Sundered reminds on a mix of Dust: An Elysian Tail, Castlevania and a tiny bit of Metroid. Good, recommentable game, but there is room for improvements. It's missing only a small edge to reach or surpass some of the top titles that had their obvious influence on the game. Said "small edge" costs alot of time though. Graphics / Sounds: The esthetics of the game, map design, character design and animations, are very pretty. Ambience soundtracks, SFX and recording is very pleasant too. It's the best part of the game. Gameplay: Smooth control in widest consideration. Usage of melee weapon on ground shifts the character slightly forward by each hit, which is a pest, after a while. Melee in mid-air is most enjoyable. The ranged weapon is troublesome. Shooting creatures to your right recoils your character so much to the left, that these monsters suddenly appear on your left sigt, cause damage, eventually push the character into brambles and damage again that it kills the character without a chance to escape the pinball death sequence. The occassional, automatic zoom in and out can be annoying but it's... not good but still ok. Level Design: Pretty map design but the level design, more accurately the way creatures spawn, is not exactly great. Survival time and other modificators determine monster count and difficulty at certain trigger points / locations and that gets bothersome, if the character did not die often enough. Too many monsters ignore walls. Bugs: I have discovered only 3 bugs. A wall glitch (happened only once), which rendered the character immobile. A platform glitch, where the character does not fall through a platform but pressing down and jump button fixes it (happens sometimes). The last bug halted the combat pattern of a boss fight and rendered it immortal (happened only once). Reloading / restarting from starting location "fixed" it but I still haven't figured out how that happened. No matter, Sundered is, on overall examination, very free of bugs.
