Developer: Radcroc
Publisher: Radcroc
Rrp: £3.99 (Steam)
Released: 31st of March 2017
Available on: Steam
Played Using: A Xbox 360 Control Pad
Approximate game length: 3 Hours ish
When it comes to making their first foray into development many indie developers reach for the retro stylings of the 8 and 16 bit era. Perhaps its because its less system intensive and predictable, or maybe because means that less effort has to be used on graphical fidelity. I can’t honestly give an authoritative answer on the subject as my own experience within games design is quite limited. All I know is that the range of new games coming out is on the rise and many of them take the form of ‘retro inspired’ if that’s a good thing or not is down to the individual. In my view though the more people that try the more likely we’ll see amazing new developers appear.
As you may have worked out from that preamble Lament is a retro inspired action platformer, specifically one attempting to emulate the games from the NES era. Aesthetically it definitely nails that as it definitely looks like an NES game as for its gameplay well… its difficult, very difficult.
For the sake of full disclosure I want it to be known that I received a copy of this game from the developer for the sake of review.
There isn’t a sound option within the options menu, in fact there are literally only two options, fullscreen and vsync, that’s it.
The developers claim to have taken inspiration from the likes of Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden. But even those games didn’t buck certain highly ingrained gaming habits. There are some things that we almost instinctively know not to do. Shooting barrels is one example, the other is that falling off platforms is a bad idea. And yet the very start screen of the game requires you to do so! It’s totally counter intuitive. The game also likes to throw its players in at the deep end, at no point are you given a tutorial or even an explanation for the characters motivations.
If you choose to use a control pad you’ll be using the D-Pad to move rather than the analogue sticks. Strangely there’s also a odd delay of some kind with the pause button. Oh, it pauses the game just fine but getting off that screen takes some perseverance as the button doesn’t work all the time. Sluggishness isn’t only limited to the pause button, its not to the same severity but all the controls feel like there is a slight lag.
The keyboard controls are much more responsive, however I found that they hurt to use when playing for a longer period. Sure, [W,A,S,D] is sensible for movement but using [J] and [K] to attack and jump? Really? This wouldn’t be so bad, but as I mentioned early there are only two options in the options menu and neither is a key rebinder.
The basic attack is very slow but thankfully this is made up for by the comically over-sized buster sword that your character carries and the overly large hit-boxes that most enemies have. Each time you make it halfway through a level (each level being made of two stages) you unlock a new attack or ability. Now here’s where things get a little strange for me, if you get to that half way point, unlock the ability and then die often enough that you loose all your lives you can go back to the level select screen with the new move unlocked.
I honestly can’t decide if this is an intentional piece of the games design or an oversight by the developer. If it is something the developer has included intentionally then its quite a smart piece of design allowing the player to unlock powers that will make the playthrough of a tricky level easier. The problem is I have trouble believing this based on how the rest of the game plays and the dearth of options within the options menu, which to me is a telling sign.
Something that many platformers, especially those attempting to emulate an older style, include is knockback. For those of you who have somehow not heard of this, knockback is the event of an enemy hitting you and you getting ‘knocked back’ a small distance. Lament also includes this feature, which is not a bad thing in of itself, the problem is that many of the enemies are very close to bottomless pits. In fact there’s an entire level that is essentially just a loosely connected series of bottomless pits that have enemies nearby. I understand that the game had to have some difficulty to it but that whole level just feels, for lack of a better word cheap.
This game is punishing, you’ll more than likely lose all your lives an multiple occasions. Thankfully the game is very generous with its, seemingly infinite, continues. Sadly part of the difficulty of this game has more to do with the control scheme and somewhat slow response time to player inputs than enemy placement or platforming.
This is one time I truly don’t want to give my final thoughts because, well… as much as I want to support an indie developer I can’t get behind this game. There’s just too much that I disliked and I can’t merely give it a pass just because it was made by a single person. Its a shame because despite everything I really can see the elements of a good game in there, but I can’t recommend this to anyone.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Shovel Knight
Freedom Planet
Owlboy
