Willow Guard

A small but charming adventure. The main interest of the game lies in its story telling adventure. Little by little, discussion after discussion, a mysterious world is revealed. It may look very simple in the beginning, but the overall world created for this game is interesting. The gameplay is simple and a bit redundant, although it offers some possibility of personal tuning (through the cards deck and equipment). There are some interesting mechanics outside of the battles too, with clues to solve, evidences to collect... The difficulty is... like a roller coaster. Sometimes it's super easy, and suddenly some challenges are super difficult. Luckily there's a "cheat mode" to help players with that. Artworks are quite nice, although technically it's not perfect. There's definitely something about it that I liked. This little game definitely left an impression. Even if it's far from perfect, you can feel the heart people put to it and I will always encourage "family teams" to develop project based on their heart and away from AAA games.

This is a very charming little game with an adorable badger in it and you should give it a try! You might just end up liking it a lot!

Tested it at the Gamescom, was really impressed by the design. Great looking characters, nice dungeons. You can see that the developer(s) put much love in it

good

El trailer parecía mucho más interesante que el gameplay real. El juego quiere ser demasiadas cosas en una y termina no haciendo bien ninguna. Además, para ser un juego en pixel art, se me caian FPS en las "dungeons". No me gustó nada.

A clear homage to The Witcher, with anthropomorphic animals and a cozy yet gritty rustic 2d artstyle in all that is character and world interaction and retro pixelated dungeon crawler in all that is action gameplay. Pretty awesome! Unfortunately all this potential ends up being squandered due to a pletora of issues. One would expect this game to try and capture monster hunter vibes regarding gameplay. You get your tools that you make from resources you gather up from hunted monsters, to hunt more monsters with them. So, you expect the way you kill monsters is to take them on one on one or in small groups, ducking and weaving between them throwing calculated attacks of all kinds left and right as resourcefully as possible. And that IS what the game delivers...in the first half. Later on in the game, the gameplay shifts to an EXTREMELY different one. A Vampire Survivors type bullet hell, where in you run away in circles from hordes of cpu breaking amounts of monsters that constantly cover the area in hitboxes, as you deal chip damage to them all little by little until you finish them all (which is boring and uninteresting and doesn't deliver on the intended fantasy) except you actually have to stop in your tracks to attack which is much worse; and creates a meta of aoe tools and abilities while rendering all others near obsolete or obsolete (which also goes against the intended fantasy). Further more, your tools and abilities are not available to you all at once all the time. You are expected to have the proper tools on you for dealing with all kinds of different monsters and their weaknesses and strengths, and also the map which has little and big puzzles to solve here and there which also need specific type of tools. But tools not ONLY must be packed into a limited deck to begin with for each level, BUT they also come to you randomly in choices of 2 inside the level, and once you choose and use up or replace they are gone unless the level gives you a pillar to reload them all. Which means the chances of having the proper tools to deal with an issue at hand not only vary wildly, but you have very little power in influencing it, given that you are almost never told what you are dealing with. Which leads me to my next point! Once the monsters begin forming hordes, their weaknesses and strengths become almost irelevant, as whatever you throw at a giant diverse group, some of them will always be heavily affected, and some of them will resist it. The reason big groups will always be extremely varied like that is because the game chooses to make it so. There are no limits to what monsters the game will throw at you in any area except the vault puzzle rooms. Because of that too, you never know what deck to make either, your choices on deck making are near irrelevant because of that on top of because of the meta. In the beginning the game functions well, as the player uses the cards resourcefully and is relatively often given pillars to reshuffle the deck in case they used up something they will need again. But as the game begins to shift, not only does it throw away its original charm, but also completely changes the value of its mechanics, sadly. On top of that, the game is actually on a timer and it never tells you that exactly, just that you better be wise spending your time, but you never know HOW wise. Plenty of gear and new cards to discover, yet in my gameplay i barely scratched the surface of gear not only because of the before mentioned puzzles that need specific cards that rng may just not give you, but ALSO due to the kinda low chance of actually getting resources, with which to upgrade your gear. And on top of that, because I never knew exactly how much time I had, I tended to use up my resources balancing all my equipment in case i would need all kinds of different gear for different missions (that never even happened either, as, as I mentioned before, the game just throws all kinds of threats at you at once) and did not go into the final with any fully upgraded gear. And there are cards i never even got to make due to rng on getting the drops for their recipes. There is also, for some reason, a slight relationship mechanic that barely does anything (not that the game would tell you what it does and to what extent, so you enver know if it's wise to use up relationship points or not and how). I am disappointed, as the game has amazing potential. I love it, up to its half point and a bit after. But the longer it goes, the more it corrupts itself and begins to break down, like one of its monsters. Since the game's story is finished, and when I go into my save it just rolls the cutscene from before the credits, I have no idea how a dlc will even work on finished saves, but I will grab it anyway simpy because I like the game's idea. But I definitely cannot in pure heart recommend this to anyone for a resourceful monster hunter game. I can recommend it to Vampire Survivors like bullet hell lovers though. That is not what the game tries to be honestly though, so this review has to be a Negative as result. I did not get the satisfaction I wished for and expected from it :( I am sad, but I'm glad the devs got to make this wonderful world and should still be nothing more than proud of thier beautiful if flawed piece of art, and hope they remain excited to work on it and enjoy creating still.

big yes. the mechanics are deeper than they appear and the story is rock solid. card system as on demand powerups works great. combat feels a little stiff but it works. investigation and npc interaction is stellar. you spend a replenishing resource to Notice Specific Things which adds understanding and new options to future npc interactions- when you learn something, your badger behaves like he has learned something too. he can bring that up now. and if he brings it up to someone who knows about it, he learns more - you can level clues by investigating them and he can show his quest items to npcs like an old sierra point and click. you are badger geralt, youve been sent by the king to deal with furry body horror monsters. you are actually realistically neurotic and you have social anxiety because you dont really spend a lot of time around people. my absolute beloved. do not sleep on this.

Excellent art, story, world building, and you play as the adorable badger [strike] Geralt [/strike] Ghweros. Combat is fun, fluid, sometimes hectic, with a neat deck building mechanic.

enjoying this one. it's got witcher vibes and some wonderful charm. the dialogue is especially well written. the combat is incredibly fun

This is a cute game, I love the art style and the gameplay. I haven't spent a lot of time in-game yet but I can tell that this is going to be a great game when I finish.