Player Preview - Leap of Fate

Title: Leap of Fate
Developer: Clever Plays
Status: Early Access

Official Site: http://bit.ly/1JbPBp1
Steam Page: http://bit.ly/1JrJtwv

Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the Rouge Lite bullet hell game, Leap of Fate, the first game developed by Clever Plays. Leap of Fate has you participating in the Trials of Fate to become the most powerful mage alive or if you fail, doomed to become a permanent part of the Trials themselves.

Each level of the trials is randomly generated via a deck of cards with varying difficulties from 1 skull to 3 and varying loot drops so you will have to weigh up the risk and reward for each level. The levels themselves are fairly small and compacted with obstacles making your manoeuvrability extremely important along with the extremely fast paced gameplay. Luckily though you do have a dedicated dash ability that allows you to dash to your mouse cursor and with the damaging dash upgrade it can also be used as an extremely effective offensive move damaging every unit you dash through. The dash does consume mana though so you will have to use it sparingly especially as mana is also the resource used for your Glyph Ability. Speaking of which, your glyph ability begins as your characters defualt but you can change out this Glyph for others that can be found randomly in loot drops or special loot levels as well as being obtainable through the Glyph skill tree. The alternate abilities can be anything from spawning in a powerful ally to help you, placing a turret or even this rather interesting dual revolver ability.

 

Each levels theme and enemies are unique to the current stage of the trials you are attempting and are based on your characters worst fears. The first stage is based on the rooftops of New York with the majority of enemies being humanoid. Some of the other stages though include Egyptian themed levels with crazy flying mummies to fight against and a Laboratory theme with venomous snakes and resurrecting doctors. Later on in the harder difficulties you will also come across bosses to defeat that have a significantly larger health pool and unique attacks to become accustom too. As well as the boss fights there is the introduction of level modifiers for example this ice modified level that makes it difficult to move around or the 1 shot 1 kill modifier that applies both to the enemies and you. Death in Leap of Fate will have all your progress through the trials and abilities gained, lost. You do have one chance to resurrect for each trial run but it does cost a fair amount of Karma that is the only resource that carries over for each new run. There is some progress that is permanent for each character via completing certain achievements within the game that will unlock abilities permanently.  

 

The skill system in the game is divided into 4 separate trees. Passive Skills, Attacks Skills, Glyphs and Mobility skills. You don’t have access to these trees all of the time, instead, you need to find special skill tree cards in the random cards your dealt and even then the skill tree card will only be dedicated to one of the 4 different skill trees. You do however receive one free skill that you get to pick out of 3 by reaching the end of one of the stages so if you do get dealt a bad round with no level ups you can still get stronger, not to mention that you can also find a clockwork key in each stage that will allow you to purchase 1 of 3 cards that include health, glyph and skill cards. Each of the skill trees are fairly in-depth and are somewhat unique to each different character with over 80 different skills that you can obtain just for the one character.

As for the look and feel of the game, it actually reminded me a lot of the similarly card based Rouge Lite, Hand of Fate, however Leap of Fate does have a much more cartoon style look to it. The game is being developed for mobile devices alongside the PC so there are some aspects from mobile gaming that have transitioned over. For instance the game plays at a 4:9 resolution with black bars on the side while also have some UI elements crossing over like this prompt to leave the level. All that aside though the game has been ported really well and plays great on mouse and keyboard.

Other features of the game include 4 characters that will be available to play on release with Aeon the shadow mage, Big Mo the Technomancer, Mukai the spirit channeler and finally Rasimov the rouge occultist. Currently in the early access version Aeon the Shadow Mage and Big Mo the Technomancer are the only characters available to play. Each character will have their own back story and a set of 3 alternate endings to the game depending on your play style. These story sections are played out via these comic book style cut scenes that can be viewed once unlocked at the character screen and are averagely voice acted but do have intriguing story lines. There are 3 difficulty levels currently available to play with the easy mode being more of a tutorial to the game and is even unplayable after you complete it, normal mode introducing most if not all of the game mechanics like boss fights, level modifiers and so on and finally Hard Core mode which will be extremely difficult to defeat as even normal is quite hard to even get half way through the trials.

 

Altogether Leap of Fate actually really surprised me, having not heard anything about the game and is extremely fast paced fun. Accompanied by the rouge lite deaths the game can really invest you into a run and be devastating when you do finally die, losing all those upgrades and progress. The artstyle is bright and colourful which is a nice change from so many dark and dreary games of late. If you like fast paced bullet hell type games with punishing death mechanics, rewarding successes, random encounters and a great amount of replay ability then Leap of Fate is definitely a game to check out especially once all the other characters are released.

Anyway, that’s been my player preview for Leap of Fate. The game is currently available to purchase on Steams Early Access for $16 or you regional equivalent. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links below. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you guys next time.

Player Preview - Feist

Title: Feist

Developer: Bits and Beasts

Release Date: 27/July/2015

Official Site: http://bit.ly/1MrqJ0U

Steam Page: http://bit.ly/1ULMpYD

Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the 2D puzzle platformer, Feist, the first game developed by the independent studio Bits and Beasts. You take on the role of small fur ball creature that was imprisoned by larger rat like beasts of the forest now escaping and attempting to rescue its companion being carted away by the rat beasts. The wilderness is an unfriendly place though full of hostile creatures and rough terrain so it’s not going to be easy.

Feist centres its gameplay around physics based puzzles that you will have to solve to progress. Almost every level of the game will introduce a new mechanic for you to work with and while the basic controls are explained there are some elements that you will just have to find out on your own for example these weird fluffy balls stick to surface but you don’t get told that, you’re just given slight visual hints via them suddenly appearing in the trees around the puzzle. There are some rather inventive sections of the game as well were you have to think somewhat outside of the box to progress but I won’t spoil that for those of you that end up picking up the game.

You aren’t completely incapable of protecting yourself from the wildlife as you can wield sticks as one use weapons, logs and rocks as throwing devices and you can even wield some of the wildlife as weapons like the fly, using its needle attack to your advantage. In many of the levels you will come across a new boss fight against a new rat beast creature that will have different mechanics both in their attacks and the way to defeat them. These guys are faster and stronger then you but hitting them with sticks, logs and stones will slow them down a bit however in doing so you also give them something to throw at you so be prepared to dodge.

There is one enemy in the game that can be a little annoying at first in the form of this burning yellow orb, it’s main function is to speed up the game and make you feel under pressure. While this enemy is something that looks somewhat broken on outside but once you grow accustom to it you can actually use it to your advantage much like every other enemy in the game. The orb tracks to your position and can easily ruin your platforming run by hitting you off the platforms to fall all the way back down to the bottom or just trapping you against the terrain inevitably killing you. Some levels require an almost perfect run due to this plus the swarming of enemies to your position making it very hard to recover from a mistake and it’s actually this that made me think how great this game would be for speed running although due to its physics based nature the game isn’t quite predictable enough for precise runs so there would be some RnG to contest with.

 Feists atmosphere produced from its artstyle, base story and soundtrack is very easy to lose yourself in as you become invested in trying to save your companion from their imprisonment. The artstyle as you have probably already noticed has a very similar graphical style to its fellow game in the genre Limbo, a simplistic shadowy look with most of the foreground coloured black. Although Limbo maintained the grayscale colour tone throughout, feist instead has opted to throw some colours around here and there, the background taking on the most colour with a forest colour palate and some enemies glowing red as they attack. As for the soundtrack it completely matches the games feeling of being in the wild alone with strange almost animal like sounds while also being quite relaxing and atmospheric to play alongside.

Altogether Feist is a very atmospheric game that provides difficult puzzles and plat forming elements together with dangerous wildlife that will keep you on your toes. The game feels like a good fit within the speed running community and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we see it start popping up at events sooner rather than later. If you like platformers with a relaxing atmosphere but still requires you to think through puzzles without holding your hand then Feist is definitely a game you should look into.

Anyway, that’s been my player preview for Feist. The game officially released on numerous store fronts on the 23^rd of July and is currently available to purchase for $15 or your regional equivalent. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links below. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you guys next time.

Player Preview - Rising Thunder

Title: Rising Thunder
Developer: Radiant Entertainment
Status: Technical Alpha

Official Site: http://bit.ly/1MX2rgE

Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the free to play fighting game, Rising Thunder, developed by Radiant Entertainment the same guys that are currently still developing their first game, Stonehearth.

Rising Thunder puts you in control of fighting robots in a setting and style quite similar to that seen in Real Steel with a touch of old school transformers. Each robot and its pilot are based on countries with Mexico, South Korea, Russia, China and Greece currently featured in the game. They are all uniquely voice acted in their countries native language and take on certain characteristics from their respective countries too for instance the American bot is a boxer, the Chinese bot is a Samurai and the Greek bot is a Spartan Warrior.

The fighting mechanics of the game provide you with a light, medium and heavy basic attack to work with as your bread and butter move set that is pretty similar in their functions throughout the roster of robots. Your move sets start to become a little bit more unique with each bots 3 special moves. These moves are a lot more powerful than your standard attacks so they are balanced via cooldowns so you’ll have to time them appropriately. Special move 2 is the only move in the specials that serves the same function across all characters aimed at denying aerial attacks. There is also an ultimate move that can only be used once your ultimate bar is filled from attacking your opponent. This move is extremely powerful and provides for some interesting camera angles while pulling it off. This move can be blocked, dodged or both so timing again is extremely important especially as the recovery time after performing this move is quite significant leaving you wide open to attacks. The special moves and ultimate move are all interchangeable in what looks to be a 2 skill option for each move slot, only a couple of the characters in the game have multiple choices at the moment but more are being added with every patch. 

Finally there are two utility moves you can perform the most important of which is block, by moving away from your opponent you automatically block any normal attacks, to block crouch attacks you will also have to crouch and move away and this will block almost everything except jump attacks. Lastly there is a grab that is primarily used to pull someone out of a block. Behind the scenes of the combat system is a 5 hit combo limit so there are no infinite combo loops which can be incredibly frustrating in other fighting games. There is also 2 combat styles that you can use, Kinetic Deflect and Kinetic Advance. Kinetic Deflect allows you to interrupt a combo consuming 1 bar of kinetic energy which you will only ever have 2 bars at the maximum. Kinetic energy regens slowly during a fight so you’re not limited to 2 bars for a round. Kinetic Advance allows for dash cancelling animations again, consuming 1 bar of kinetic energy.

For ranked mode, the only mode currently implemented, the rounds are a best of 3 and the match is also a best of 3. Between each match you will be able to switch out your special abilities and switch what kinetic combat mode you want to use. After each game you will gain or lose points depending on weather you won or lost that will affect your ranking that starts from carbon and goes all the way up to Diamond for 5 ranking levels total. There is also some signs of a progression system with an account level and character level gaining experience but currently nothing in the game that can really be unlocked which brings me to the free to play model. While the model hasn’t been implemented yet, Radiant Entertainment has said that they plan on a purely cosmetic business model stating that they are aiming for something similar to DOTA 2’s business model. So what we can gather from that is that all characters will be available free of charge along with all their abilities and variants thereof but you will have the option of kitting them out with different parts and pieces.

Other features of the game include full keyboard support and in fact is focused on making it as playable as possible for keyboard users providing movement on the wasd keys and fighting abilities on u,I,o,j,k,l and semi colon, I’ll put up  a little graphic to show you guys a bit better. Personally I played the game on my Xbox 360 controller for that better playing position the only downside being that blocking is a little bit harder to do with a gamepads joystick then a keyboards key. Being an online game Rising Thunder implements a ping balancing mechanic were the game is slowed down to try and match the ping. It doesn’t really become a problem until around the 250+ ping mark were the game starts to enter into slideshow territory. Obviously this problem is something that won’t really happen all that often once the game actually releases and has a decent sized playerbase.

Altogether Rising Thunder is an extremely fun and competitive fighting game that even beginners to the genre will be able to get into with no confusing combos and of course no paid entry barrier so those that aren’t sure if they will enjoy a fighting game have nothing really to lose. For experienced fighting game players there are a lot of character play style similarities so if you already play a certain character in another fighting game it should be pretty easy to transfer over to a similar character in Rising Thunder. I highly recommend checking out the game for new players to the genre and old alike. The game is well polished and a ton of fun to play.

Anyway, that’s been my player preview for Rising Thunder. The game is currently in a technical alpha stage with no official release date as of yet. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links below. Thanks for watching, I’ll see you guys next time.