I found this game a few months ago when I did the search for The Elders Scrolls. I was intrigued by the thumbnail so I went on the game's page for more information.

When I saw the preview trailer, I thought it seemed like a nice game so I told myself, why not give it a try.

You spawn in what seems to be a prison cell, then, you fall asleep on the bed and the adventure begins. You appear in what seems to be a snowy valley between two mountains. Everything is filled with snow and the music complement the cold atmosphere. There, you meet your first enemy, a skeleton.

Although the animations seem on point, the game lacks sound effects, because of that, the hits are silent and so are the enemies, so next thing you know, you're losing health so you turn around and there's a skeleton bashing you.

After a dozen of enemies in this frozen landscape, you reach a portal that brings you to a dungeon. There you appear with a torch and your stuff is lined on the walls next to you. The drone music aggremented with the poor visual field that the torch creates adds to the tension.

There are a few different paths you can take at that point but i'll stop my review here and skip to the goods and the bads of the game:

The goods:
- Absolutely fantastic atmosphere, the snowy mountains are wonderful and the dungeon creates a very stressful ambiance with a well-chosen set of colours.
- Wide array of items and weapons.
- Great music.
- Great animations.

The bads:
- Lack of sound effects (sword sounds, creatures sounds, etc).
- Issues with the interactions between the protagonist and the world (in the pillars room next to the spawn in the dungeon, it is very hard to reach the end of the pillars' parkour because the player keeps lagging on the pillars, also, the creatures are faster than the player and they have a hit advantage; you need to stand still to hurt them while they can hurt you while you move).
- Lack of description of the elements (ex: in the dungeon, you will sometimes meet stone gargoyles' head on walls blasting what seems to be glitter of different colours, you have no clue what it is so you reach to it to investigate and next thing you know, you're dead).
- Lack of a save system; you spawn back at the beginning of the map when you die and you lose all progress done during your last life.
- Once you quit the game, your game won't be saved locally, so next time you'll play, you'll start off from the very beginning.
- Lack of structure; you don't know where you need to go first and what to do. When I entered the dungeon, I told myself that I needed to complete the pillars' parkour first, so after close to 50 attempts, I managed to do so and next thing, I was flabergasted by three level 8 skeletons in the adjacent room with absolutely no chance of success (also there was this big red tree with these same gargoyles I mentionned earlier blasting red glitter, still not sure what they do).

Conclusion:

Average game, incredible potential, still a lot of work to be done but could end up doing a massively great game.

My original review refers to an older version of this game. The developer recently released an updated version and asked me to give it another chance. I spent about an hour on it this evening and my updated comments follow after my original review.

Tl;dr While the game is somewhat improved now, it is still not a good game overall and unfortunately I cannot recommend it.

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Original review posted on 13-Sep-2022

I have no idea what the positive reviews are talking about. Comparing this game to Morrowind and The Witcher? I don't think so; not even close.

The first few minutes of the game, when you are moving through outdoor environments, look very nice. The game is made in Unreal Engine, which is an unusual choice for an indie game and does require some technical skill, so props to the developer for that.

The problems begin the moment you walk out of the prison cell at the start of the game. The first thing the priestess tells you to do is pray to the statue. I tried interacting with the statue by pressing 'e' and nothing happened. It took me a long time to figure out that touching the statue is how you save the game, but nothing tells you that. Even if you do save the game, it does not save your inventory or your current position, only your character stats, so every time you reload the game you end up back at the statue, having to pick your weapons up off the ground again.

Speaking of weapons, the combat is some of the worst I have experienced in any game. The weapons feel like they are passing right through the enemies with no impact at all. There are no combat sounds apart from the "swoosh" of the swords so you cannot even tell if you are hitting anything or not. You are not quick enough to avoid enemy attacks and there is no dodge, so the only viable tactic is to raise your shield, wait for them to hit you, then drop the shield and hit them back, over and over. The enemies are damage sponges and it takes 10-15 hits to kill them, so combat quickly becomes excruciating.

There is extremely basic character progression like experience, levels, and a few skills that increase your health and combat strength, but even if you manage to level up and get a skill point to spend, it makes no difference because the enemies level up with you. That's right, there is level scaling in this game. It would have been better to leave the enemies out entirely and just make it a walking simulator.

I finally decided to cheat myself a ton of health and combat strength by hacking the save file, just so I could get past the atrocious combat and see what else the game had to offer. You know those mountains and snowy valleys the other reviews are talking about? That part of the game only lasts for maybe ten minutes, just long enough for you to pick up a scroll and a key that opens the gate to the sewers. The rest of the game is spent in a pitch black underground labyrinth, with the only light source being your torch that only lets you see a few inches in front of your face. That's right, because everyone loves being lost for an hour in a dark maze where you cannot even see anything, "navigating" by hugging the walls and hoping that you are not going around in circles. There is nothing remotely interesting to see or do for the majority of the game; in fact you can barely see anything at all.

The game finally ends when you find an altar in the maze and place the scroll on it. The priestess thanks you for your help, says some mumbo jumbo about the elders being restored, and then the game ends. No final cut scene, no explanation of anything, the entire game is just one long delivery quest that does not even make sense.

The developer seems like a nice guy. He is open to feedback and he even wrote on the forum, "I was improving the game and came to the conclusion that I had to redo everything. Absolutely every element. Now I'm making a new game and it looks much better now." I appreciate your honest assessment of your game and I wish you luck with the new project, but if you want to make a good RPG then you need to improve a lot more than just the way it looks. If you are mainly interested in delivering a good visual experience, then drop the combat, drop the levels and skill trees and all the RPG stuff, and just make it a walking simulator. It would be a better game, and more in line with your natural talents.

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Comments on new version posted on 12-Jul-2023

Well, let me say first of all that I admire your dedication to this game, and your efforts to improve your game design abilities. It is unusual for an indie developer to release a substantial update for a game that is nearly six years old.

I did notice quite a few improvements. The multi-slot save system, accessed from the pause menu, is a huge improvement. I tested it thoroughly and it seems to be working well.

The outdoor locations look really good. I saw that you expanded the starting area and there is a lot more to explore there now. I also liked the abandonded seaside village. (I think that is new from the last version?) The various environments have a strong atmosphere which I think is important for a game like this.

The sword combat is still really bad. The sword swings very slowly and it seems like it fails to make contact with the enemy at least half the time. Even when it does make contact, it still feels like it is passing through the enemies with little or no impact. Blocking did not work at all, and there is still no dodge, so I could not avoid taking damage no matter what I did. Melee combat feels clunky and unresponsive overall.

The magic combat (which I believe was added in this version) is better because it at least sort of works. However I could not find any way to replenish either health or mana besides using the candles, so I stopped playing once I ran out of them, and I never got to the dungeon.

I will repeat what I said in my original review: You should consider making a walking simulator. You are very good at visual design and at creating atmospheric environments, but the terrible combat is just getting in the way of the good parts. Instead of spending more time trying to improve the combat, it would be better if you dropped the combat entirely and focused on storytelling and on creating beautiful, immersive locations for the player to explore at a leisurely pace.

I wish you best of luck in your future projects.

i want to like this game but its just not fun unless its on sale for like 50 cents its not worth it

Now please note at the time of reviewing it I have only made it through the first new area as part of the new update and not got a chance to play through the rest so some things I list might come later. I will start off by saying thank you for not leaving this game I am really glad to see you trying your best to fix this game with that you have my full honor and respect and I hope to see more updates in the future for I will keep an eye on it and would recommend it on the fact that he is truly sticking by his game and could end up being something cool like Castle Torgeath Descent into Darkness or Dungeons & Darkness and at that price why not..

To start off here are a few things I ran into that I feel need work, sometimes when I attack with my short sword or mace the attack does not land where as the enemy keeps hitting me it's like Morrowind all over again. sometimes when the wizard skeleton hits me even with the mana shield active I fly back or up like 30ft I have also been hit so much to the point I clip through the map fall and die. The level up system seems to not work fully or unnecessary when I level up my weapons do the same amount of damage but the enemies do double even though they are my level and the last glitch is sometimes the enemies get stuck in a attack animation loop

Now for things I feel you can add later on, 1) add a brightness bar or torch because the starting cell is super dark. 2) would be nice to have a map, 3) I would love to see armor, bows, and magic added later on, 4) maybe add some hands to the weapons so it does not look like I am a floating sword, and 5) if you can I would love to see you add more swords to the game or make the weapons level up with you.

The games reminds Morrowind, Witcher & Elder Scolls
you start off in a prison cell and there`s a ghostly figure witch sort of gives you a quest when you exit the prison cell to the outside world you will find four weapons to pick up each one has it advantage and disadvantage to kill the monsters if you do get killed you re-spawn back in the castle

a decent fantasy game good graphics and game play

This game is not fun at all very unfair as you lose all your EXP everytime you die

probably not worth the 2.99 and maybe work on sound a little more but other then that its still good

Garbage. Nothing works and it's not even an early access game. All the positive reviews are fake.

Cool game, reminds Morrowind, laid bricks in the dungeon.

This game is amazing <3