Pugware, a one man developer with talented musician sidekick, NEEDS TO PUT THE CRACK COCAIN AND HARD DRUGS DOWN. He has created, patched, easter egged, patched again, coded, drawn, three games in a very short time. And maintains them, with integrity and humility. He seems to work 48 hours a day, somehow without dieing. I think he's an eldritch contracted Litch like Cher or Madonna. How does one work 48 hours in one day ? By working 200x harder than a human being for 24 hours a day, and Eldritch chronomancy. So yeah, 48 hours, every day. Thank you pugware for another God tier game, please don't die of crack overdose. 10/10 would buy again and again.

What is Into The Fray?

Into The Fray is a oblique top-down twin stick shooter game where you make both humans and eldritch monsters rethink their life choices.

In Into The Fray you play as Hito the 3rd knight in his struggle to save the empire.

Pros:
- Friendly and active developer
- Fun, fast paced crunchy combat
- Different difficulty settings for if you are a dark souls fan, game reviewer or somewhere in between
- Beautiful art
- Many distinct enemy types to massacre
- Gore persistence

Cons:
- I can't think of any because the game is too good.

My thoughts:
Buy it, you wont regret it.

Darn good, cathartic shooter game. The whole series' storyline is intriguing, even if the games feel very hard, sometimes. But that's what makes a game, in my opinion, when it's hard and you finally overcome something, it's a very nice feeling. The prices are very reasonable as well. I'd recommend.

I like the other skautfolds. I cannot in good conscience thumbs up this one.

Skautfold is a series that changes genre every game, and usually that's a point in its favor, but Into The Fray is modeled after Doom 2016, and Doom 2016 relies on a flowstate to be fun.

It's hard to get into a flowstate when your checkpoint is the beginning of the level, when you're constantly out of ammo, and when the only way to recover health is by glorykills---which you often can't perform, because the line between glorykillable and dead is a single bullet, and unless you're counting your shots, you can't set up a glorykill. Worse, when you do get someone into the stagger animation (which looks different for different types of creatures, and doesn't always involve an obvious orange flash), they're only in it for a few moments before they drop dead. This means that enemies that you have to fight at range (i.e. most basic human enemies) can't be glorykilled unless you're in their face, where you'll take at least one hit trying to set up the glorykill, making it pointless unless you're playing on rpg mode and going for a specific build.

To make matters worse, the camera is weirdly claustrophobic and sometimes likes to cling to static shots, meaning you'll get shotgunned from off-screen as you try to go north and the camera waits a moment before following you. Ranged fights often involve trying to tempt enemies into firing at you laterally, where you can at least see what they're doing, even if your bullets now go straight through the bottoms of their 50% off hitboxes.

ITF technically features controller support, but you should not play this game on controller, since it's like maneuvering a greased rhinocerous. Keyboard is decently smooth, but comes with its own problems, as you're going to want to remap dash to right click to have even a hope of getting close to enemies within their glorykill window.

The game is also considerably less bug free than its predecessors, and you'll often pop out at the wrong spot on the world map when you emerge from a location. I've also hit an issue where you can't change screens when you're being fired upon, but I can't tell if that's meant to be a feature.

So, what's good about this game? Well, it's a skautfold, so the worldbuilding is interesting. This is not the place to start the series, though. Waltham, Hito, the knights, england, the fog, these things don't get explained in ITF's first hour and a half, and the narrative hits the ground running without bothering to catch you up. Also, like in the other skautfold games, there's lots of spots where you can interact and get some text, but in ITF mostly it's not worthwhile, and stopping to read it breaks the game flow.

I don't like thumbs downing a game that doesn't have a lot of reviews, and especially one where the whole series is a one-person studio labor of love, but even on rpg mode and at normal difficulty the core design makes ITF hard to enjoy.

If you're invested in the skautfold lore, you may still want to check this one out on sale, but I don't know that I'd recommend it over another top-down shooter.

Edit: tried to give this another fair shot, two more notes. You can rebind some, but not all keys. The 'use' key? Can't rebind it. You also can't back out of missions by leaving the area. You have to die, then choose to return to the map. Also, after further testing, putting dash on rmb does not fix the "I can't get to the glorykillable enemy in time" problem. If you're playing this, put your points into movement speed and health restored per glorykill, not raw damage up. Boss fights will drag, but fights with regular mobs will be doable.

So... this is the third game in the "Skautfold" series from Pugware, and it feels kinda like Dark Souls 2 to me... Let me elaborate on that

Now you might love dks2, but I need you to level with me for a second in order for this analogy to work: I didn´t like Dark Souls 2, as a diehard fan of the series since Dmeon Souls I was eagerly awaiting the next installment and played it with a big smile on my face.. for about an hour. Bit by bit that smile was fading, despite that I pressed on, believing I must be mistaken, surely the game would get better, but the more I played the more flaws I noticed... I kept waiting for it to become great, kept playing until I beat the final boss.... I was desperate, I wanted to like it so bad... but here we are...and while it retained some of the "soul" of the previous titles and was by no means a bad game, but it had a lot of shortcomings in it´s very design, flaws that made it probably the most disappointing game I´ve ever played (well... tied with Zero Time Dilemma, but let´s not derail the review... anymore)

I think that paragraph speaks for itself, but if it doesn´t, here is a list of the things I dislike about the game (Into the Fray, to be clear):

- Bullet hell?: Some enemies slow bullets, others shoot really fast bullets, this is all well and good except if 3 or so enemies with fast shooting hit you in any difficulty above normal then you die, and in the latter levels with chaos everywhere is REALLY hard to dodge bullets without dancing around enemies
- Dancing around enemies: this is literally the endgame, the most optimal strategy in this game, since dodging bullets by reaction time is unreliable (I´ve literally played a danmaku bullet hell game and it feels nothing like this) the only effective move you have is trying to get all enemies in one place and the shoot term while circling around them, there´s nothing they can do you just beat the whole game
- Offscreen shoots: WHY can enemies shoot you offscreen, the widescreen resolution makes it so enemies that are above or below you can shoot you without you even seeing them, this is a problem considering how fast a bullet can catch you and how much a shotgun to the face hurts
- Confused design: the game offers 5 diffculties, (the easiest one changing blood into flowers, very funny and quite cool detail gotta admit) and 2 "modes": action and rpg, since every other game in the series had a leveling progression the "addition" of an action mode struck me as odd, so I searched the forums... apparently the dev wanted this one to be purely action focused as he dislikes shooters with leveling systems, as a result the rpg mode feels like an afterthought, you gain leveling points by finding special stones scattered around in the levels, not by killing enemies, thus there is little incentive to kill every enemy in the room, but you must anyways because this is a shooter... not only that but leveling actually leaves you stronger than an action game character (for obvious reasons), which to be honest I really appreciated because I suck at shooters and I wanted to beat this at least on normal, but it still shows how much of an afterthought the rpg mode was
- The first boss sucks: I´ve read a negative review that mentioned how it quit after getting stuck on the first boss, same thing happened to me but I lowered the difficulty (started on hard rock and eventually started over in normal). The interesting thing is the dev answered and said that it was probably one of the easier bosses in the game... let me tell you why he is right... but also wrong: The boss is a glorified windows screen saver, he just goes in circles around you (like you will with most enemies) and all his attacks are well telegraphed as each one has their own visual cue and sound... but the boss is black, the scenario gets darker and darker while you fight him (which is really cool btw, dying the grass on demon blood) and one of his attacks is a sword that falls... and you can barely make it out in all the visual flare... too much visual noise, and that goes for all levels, mines, traps, all of it very cool but not always visible in the pixel art scenarios, covered in corpses, in the middle of a shoot out. Also it kills you in like 3 hits and takes forever to die (worse without damage upgrades, which you won´t have at all in action mode btw)
- These aren´t hotline miami levels: there is no save points in the levels, which is insane, some of them are quite large and have the hardest fights at the end, so if you die you´ll need to start the whole level from scratch, this puts you in a paranoid state in which you try to slowly advance in order to not be killed by an ambush... but the combat requires you to get close and personal in order to regain health, it´s clearly trying to reward aggression... but it severely punishes aggression with it´s backward checkpoint system, and playing methodically makes it so your progress becomes even MORE valuable since playing through a level ends up taking longer than it should and is definitely not the intended way to play... so is a lose-lose scenario by design
- The map is meaningless: another underdeveloped feature, the game is 100% linear with the ONLY choice in where to go happening at the very end if you wanna go for the "A" ending... so why have a map at all? it´s clunky to move and the random battles while traveling don´t really add much, I love the map artstyle tho

It´s sad, it´s clearly influenced by the likes of DOOM 2016 but trying to recreate that with an isometric view and pixel art is really hard, the game does manages to be interesting despite that but it just falls short... it has little moments of great fun and even if getting to Abyss Watcher can be a certified torture from hell I still ended up enjoying it... wait, scratch that I got confused with dks2 again... the point still stands, kinda

Despite all my complains I truly look forward to the next game, at least I was able to catch up with the story and I cannot wait to know how it continues and what new mechanics the developer will come up with

Not recommended (unless you are really into the Skautfold series and want to know how it continues and/or just want to support a clearly passionate developer)

The third game in the Skautfold series is the most polished yet, and moves from hacking and/or slashing towards a twin-stick shooter type of game. The action is intense compared to the earlier games, and Pugware has paid careful attention to game feel, or 'juice'. Into the Fray still looks and feels rough around the edges, but in my case a highly polished game is not what I expect, nor look for, in a Pugware game.

The main reason I got invested in the series is the earnestly told, original story and the vision the creator has for the whole series: Lovecraftian alternate history told through games that differ in genre in each installment. It is a breath of fresh air, which is in and of itself valuable, and reason enough to recommend the series to anyone interested in the indie scene.

So far, I'm having a lot of fun with Into the Fray. The story is deliciously weird (there's a head in a jar that wants me to wear his cape and the cape requires the blood of my enemies). That will all make sense if you play the game - trust me. Anyway, the story is the part I love. The action parts are kind of cool but I'm terrible at it. That's not the games fault though - that's just me not being used to these "twin-stick" style shooters. I think after I play for a little while I'll probably get a little bit better at it. There are secrets to find, RPG mechanics if you choose to play that way, there's shooting, there's lore, there's stories - I mean they really put in a good bit of work with this game.

If you're still on the fence, I've started a video series on Youtube you can watch to see if this is something you might be interested in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsUPO5cX444

The 3rd game in the Skautfold series.
After the events of Usurper, the 2nd game, we now play as the Hito, the 3rd knight, in a... Twin Stick shooter!?
Going from a Dark Souls-ish action game to a Metroidvania to a Twin Stick shooter is an interesting progression for a series, but the game does pull it off successfully, even though I'm not a big fan of the genre.
As such the gameplay was the least interesting part for me, and sometimes - especially at the beginning - it was frustratingly difficult. Things did get better though and I had a blast towards the end once you have a big arsenal of cool guns.

The usual highlights are still present in this game too: very good 2D art, a really cool setting and story and great boss fights. The (true) ending especially makes me really look forward to the 4th game as well, which is thankfully a metroidvania again and already available in Early Access at the time of writing this review.

Don't sleep on this series!

The combat reminds me of Hotline Miami (in terms of weaponry, aiming, and in a distant way the perspective) and Baldur's Gate (interacting with the environment, and aggroing the enemies one group at a time.) The bosses are sufficiently challenging, straightforward without insulting the player's ability to pick up on weaknesses and tricks. There are also pugs everywhere that you can pick up and give to the pug king.

For what it is at the moment, it delivers more in gameplay than it does in story. And, entering a stage or wandering around, the text size is extremely small. It goes back to normal once in a cutscene, or when the player decides to make Hito observe something.

Given the developer's reputation and phenomenal response to bugs and issues in his past two games, that's another reason to stick it through.

I don't even LIKE twin stick shooters, and this is a FANTASTIC game. I triple-shotgunned this after Usurper after Shrouded In Sanity, and it was an awesome way to kill a week of free time. The story here is a great selling point, the art design - it's so rare to get a game that handles eldritch horror in an effective manner. Even more rare when it comes in a package that feels this good!

One thing this entire series has nailed to date is that all the defensive options feel GREAT. Damage taken is always brutal, but your ability to not take damage is super strong. Highly recommend playing RPG mode and upping your damage and dodge speed. The fastest dodge feels amazing to use. Definitely play the other two first - these are bite-sized diamonds in the rough that have plenty of depth and detail to keep your attention, but they never last long enough to wear out their welcome. Something a lot of games could stand to learn - better to end when you're doing great than drag out to artifically fill a time count.

This game feels great to play, and legitimately, I adore that the decision was made that, since the Third Knight only uses guns, ♥♥♥♥ it, switch the genre to twin stick shooter. Absolutely love it.

Get the True Ending!