First things first, the art design and presentation is great. The story and setting is intriguing and the atmospheric sound design is also good, however the voice acting is only meh and the voices don't really fit the characters, at least in my ears. Also the conversation between the 2 protagonists is pretty much nothing but a sarcastic fist fight and it's a bit tiring after a while. Now for the most important part, the gameplay and... it's not good. The movement itself is fine, although it doesn't feel quite natural. It's a bit too light, agile and fast for a stuff bear in armor, a bit of weight behind his jumps and attacks would solve that. Here's my biggest gripe though, the combat. You only have one attack option and your range is quite short, every touch of the enemy, even if it wasn't an actual attack, for example jumping on the wolf's back, hurts and there's no dodge roll or double jump which makes the combat feel very clunky and not well put together. I really hope the developer can improve the game and I'll definetely keep my eye on it, even though I couldn't bear to finish the demo, but because the premise is very interesting.
Hardware the game was tested with: ------------------------------------------- - Intel I 9 10900K - NVIDIA GTX 1070 - 32gb DDR4 3600 RAM - SATA SSD storage Graphics & Performance: ----------------------------- Game looks very pretty and has a timeless art style which will hold up for quite some, especially the light and shadow effects are very good. I noticed only a very few graphical glitches, which are physics related, but yet again they were very few and far between. The game ran constantly at 144 fps and the GPU wasn't fully utilized, so 144 fps seems to be the cap here. With the hardware above it also run smoothly between 60 and 80 fps on 4K. Story & Atmosphere/Sound: ------------------------- Story line is very simple, but the lore behind is actually quite deep and intriguing. I was always kept on my toes and immersed, hungry for more bits about the world, the inhabitants and what's going on. Bundled withe the great art and sound design of the game this game will take you in and will make you want more. Controls: ----------- Here lies the biggest problem of the game and it is not really a big problem considering the type of game it is, which is basically an atmosperic puzzle game... BUT... if the developer implements an achievement to tackle the game in less than an hour without dying then it becomes a problem, because it requires precision. This precision is already crippled by the perspective, which makes jumps very hard to time, but together with the spongy controls you'll sometimes feel that the death was beyond your control. Again, not a big deal if you just want to finish the game, because the checkpoints are fair, but the last achievements is a very big pain the butt. Overall a great game, even for me, who doesn't particually enjoy puzzle games, the atmosphere and lore just kept me involved and I'm eager to play part 2. You could drop down the rating to 3 stars if precise controls are very important to you. Anyway it's still worth your time.
