I liked the concept for this game, and thought it had a lot of potential, but it suffers from shoddy execution.

• Concept is novel, and gameplay not typical.
  
• Co-op is available, and playing co-op can help make up for the game's shortcomings by making interesting combos possible.
  
• Puzzles and platforming with physics - a great combination in almost any game that does it. It's possible the game would have been rather better for me if it had been about the puzzles instead of boring combat against swarms of boring enemies.

• Dated graphics - only a con if you want AAA visuals.
  
• Railroading - the world isn't open
  
• The plot and characters are forgettable

• Voice acting is cringeworthy.
  
• Inaccurate physics in a game where the physics is vital to gameplay
  
• Controls are... slippery? I think that's the word for it. Hard to explain, but controls sometimes react slowly, and other times suddenly.
  
• Surpsingly demanding on hardware for an older graphics style.
  
• Combat is repetitive and dull. You can be creative, but the game encourages you to just bash everything with whatever is handy.

Every once in while a game comes along that reminds us of something we played before, but still stands on its own as a separate entity. When you enter the world of Nor you are assailed with nostalgic feelings of Magic Carpet, Gothic 2, Myst, Alladin and other Shaherezad tales. The game gave me that googly eyed feeling of listening to a campfire story from the village elder.

Onwards to features... You get to throw rocks, no wait. You get to bury a lizard in a pit of sand, charge up a rock with awesome wind power and ram it in its snout at supersonic speeds. Or toss some lava rocks at em and watch em burn. You make the rules. Aaaaaand once you pile all the corpses in a neat pile in the corner you can grab a cup of tea and wrack your brain on the intricately designed puzzle that lets you get to the next room.

Obviously this game needs polish and work, but the framework is solid. Devs seems to be dedicated to making a good game. And once they get the cash, feedback and time the final product is sure to impress.
PS: You get to throw rocks... Any SWTOR Shadow needs to get this game like NOW!!!

Ripping boulders out of walls and smashing your foes with them is soo much fun.

I have played the early access for a few hours now. The game has an original fantasy story and Zelda-like puzzle dungeons which I enjoy. But the game’s core experience is its physics based combat. You raise and lower the ground, you throw stuff at enemies, you throw enemies at enemies… you get the point. It’s a lot of fun and very rewarding. Combat can get out of hand in larger battles. But it hasn’t frustrated me yet. Simply reload and retry - I usually manage well the second time around.

It was a wonderful experience to see how the game (bumpy at first) got more and more polished and complete with each patch. The indy developers published funny behind the scenes videos almost every week since before the Kickstarter. Now that the game is released, including recorded voice, intros and so on I cannot wait to play it in full glory from start to finish. Because, once again, smashing your opponents with large chunks of rock is such soul pleasing fun :)

Appendix: After playing through single player
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What a wonderful game. Learning new skills and progressing to more complex fighting mechanics is very well done. After about a third of the game, I started to control my abilities with a lot of precision and so I could start to control encounters. It became so much fun to get the hang of a new enemy type and then wreak havoc amongst foes. Phisics based combat is something larger titles usually refrain from. Mostly because so much can go wrong (glitches, exploits...). It's remarkable how well it works in Son of Nor.

A good change of pace and also my personal favourite in Son of Nor are the puzzle dungeons. If you like Zelda, you'll like these dungeons. Level design and puzzles are pretty clever. Though most of the puzzles are rather easy to solve, there is a tricky one or two

It's nice to see that in some parts of the game, sneaking past enemies would have been a viable option. But then again... I control earth, wind and fire. Come get some.

As a local co-op game, this is definitely worth the money. There are too few games that have local co-op in campaign mode to be picky. I played 2 hours with a friend, and it was good fun.

But, as a single player game, Son of Nor just isn't worth the time when there are so many better single player games out there.

The gameplay is dull. There's only one tactic effective against each type of enemy, and only a few different types of enemies. Telekinesis, which doesn't require mana and is available from the start, is the easiest way to kill most enemies, so there's very little reason to use the spells that cost mana.

The story is not very interesting. I feel like a lot of it was lost in translation, because there just isn't much there. It alludes to there being a lot more lore that wasn't explained. Also, I have no idea what happened in the ending - did my character save his people, or cause the destruction of the world, or was it a cliffhanger? I have no idea. It just cut to credits.

As a better alternative to Son of Nor, I recommend the game "Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers". It has similar telekinesis-style mechanics, but is MUCH more fun and it has a coherent story.

Finally the game gone out of EA and it made huge progress. Excellent gameplay with a fantastic co-op mode. Finally a Kickstarter project who kept their promises and did all the time communicating to the backers and community. Worth playing and buying.

Hope we will see a sequel. Enjoyed all hours so far

I've got this game for free during winter event and i didn't want to complain much but... its not that good.

I've reserved playing this game until it was done, though i did get a glimpse of it month's ago and quite frankly i don't see a lot of changes, except perhaps intro video.

Each part of the game lasts for about 5-10 minutes because game engine just can't handle bigger levels. It can barely handle even those tiny portions of the game filled with few enemies and items to smash and throw about.

Character animations are non existent, from running to talking it looks unpleasant, like it was made years ago. I would rather play it in first person view just to avoid seeing those weird running stickmen hands and legs. In fact - it should've been first person, like Dark Messiah. Though i guess we would have to stare at those horrible, motionless, low polygon npc faces then... sigh.

There are bugs, there are slowdowns, the story doesn't make any sense whatsoever, with unknown names, places and characters introduced for no specific purpose. Oh that person cared for someone and betrayed us? Its fine - he's dead now. Lizards want humans dead? Humans saved by birds? Birds gone away? Long faces whatstheirnames saved humans again? Why is it so unnecessarily complicated, convoluted and why do you pour so much info in the first 5 minutes of the game? Surely there are better ways to present the world and its story than that?

There's also a disconnect between scenes, music, sounds and characters which almost gives me one of those "omg how did it make onto steam?!?" vibes. Its not THAT bad, but at times you can almost feel bad coding, graphics, animations and characters voices misaligning into something resembling "Garry's Incident" or "Slaughtering Grounds". Though, i will mention it again - its not THAT bad.

I suppose what i am trying to say - its not finished. Its unpolished. Its bugged, its laggy, the dialogues are horrendous and the animations (except levitation, which looks pretty neat) will make your eyes bleed. The game is just too ambitious for its own good.

Bigger levels, first person view, scratch the story, make it a sandbox with terraforming, telekinesis, fireballs. Heck - a multiplayer arena with all of those same spells would've been amazing. Sadly - no one is playing this game in co-op, the server list is empty.

I suppose i could've overlooked bad story if the game had bigger levels and better animations, or i could've overlooked tiny levels and bad animations if the story was amazing but (and i am sorry for that) - i can't recommend this.

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UPD:

I really wish there was an option for a "neutral" rating. While i would not personally recommend this game, i feel that voting down the game you got for free might be a little bit unfair. Thankfully the developers are nice and understanding and a lot of people disagree with my opinion, so this particular review shouldn't be a problem for those who still want to try that game.

Its just an opinion after all.

Son of Nor is third person sci-fi action adventure game. The story/lore in Son of Nor is very unique/intriguing and is the main thing that pulled me to play it. The story is very great, but there are so issues I have with this game. Two of the big things is the fact that the multiplayer is so dead, and the voice acting is very bland at times. With this being said the intriguing story, platforming, puzzles and cool telekinetic powers (Pick up stuff to throw and terraform sandy areas) really pulled me in to play and keep playing. I really just wish multiplayer had a place, but unfortunately its dead as of now.

• Cool mechanics
  
• Interesting story
  
• Interactive environments
  
• Awesome Co-op
  
• Sandbox/Proving Ground mode
  
• Plenty of graphics options
  
• Great controller and Keyboard/mouse support
  
  

• Dead multiplayer
  
• Voice acting is bland at times
  
• A few performance issue (I had none, but I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about it)
  
• Combat is a bit clunky
  

Son of Nor is really fun and a great experience, but does have a few problems. (Nothing game breaking or completely annoying) The multiplayer seems completely dead, but the single player and co-op is really where this game shines. If you are looking for a really cool story with great puzzles, platforming, and powers, this is the game for you. I thoroughly enjoyed myself nearly every second while playing Son of Nor

-HiPFiRED


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This game was a bit of a mess. The engine didn't seem quite able to keep up with the physics, the environments seemed created with a toolkit of some sort, and the hit detection never quite worked as expected. The game does feel inspired, however, and was a valiant effort. In addition, some of the puzzles in the game are quite clever. These positives can't quite overcome the unpolished feel of the entire game.

A great Indie title which I have owned for a while now. From a fairly small team comes this title which allows you to terraform, use telekinesis and manipulate your environment to swing things in your favour! Multi-platform, extensive co-op/multiplayer modes as well as co-op story mode with lots of challenging levels and puzzles. Combine magical powers with your friends and make fire tornados! Who wouldn't want to be able to use their mind to throw boulders at your enemies' head?

Gameplay?

The gameplay reminds me a lot like Jedi Academy while the visuals and the feel of the game makes me think of Stargate, Indiana Jones and Prince of Persia. Not a bad combination! It forces you to think about your surroundings and the abilities you have to hand in order to defend yourself. Unlike a lot of action-adventure games, you don't wield weapons but have to use elements and take advantage of your surroundings. You can kind of use weapons, but not physically hold a spear, but take it from a Sarahul's hand (the bad guys in this game, like big lizard men) and throw it right back at them. There is also freedom to choose different paths as to how you're going to proceed to your goal. Are you going to go stealth? Go in blazing and take on an army of lizard guys? Flank strategically with your friends? Up to you. For an Indie game title, it's not as linear as you would expect. I believe there is roughly 12+ hours of gameplay available single player and/or co-op, plus PvP arenas and a few other multiplayer game modes.

Cool stuff, GADGETS!

Another thing which really caught my eye was the amount of gadgets you can use in this game. It's compatible with Oculus Rift (although I believe there are some tweeks needed), Tobii EyeX which is an eye sensor bar and finally, EPOC Emotive which enables you to almost literally control the game with your mind! Other than being awesome features, it really broadens the market to other avid gamers who may not be so physically able to enjoy games. Having eyetracker software, and being able to train your hardware to the thought patterns of your brain is truly astonishing. Again, I don't know of many Indie games that enable you to do this. So kudos to Stillalive Studios!

Overall?

Well, I can't be the judge of this game only you can. With anything I would always advise to check out some gameplay of something first and this would be no exception. I personally think it's a really cool little game and a bit of a diamond in the rough. The team at Stillalive have been awesome to everyone by listening to feedback, developer diaries to keep you up to date with changes and to give you a chance to express your views whether they're positive or negative. You can tell a lot of hard work and love went into this title and even if the game isn't your cup of tea, you'd still want to support the developers.

I might have a toaster for a PC, but I have played better looking games on it that had no problem, this game though... It stutters, it lags and it looks aweful.

I remember that I could not create a character because the fire at the into screen made my pc freeze up at early access, I mean it is now a bit better, but it is still bleh. Also it deleted my progress once or twice, always nice of a game to do that.

Gameplay wise it can be summed up like this: Fun at first, but viarity comes too slow to be fun for longer.

Pity I blew 20 bucks on this sucker.