It's a fantastical post-post-apocalypse world where humans covered the world in a globe-spanning empire of magical technology, then fucked around and found out, destroying the entire surface world in an event called the World Rend. The remaining populace, living on the floating islands that occur naturally on this world, were once again at the mercy of the gods and their unfair contracts. Until a resistance built up and killed most of the gods in the God War, creating the Apostatic Union in its wake.
Things are bad, though. After killing all the gods, mortals must fend for themselves and tend to their own needs. There's a famine and a plague going on in Hallowshire, the Clockwork King might be going mad, and the undead of the Endless Realm are literally decaying in mausoleums waiting for their interminable immortality to carry them to the end of all things. Wikkans conspire to restore the gods to their former glory, and an infamous pirate named Vela has found a map to something that could end the world -- or restore it.
You are a prisoner recruited by the Apostatic Inquisition, tasked by a tortured High Confessor in a clockwork coffin to somehow stop Vela. This is an act of desperation: they literally kick you out the door without anything but the rags you're wearing, hoping you'll do something about it.
It's just 20 bucks to dig into Vaporwave Vvardenfell. This game's incredible. The aesthetic, the music, the PS1 style graphics are just nailed perfectly. All character progression is just exploration. You get some experience for finishing quests, but mostly you get it by finding these floating blue skulls called Delusions in hidden areas. Spend them to boost your stats. You can also equip items to boost them, upgrade weapons and armor, craft simple potions, etc.
At the end of the main quest you get an airship and it's so fun to just zoom around the map. Reminds me of Skies of Arcadia. 10/10 would recommend
I've been waiting to play this for when it is comes out of early access but every screenshot makes me want to break the seal and try it out early
Been playing since the EA. One of the few games I'm 420% certain that early-access was necessary. The game has really evolved and improved with each iteration. Just glad to see it hit that 1.0 release and getting the love it rightly deserves. It's just classic good-ass video gaming. It's weird and wholly itself which is what I want more games to be. I love when a game is committed to whatever it's trying to be, and succeeds at it. Dread Disillusion to me feels like a video game version of TTRPG that never existed, and I mean in to be a good thing. It rules.
I'm not a fan of the lockpicking, it seems like the only thing leveling it does is let you hold more picks, unless I'm missing something. Coming up to a locked door quickly turns into "gonna roll this d6 15 times and hope I hit a 6". Meanwhile my lore skill is too low to open many of the secret passages I'm finding, while I'm maxed out on lockpicks wherever I go.
Everything else about the game is cool. I still haven't found a bow to use all this ammunition I'm grabbing. Would be cool to have some sort of damaging magic, if there is any I haven't found it yet. Thinking I may start over and put more focus on lore so I can open up all these cool things I'm finding, especially since the game basically floods you with lockpicks constantly.
Find the different hats that boost your skills. Lots of doors that are locked can also be smashed open, and there's some doors with a skull doorman you can talk your way past (charm check).
Apparently the creator of lunacid also helped make this game, Ill pick this game up soon, but if you finished with this one play lunacid
It's really weird I tried to get though it but I got stuck on a choice and I gave up. I might pick it back up now
I've put some time into this one now and I think I like it a fair bit. At first I felt it was pretty simple and easy, almost shallow. But now I think that's really working for it.
Like the combat is trivial and the puzzles are mostly very short. There is very little that is frustrating in this game. Even trekking back and forth across the islands is made pretty painless with the "gotta go fast" spell.
But what this enables is for you to just groove around plundering ruins and solving problems ten minutes at a time. I does feel like the complexity and difficulty has increased now that I'm onto my third area, but at this point I've become very efficient and running around picking up coins while I piece together the lore of this world.
It's funny that this game has a lot of the same kind of bullshit that weighs down the ubisoft-style of open world games. What it does differently is that it doesn't waste your fucking time and bury everything in a slick but needlessly complicated system of menus. You don't gotta climb the map tower twenty times, you just walk up to something big and mark it on your map. You just get enough materials poking around that you usually have what you need to upgrade your stuff or whatever. And you don't have to sit through animations or survival-style busywork buttons to do it.
All this enables a game that funnily lets you sink into the world by being relatively non-immersive in its gameplay. Nothing you're doing is gonna be too complicated or cumbersome, so what you're left with is thinking about all the weird stuff you're seeing, wondering how you can get into the basement, pondering if anyone involved in this mess has the right idea about any of it. And that slaps!
Good game, might finish it.
Yeah, despite the simplicity I felt myself melting away into this world to the point where I really contemplated which of the two endings the game presents to you, genuinely not knowing which way things would go and ultimately being satisfied with what I picked.
I'd love to see more of this world and maybe play more games set in it. It's fascinating.
Hell yea, looks cool as shit. Had it on my list, might have to give it a dive!
