Felvidek

The humorous text and disturbing subject matter reminded me of a slightly longer game, Beneath a Steel Sky. The game also does some great visual gags that make loving, nostalgic jokes about technical limitations of games back in the 1980s and 1990s. And on top of it, you get to meet a bunch of goofy characters with often-hilarious motivations. There's also great discussion among the characters of working-class issues that have been relevant for all of the history of humanity.

Let's premise that this game isn't a masterpiece, but deserves five stars all the same. Felvidek is a small RPG about paranormal events happening in Hungary during the 16th century. It takes a lot of elements from what I can only assume is folkloric elements deriving from the mixed heritage of Eastern Europe and some tropes deriving, no doubt, from Disco Elysium, to make its very own insane story. Sometimes the dialogue is a bit too much, it throws historical and cultural references into the player's face without much or any context, mixing it with Ye Ole English and untranslated Hungarian, which makes some passages completely void of sense if you, like me, have little to no grip on Eastern Europe's history, language and culture. However, the writing is overall extremely well done and quite fun. It has a lot of humour comng from very unexpected places, the three main characters are wonderfully portrayed and have some extremely charming exchanges between themselves, and the story, well, the story is bonkers. RPGs mechanics are solid but nothing to write home about. They are however very much elevated by the style and animations, which carry a lot of the game in general. The Aesthethics of Felvidek are what all indies made with a small budget should strive for: they are unique and captivating throughout the whole game. Enemy design, character art, backgrounds, animations, all are so coherent and unique that make me want to replay the game just so that I can see Pali heal himself by popping open a bottle of wine again. Game's very short: From 4 to 7 hours max, and while there is some very minor decision making, I don't really believe it offers a lot of replayability. That's okay to me personally, as I believe it makes everything very compact and solid overall, but just know that you are not going to get lost in hours of gameplay here.

I had a lot of fun with this title. I immediately fell in love with the art style and sound. I was so captivated by it that I re-watched the trailer several times, as I couldn’t start playing it right after buying it. The story was interesting, and the gameplay was enjoyable. The character design is amazing, and it was fun to encounter even stranger monsters as I progressed. The combat music is awesome—every time it played, my fiancé would look over to see what new monstrosities I was battling. I only wish there had been a bit more diversity in the sound effects and music, along with a few touch-ups in the graphics to make it feel truly complete. However, it's still 5 stars in my opinion.

Its like if Clark Ashton Smith´s Averoigne series had a videogame made out of it. More than a great rpg game, this is more of a great artsy experience. Great aesthetics with a lot of attention to detail, trippy music and black humor made this short experience quite enjoyable. The combat is primitive (feels like an NES game) but enjoyable. The animations and sprites have a lot of personality and vibe to it. If you are into Durer, Bosch and otehr medieval art then this is worth the try.