build atmosphere and tell a story instead becomes another thing to click through. The spell system is another example of this. There are all of these spells that you can unlock, and they look like they could be interesting and fun to experiment with. But rather than letting you actually try them before spending your resources, you're given a tiny video preview of what each spell does. You can watch it, you can buy it, but you can't actually use it to see if you enjoy playing with it. And then there's the actual combat. You'll fight for maybe 45 seconds and start getting into the rhythm of things. Then it's time to stop. Move around. Pick a scroll. Pick a buff. Pick a debuff. Navigate another interface. Then, eventually, you get to go back to fighting. At one point, I ended up on a random board where I had to pick up a seed and plant a tree just to get a scroll. Which, naturally, leads me right back into another menu. That's the problem. The combat isn't given enough room to breathe. Every time I start getting into the actual gameplay, something pulls me out of it. Instead of letting me experiment, fight, and discover things naturally, the game constantly asks me to stop and make another decision through another interface. There are so many layers of progression and customization that they end up feeling less like meaningful choices and more like chores standing between me and the game. I don't necessarily hate the individual ideas. Scrolls could be interesting. Buffs and debuffs could be interesting. The spells could be interesting. The boards could be interesting. The progression systems could probably work. But throwing all of these things at the player constantly doesn't automatically make the game deeper. At some point, it just becomes exhausting. I shouldn't spend more time thinking about which menu I'm supposed to open next than I do thinking about what I'm actually doing in combat. Vellum feels like a game that is constantly preparing me to play the game, without ever quite letting me play it. And unfortunately, that's just not fun. I played 30 minutes, 17 of those were probably menus.

dude this game is one of my favorites, i've been playing it nonstop since i got it. the raids are great, the music is good, the gameplay is great, it's all great

I'm generally pretty adamantly opposed to literacy, but for this game I guess I'll make an exception.

Super fun game to play with friends! The artwork is really cool, and I love the combat too. It's not too complicated and perfect game to pick up after work when I just want to turn my brain off and button smash.

i love it when games are designed specifically to be friendslop or multi only. Sure the early levels are fine solo but the farther you get it becomes disgusting evident this is only balanced around multiplayer.

It's like Risk of rain but actually fun, and I don't have to spend my money to have a good time! Overall a generally good game. (solo and multiplayer)