The first game on my list was Archvale, a small indie game and – I believe – a first outing for the developer. One part SNES-Zelda, one part Dark Souls, and one part Binding of Isaac, Archvale is a bullet-hell hack-n-slash RPG with cute graphics, bright colors, and addictive gameplay.
Set in a fantasy world that has been closed off from all other realities, you play as a nameless and mysterious character who is the first person ever to stand up to the giant, dungeon-dwelling boss characters who guard the fragments of the arch, a gateway to a realm that has sealed a great evil. You travel the lands encountering enemies, towns full of aid, and secrets to find around every corner. Its a simple game, with simple combat and an easy to understand loop; you dodge incoming projectiles and toss your own, gaining enough gold and materials to buy and upgrade your equipment and getting stronger the whole time.
The array of combat options is delightfully robust but still small enough to be tight. I ended up playing as a mage because I found the elemental damage and firing rates of some of the wands and books to be better, but the melee weapons (everything fires projectiles, even swords and axes, mind you) still pack a punch. Though if you look around every corner you can find and complete a weapon so powerful that it trivializes the final bosses of the game, though you can’t get that until near the end.
The progression is blocked, really, only by skill to a certain point. There are a few roadblocks that require you to complete certain challenges and obtain certain items, but you can’t get to the credits without completing every dungeon anyhow, so “sequence breaking” isn’t really a worthwhile tactic. Plus, the dungeons are fun and the right level of difficult and the boss fights are MOSTLY well put together and paced. More than once though I found a boss that was a bit much and required quite a few attempts. And that’s where the Dark Souls mechanic comes in (as well as the mentioned BOI similarities).
When you die in this game, you transport back to the most recently “active” checkpoint (of which there are a large number and each one gives you a permanent but small stat boost) and you have to trek through the enemies you killed, again, to reach your point of death. You also lose some resources forever in this process, but you can save a bunch of money in towns at the banks, each one unlocked upping the cap for how much you can save. This comes in handy for keeping a steady upgrade to your weapons and armors as you go (the armors also change your appearance which, while unnecessary, is cute and adds an extra touch of character to the game). The bosses, meanwhile, are sometimes ripped from Isaac in obvious ways (the slime bosses are just Monstro clones, for example) and you deal with them like you would bosses at the end of floors in that game. Its addictive and fun and you never feel like you can’t win, ever. You just gotta “git gud”.
Overall, a solid, fairly short game. My 100% playthrough took me just about 11 and a half hours and that was only to get all the achievements, which aren’t really necessary, so probably a 8-9 hour game, really. Its cute, its fun, there were no bugs and no giant difficulty spikes that made progress a chore, and the music – which wasn’t anything particularly special – was inoffensive and helped move the game along. An enjoyable little indie and I hope, based on the ending, there is a sequel coming at some point because I’d play the heck out of it!
(Of note: this review is long because I’ve never played it before and I had stuff to say. Bioshock Remastered is next up and will likely be shorter because I’d beaten it once before and don’t need to really go in depth on a game that everyone and their grandma has played, by now.)
skylerbartels 