Astalon and its ilk feel like the game equivalent to zine culture or the still flourishing demoscene: small, intimate artefacts made by passionate enthusiasts, at odds with the lightning speed growth-oriented culture that surrounds them. I don't like these impulses, but I sure as hell feel them.īut as a salve for the tension this zeitgeisty approach to game design provokes in me, I'm increasingly drawn to little games like Astalon-games you can either take or leave, that aren't released to any real fanfare, that never enter the discourse, that just exist to be stumbled upon and savoured.
Sometimes this desire to lay claim to all of my attention strikes me as cynical, but maybe that's because I'm as prone as others are for gratification-to hit a level cap, to unlock a cosmetic, to hear the ping of a Steam achievement.
They want me to log in all the time, to complete bizarre challenges, and they email me when I leave them unfinished. As engagement metrics become as important as raw sales figures, it's rare for a big, heavily marketed, purportedly cutting-edge videogame to be finished by the average mortal. There's a lot to love about modern games in 2021-they're looking better, they're getting smarter, and there's a ridiculous abundance of them-but appallingly, to me at least: they never end. But up to $30 I would say it is totally worth the money.I played a bunch of pixel art platformers as a kid of the '90s, especially of the Apogee shareware variety, but I don't think pure nostalgia is the reason I increasingly turn to these games instead of the loud seasonal blockbusters. I'm in Indonesia so the steam prices are different, I'm not sure what it costs where you live. But the fact that I took the time to reply to this in such lengthy fashion should give an indication of how much I enjoyed this game. They are linked to stats so if you choose strenght then you can use swords, greatswords and axes. You can combine weapons in synergistic ways, but with the stat system you will have to chose which weapon type you want to use for the rest of the game. Both of those have different risks and different payoffs. You don't just have a parry (that you can time perfectly if you feel brave) you also have a 'perfect block' which just means that you block at the exact time something attacks you. There's a pretty intricate combat system. In DG you have a lot of freedom in terms of where to go, there's no forced linearity with how difficult the bosses are. As you explore you practice the skillset you have and then when you feel ready you go take on one of the bosses. So the pacing of the game is exploring, gathering items and leveling your chosen stats. But then as you keep trying you automatically pick up on the patterns and before you know you're getting the boss to less than 30% hp and eventually beat it.
I love how something just seems so ridiculously difficult that it makes me laugh. To me a great boss feels impossible to beat when you first try. And honestly, when I was playing DG I felt that it was better than Blasphemous. The graphics are really great, a good balance between retro and polished. I would compare it to salt and sanctuary. I think it's a pretty good system as far as saving/leveling and pacing the game. I played through ds1 and I do enjoy the genre, but I don't go ng+ and all that stuff.ĭeaths Gambit definitely tries to mimic some of those typical ds design choices in terms of difficulty, though in a sense that level of difficulty really originated from classic platformer games.Īnyway, it does have the bonfire system, but I don't think that's going to be something you dislike.
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