A couple hours in. I'm really enjoying the game so far:
1. Gameplay through typing works really well and keeps some tension depending on your typing speed levels.
2. Story keeps you wanting to find out more. I like the way it's weaved in.
3. Artstyle is lovely. In a world where a lot of games look the exact same, this is a breath of fresh air.
Epistory is a story, a romance, saga, fable, hence an epic about a girl on a fox. She explores an unfolding world of stacked paper and overcomes insects by typing their names such as ‘err’, ‘sick’ and ‘sloth’. The length and difficulty go up as the game progress or because of how the dynamic difficulty setting works? You find many tongue twister of some rock formation ending with –mite, and typing becomes fun when a spider with long legs is called ‘multinational’, or an insect calls itself ‘coujntermeasure’.
You can see why I bought this game. Not because it is beautiful and atmospheric, I simply want to make fewer errors when typing. I can spell out long works just fine. My problem is to type too many letters. The backspace key is the most worn key on my keyboard. Unfortunately, Epistory will not make me a better typist. Besides the dynamic difficulty option, there are no type options. You cannot set incorrect letters to be written anyway. You cannot increase word length. You cannot set typing speed.
I like the use of elements. Not in the way that some monsters can only be killed with a specific element, but when you have the a choice between using fire to burn of two words from a long worded creature, or try to use chain lightning to deal with the creature by means of killing a short word bug next to it. It adds an additional layer of thinking. Apart from sometimes overlapping names, the font style is clean and clear.
Besides the lack of typing options, there is one thing that I did not really like about Epistory. Every completed word starts a timer or refreshes the timer and increases a typing score. This means that phases, between typing, when walking on the world map are the most stressful. In a typing game, stress should come from not getting words right. Not from not getting words at all!
Most indie developers have a problem marrying gameplay to their artistic intent, but you can tell from the onset that the two are pretty much in parallel. The game ostensibly stars a girl riding atop a fox going through a gorgeous origami world, yet throughout, there are hints of something larger, of a young artist going through her life, trying to find her place in the world. In this, the art plays into both the surface-level story and the behind-the-scenes writer trying to make a good story. The narrator helps this with a beautiful, inspired performance that helps to draw the user into this amazing world.
On the gaming end, as the title suggests, you're ostensibly typing. Enemies are killed, obstacles and chests are opened using the written words that appear over them. People with full or 1800 keyboards will be happy to know that their number pad is given use as well, with various safes that have to be opened to unlock the fragments scattered through all the levels. Of course, there's more than just normal typing random words - The player will find four very distinct powers on the way. Fire makes it so you can effectively kill an enemy with half the words required, ice keeps enemies in place to give the user more time to handle closer threats, wind can push enemies away, and spark, easily the most powerful in the right places, can shoot lightning towards multiple enemies at once. While there are enemies that can only be cleared with certain powers, even if you're going against normal enemies, using the right power at the right time can mean the difference between a smooth experience and a very tense one, especially at nests, essentially boss battles that the player cannot escape once the fight starts.
If I must dock points, the lack of enemy variety goes against the game. That is, however a minor complaint compared to the sheer joy of playing. This is NOT one to miss.
For the love of God, I'm in the middle of my first run on mass effect legendary ed and saw this on sale. I thought "I'll take that deal and play it a little. Just for a bit of distraction". Stupid! stupid! stupid! Now I've been in the zone for 6 hours and I can't stop playing this game, dammit!
This is truly a unique experience, as your attacks are literally (LITERALLY!!) typing words fast enough to hit mobs. As you progress through the game, you will unlock new forms of elemental attacks - Ice words will slow mobs; Lightning words will have arcing attacks that hit multiple enemies.
The world literally (LITERALLY!!!!!) unfolds like so much origami as you try to learn what happened to the land and character to bring things to the brink of disaster.
I actually played this along side my daughter, taking turns with her when words got too difficult (though the difficulty can be scaled) or when she was overwhelmed with too many mobs. Great family experience! She has since installed it on her own laptop to play through it by herself for the second time.
I still need to keep reminding her of PROPER HAND POSITION though :P