SUPER fun. Iron Pineapple sent me here, and I'm glad he did.

I can't wait to see what this game turns into!

I don't think I've had this much fun with a non-Fromsoft soulslike (save for a couple), ever. A bit unsuspecting with its minimalist artstyle, but it gives way to some good atmosphere, great sound design, VERY satisfying combat (solid visual feedback and sounds), and an impressive level of combat style breathing room. Parries, dodges, backsteps, etc.

Also secret walls with cool loot. Also a surprisingly well designed boss.

I NEED the full game.

A splendid, distilled souls-like starring geometric shapes, set in a dark, oppressive prison. It’s dazzling how well made and claustrophobic it is, with plenty of small corridors and corners hosting a play of light and shadows. Combined with tight combat and superb audio design, it manages to create a palpable, eerie tension you could cut with a dagger.

It works great with the film grain and lens distortion the game features, giving it an additional grungy and dirty vibe. But, if that’s not your cup of tea, both options can be turned off for a smoother visual experience. Accessibility features are included as well, allowing you to turn off screen shakes and flashes, and play around with the damage and stamina options, making the prologue approachable to everyone.

All the souls-like staples are here, bonfires called light sparks, where you can manage your inventory and upgrade your stats, limited number of kindlings as a healing item, and sols as an upgrade currency. Shortcuts in the form of prison doors, and secret walls that hide items and dangers are present as well. The prologue also features wall torches that you can light to track where you’ve been, easily marking your progress.

Combat mechanics and gameplay flow are enjoyable, with good visual feedback, hits feel crunchy, and all the weapons feel good to use, each bearing different stat bonuses that lean into a particular playstyle. A few artifacts and relics can also be found, changing heavily how certain mechanics behave. For example, an artifact that doubles ammo and damage of secondary ranged weapons, but also doubles the cost of stamina for dodging and attacking with primary weapons.

After beating the final boss, which is surprisingly well designed and has great music, you can try tackling a few new challenge modes that unlock, like a dagger only challenge, extending the playtime of this prologue by quite a bit.

One thing I feel is rather iffy is the shield and parry mechanic. The shield forms a barrier around you that blocks all damage, costing stamina. The way you parry is that you need to release the shield the moment it charges, which makes it needlessly complicated and usually hard to do in the middle of combat. It’s also not rewarding, granting you almost nothing in return, except stamina, and it ends up being much better relying on visual cues and using dodge.

The shield may need some love and attention, but it’s still very noticeable how much effort Finite Reflection invested into this tiny slice of souls-like goodness which is well worth spending your time on. This small prologue already features a lot of depth, and it’d be swell if they managed to turn their ideas into a full fledged game.

More off the beaten path games, wonders and failures at the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Being a souls veteran (Played almost every souls game at least once, NG+8 in Elden Ring) I was recommended this game by my friend. And honestly I'm pleasantly surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did. I mean I put 3 hours in a game that took me 34 minutes to beat, I would 100% suggest this to any souls fan, or anyone who are looking to ease into main souls titles. As the mechanics and gameplay flow are extremely similar, it's a very enjoyable experience.


I am in love with the sound design in this game, everything feels so eerie and damp. The hits feel heavy, and gameplay feels balanced besides one detail which I will get to in the appropriate section. The theme for the boss is also very good, I really hope the score for the rest of the game follows suit.


(I will edit this as new issues arise or are fixed or improved)

Now there is very little here, but I'm going to go into as much detail as I can because I want this game to succeed!

Parrying is supposed to be an extremely high risk high reward technique, in souls, you have to anticipate when the enemy attack will land then plan ahead a few frames to block, staggering your adversary and allowing you to deliver a deathblow to deal massive damage and give you some breathing room while they recover, or you tea-bag their dissolving corpse, proving your massive superiority. But in this game, the parry does none of that, as blocking continuously takes stamina to do. And even if you do land a successful parry, it only serves to refill your stamina. There is no stance break for normal enemies, and the posture damage is pathetic to the boss which can be staggered. So it honestly makes sense to just dodge and attack, as that will build up posture damage more. It just does not feel rewarding at all. And also having block and Parry bound to the same button is kind of silly in my opinion, it just feels easy if you miss the Parry. No chip damage, just a bit of stamina is lost. Low risk, low reward. Should be it's own button IMO.

The Great Hammer, this is OP. Period. I know they are tuning down the posture damage, and that's awesome. But I really hope they don't nerf it to the point of it being usable. I feel the damage should be lowered slightly, but not to the point where huge STR investment is the only way to make it viable. I want the unga bunga idiots such as myself who pumped 100 STR to be rewarded by our awful vigor and stamina choices with large funni numbers, but not have to suffer with trash damage until we get there.


Now here are some things i'd like to see implemented.

Boss replay-ability and rush. I know we only have one boss so far. But if the devs are going to expand this game as much as I'd love to see them do. We need remembrances and even a boss rush like the Gauntlets from Sekiro. I replayed Elden Ring 8 times to fight Godfrey and Maliketh. If a player has a specific boss they like, they should be able to play them as much as they want.

Cross OS P2P Network Co-op. This seems like the perfect game to ease a buddy into as a souls gateway, and having P2P would eliminate the need for servers and allow windows and Mac play to be less stressful and we won't have to worry about one version being abandoned in the future.

Invasions. This for the PvP scene, basically just copy paste souls and we'll be good. But have it be toggle-able so we can play coop without worrying.

And that's where I will leave it for now, I cannot wait to see what the dev team does here. I have a feeling this could become the next breakout soulslike like Hollow Knight or Thymesia!

Iron Pineapple sent me here.
Such a well made game, can't wait to see more of it!

Very fun, but very challenging! Its incredible how this game is able to abstract the core elements that make a souls-like so much fun and really focus on pushing those core elements as far as possible. Making a game like this requires a truly in-depth understanding of what makes a good Souls-like tick, which makes this a great souls-like!

I've never known souls-like fans to back down from a challenging game, and look no further. This game is tough, but so rewarding!

I'm actually quite surprised how much of a tense vibe this game puts on when it's just shapes. I know it's just the prologue, but button remapping would be nice, and it'd also be cool if there was some other way of visualizing the stamina so that it's more easily viewable. In a fight, the stamina bar is quite far away from the action. Other than those two things I think the game is solid! The adaptive soundtrack on the boss was awesome, and while the parry is different from a traditional action game, I like it in that it discourages hiding behind your shield all the time.

Its a really good game, can't wait to see more of it!

music is hot

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☑ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☑ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☑ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

tl;dr: good game, and it's a prologue, so it's not going to be a masterpiece, possibly unlike the main game (unreleased as of writing this)