Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

VoltAge:Genesis

Freely explore a deadly wasteland as you uncover a plot to awaken an ancient evil. · By Golden Fish Entertainment

Review by Skyrock1510

A topic by Skyrock1510 created 5 days ago Views: 19 Replies: 2
Viewing posts 1 to 3
(1 edit)

Completed the game at lvl90 after 143 hours. That is a lot of content for 10 bucks!

This is a very exploration- and side-quest-heavy turn-based RPG, probably best comparable with the Exile/Avernum series of Jeff Vogel. If you like exploring maps, searching for hidden nooks and crannies and revisiting areas to try out new exploration tools, this should be right up your alley.
Like Exile, the writing is dripping with incidental hints about the setting history, the factions and their conflicts within it. The setting isn't just a cardboard backdrop serving as décor for the player's adventure - it feels as if the world did already exist before you've entered it, and like it will continue to exist after you've completed the main story line.

Every 5 levels new side quests get unlocked, ranging from fetch quests over boss fights to dungeons. Until the late game, you will always have multiple quests on the table to pursue and keep yourself busy.

Level-grinding is fortunately not as much of an issue as in other RPG Maker titles, thanks to XP rewards for solving quests, and thanks to the option of buying XP for money after the early game.

Difficulty is below-average. The combats are generally not difficult and tend to be very short - 3 rounds or less, unless the encounter is way above your party level. On the short term, if you find yourself in an area with encounters more difficult than expected, you can punch a good 5-10 levels above your own weight class by spending consumables.
Towards the late game, some of the bosses are challenging, but can still be defeated in 10 rounds or less if your party is strong enough and you have the right strategy. Still, this isn't the game if you expect tactically deep, long battles that require a lot of retries.

The graphics and sound are serviceable RPG Maker fare, with a few commissioned custom sprites. (The Barrel Sludge is my personal favourite.)

The post-apocalyptic wasteland setting after the bomb is rather refreshing - and here, typical RPG Maker shenanigans about spelunking in ruins and looting everything that isn't nailed down make perfect sense!

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, and for taking the time to play VoltAge:Genesis...I'm glad to hear that you got so much playtime out of my "little" game! I still hope to one day revisit the world of VoltAge (once I finish up with school), so even though the game is not actively being worked on right now, I still value your feedback and the information shared about things that are unclear or still need to be fixed.

Oh, it's not meant to be a dig at you. I adore Jeff Vogel's work - who has to outsource graphics and sound, because he is a one person band of a game dev who is bad at both, and yet has consistently been notoriously cheap on those expenses, because pretty graphics and sound aren't the reason why people buy his games. Instead, he relies on tons of exploration and side-quests, combined with incidentally dropped world-building and lore.

Delivering something like a JRPG version of a Spiderweb Software RPG as a debute is no small feat, even if it will only appeal only to a tiny portion of the gamer demographic like me.