Playing this was an excellent way to spend an evening. There’s quite a lot to say about this game even in its incomplete state but I’ll try to outline the important bits. Hopefully this will fairly represent the game and do it justice.
Gameplay
Admittedly, I’m not the best person to give proper analysis of this kind of RPG gameplay as I don’t often play games with it and usually I am not a fan. Despite this, I enjoyed the combat in this game. It may feel basic at first but, once you gain levels and party members, the range of strategies opens up and you get to experience each member's list of moves/abilities which are all derived from their characteristics and story. The combat system itself has its own twist on the usual turn-based RPG format and is fun to engage with. Most of it revolves around managing 3 resource pools (evaporation, phantasm, and swagger) which are all impacted by player and enemy actions but can also be exchanged during combat, allowing for strategising and calculated risk-taking. A basic example would be, if you don't have enough phantasm (a hybrid of sanity and mana as you would see in other games), you can gamble by sacrificing some evaporation (health) to increase it and therefore set yourself up to use a strong ability on your next turn.
Weapon and armour equipment options are currently limited but the equippable card system creates a little more build potential and the ability to slot moods and intentions like equipment is reminiscent of Omori or Disco Elysium in the sense that it makes the player character's psyche part of the core gameplay, emphasising its importance to the overall narrative more-so than if it were solely explored in dialogue.
The depth of the system plus tying stats and abilities to the game narrative and themes means that combat doesn't feel tacked on like it's an after-thought or simply there to pad out a narrative-driven game.
The combat animations are simple but serviceable while the sound effects were satisfying enough to trigger dopamine in my ape brain.
Enemies are diverse both in terms of their appearance and their abilities, the latter ensuring you can't rely on the same tactics every encounter. Aesthetically, they are suitably visceral and ominous with some unique designs in the mix that, again, are tied to the narrative and themes.
The lack of random encounters prevented the sense of tedium I usually get from RPGs and stopped me from excessively grinding (either intentionally or accidentally), becoming overpowered, and undermining the gravitas of the boss fights by turning them in to easy stomps.
Difficulty-wise, the game is challenging but fair, forcing you to do more than just brute-force every encounter with normal attacks. How to tackle a given enemy is intuitive enough that you don't have to attempt trial and error or go searching for information outside the game itself. Furthermore, difficulty is tuned so that, if you do hit a roadblock, an effective solution is to go gain some more XP to level up (which doesn't take too long) and try a different approach, likely with a new ability in your arsenal as they are, gratifyingly, awarded frequently. The RNG can be a bit harsh but the mechanics and the consumable items you can find or buy are enough to compensate for bad luck and often salvage a fight.
I chose to play with the tutorial NPC who was concise and clear while also providing a bit of entertainment and extra hints about the story.
The ability to move quickly around an area with just a mouse click is a nice little bonus especially when it comes to making back-tracking less tedious; it is often sorely missing from similar games. However, sometimes I did find myself using manual movement as the pathfinding can get stuck on obstacles.
Collision with enemies on the over-world map can be iffy. At times their sprites clearly touch yours but still don't initiate combat and even trying to force them to attack you can be fiddly.
Story/Setting/The Main Attraction
Despite there only being two acts, the game has a lot to say and there are a lot of things to say about it. It’s the kind of game that provokes thought and, dare I say it, *introspection*. It reminds us of the darker aspects of life such as the necessity of killing to survive, the loss of innocence, the inevitability of death, and the inexplicable naming convention that caused the sequel to "Deerhunter II" to be called "Deerhunter 3".
The starting story hook is strong and I am eager to find out more about the world as well as what the culmination of my dialogue choices and actions will be. The idea that I am shaping the main character’s disposition and opinions on people and things that existed or happened prior to the start of the game is very intriguing.
Characters have well defined personalities and motivations and, most importantly for the kind of story this game wants to tell, your fellow travellers are engaging and sympathetic. Though the characters are archetypes most players likely will have seen before, they are instances of them being done well.
Dialogue is short and sweet, it never meanders and is always geared towards revealing something about the world and characters or driving the plot forward while avoiding excessive lore dumps or long, boring character monologues. Something I found refreshing is that the writing is confident in its bleakness and seriousness as hardly any of it is hedged with humour. There are quite a few grammatical and typing errors which I did find a bit distracting but these are of course easily fixed and to be expected in early development.
The world-building is simply great and might be a close tie with the music for what I enjoyed the most. While you can sense the DNA of other IPs in this game, there isn't a point where you are thinking "the creator just ripped this off" or where it feels overly derivative; the world is very much its own thing with its mixture of alternate history, spiritualism/occultism, and technology.
It is a visually interesting world that sits somewhere between a dreamscape and a hellscape and it has a distinct flavour of Americana that I personally love and found to be evocative of Silent Hill and Twin Peaks. You are able to build an even better picture of this world’s nature and history through environmental storytelling, audio/music, and interactable objects. I won’t spoil anything but the dev has done a few clever things that suddenly click if you stop to take a look at your environment.
Music/The Other Main Attraction
The music is fantastic. If you are fan of the likes of Silent Hill 2/3 or Disco Elysium then I can almost guarantee you that the ambient tracks will scratch your itch. The combat tracks too are absolute bangers that don't become irritating even though you’ll hear them frequently. In fact, a lot of the tracks in this game are, frankly, earworms that are now stuck looping in my head and I might have to sue if they persist.
Good choices have been made on when and where to play tracks. For example, the choice to keep a certain track running after exiting a cell allows the (disturbing) things you have just seen in that cell to linger in your mind. It's hard to describe exactly what I mean here without spoilers but you'll likely know when you get there.
Additionally, tracks undergo variation as you travel, changing with escalating threat or tragic moments. This results in the music being another way in which the unfolding narrative is skilfully conveyed to the player; it was very satisfying to hear a familiar tune that I already liked return with altered lyrics and instrumentation now suited to new events.
Graphics/Visuals
The character and environment art is simple but more than adequate and respectable for a solo dev, with the visual experience often elevated by some out of left field artistic direction. Character appearances/expressions are limited to one portrait each but still effectively communicate their personalities overall and I never found their static nature distracting.
Summary
A comfy but also melancholy journey with its own identity that will manage to tease out feels through a brilliant world and soundscape. You get the impression a lot of care was taken constructing the overall experience with virtually all aspects from music to gameplay working in accordance to produce a consistent tone and narrative with emotional pay-offs. I'm looking forward to the next parts and ultimately how it all ends!