GRAVEN

The game feels unfinished, has boring combat, spells are useless and overall content is mediocre at best. Would not recommend buying this game as it is now.

If you're a fan of Hexen or Heretic, this could be your thing. It does the "retro thing" very well. That means there is no voice-acting, atmospheric music and sound design. The same goes for the choice of graphics, very basic and yet very immersive. There is no hand-holding. Figuring out the puzzles is not that hard but challenging enough to be entertaining. Dont' look up spoilers unless you're really, really, really stuck. You get a pleasant sense of accomplishment when you find your way or solve a puzzles by yourself.

Starts strong, but quickly gets frustrating. Not fun to progress. Found key? Time to find next key. Forgot what door needs that key? Run around for 40 minutes looking for it. Finally unlock one route back to town? You'll be using it a lot because of always booting up the game back in town. The game design isn't smart, it's just clumsy and confusing. Aimlessly looking around is 80% of the game. I only came across ONE real puzzle. Some enemies melt your HP in a fraction of a second. No reliable way to avoid damage. Not enough ammunition to keep distance from enemies. Spells are pretty much useless. If you deplete your mana, it will recharge an absolute farts-worth of it back. Upgrades seem mostly worthless. Bought all I could, and didn't notice anything. Enemies still took the same number of hits from the 3x upgraded sword. The explosive barbs were cool. I gave up after 6 hours. I just don't have the patience to kill the same respawning enemies anymore. Also, needs more music variety.

The game has a beautiful atmosphere, music and art. I agree with a critique that it needs more challenge: enemies timings and reactions tweaked, loot drop rate changed etc. I liked this early access and give it big thumbs up. Hopefully, the full release will live to the promise given.

Softlocked by elevator bug in the library basement. Won't go up even though it has all the gears. Terrible save system only keeps a single state. Can't go back to a previous point before the gears were applied to the elevator. Have to restart the game completely. Might just rage quit instead.