Check out Valdis Story

[gruevy]

It's new, and it's on sale on Steam for the next few days, and it's one of the top 5 metroidvania games I've ever played. Seriously, it's amazing. Check it out. Valdis Story: Abyssal City.

The difficulty is pretty punishing, though, so be warned

[James]

I just grabbed it the other day, but haven't gotten to play it yet. It does look quite awesome

[James]

Finally played through the first part and beat the first boss. Lots of cool stuff! Anxious to see how crafting and some other stuff is handled

[TobiasAmaranth]

Yes, their crafting is their way of buying things. No currency. It's odd that you can't buy ~every~ upgrade in the game, though.

I would define Valdis Story as a true hardcore game. It is not forgiving while at the same time being well constructed. It's not afraid to be a jerk to the player, but at the same time, everything has a proper strategy.

I'm terrible at games like that. XD Especially when they insist on rating me and tracking my every bit of information. Hahaha. That said, I did faiiiirly well, despite playing through on Hard, the second of the four difficulties.

I believe I would fail very bad if I tried anything higher, however. Even knowing the boss patterns like I do now. Definitely a worthy game to take some inspiration from.

[Geko]

Only thing that I didn't like about Valdis Story was the lack of control over your character. At times the character would get stuck on walls and not jump off, other times it jumped off way too easily. Platforming was also somewhat difficult at times because of the way the character accelerated. This lack of control issue is always hard to explain but many modern 2d games have this problem, unfortunately, and there are always guys who will keep saying that nothing is wrong. Fact is, I've never been so mad at a game as I was at VS for it's control issues.

[James]

Kinda funny because some people were complaining on Steam forum about how you stop to swing in Chasm vs. being able to move and all that.. I guess you just can't please everyone

[TobiasAmaranth]

My only issue with the controls after getting fully accustomed to it was that the minimum distance to move forward is so large. You MUST move forward like, a gridblock or 1.5. That said, I did get really really annoyed at the controls early in the game. By the end of my experience, I figured out exactly how to make my character do what I wanted and it became a lot more enjoyable.

Mastering wall jump, edge grabs, and player positioning is very important and there are mostly-harmless puzzles you are coerced into in order to help train your skills in such things. These puzzles are generally timed which pushes you to move ever-faster and become more efficient in the controls. This is an important training tool for a game because it holds a player's attention while teaching them 'you can do even better!'

So, yeah, I agree with getting annoyed early-game about the controls. But once they click, which I have to gives them props for making their controls have a genuine finesse to them, they become second nature and easy to execute. Jump rebound rebound rebound boost downcancel dash magicgem, hadoken-dash, edge grab, quick roll.

[jiveguilla]

I just picked up the game and it's really cool how quickly the difficulty ramps up. It's not as forgiving as other Metroidvania games for sure. After getting the wall jump, I went back to fight the yeti... that didn't go so well...

[mickyrick]

Somewhat funny since some people were being whining on Sauna community forum precisely you cease to swing movement with Chasm or. to be able to shift in addition to all of that.. Perhaps you only can't remember to all people: ).

[elektriccobra]

i like that game, i wish it was bigger, in terms of items and such, not saying there isnt a good amount and i like crafting stuff but, you almost need the junk items sometimes.
I picture my inventory in SoTN; there was so much in there that i didnt use BUUUUT.... when i checked out some of the "junk" items, sometimes they had some really cool attributes! If Valdis Story had some more stuff like that i would have been a little more immersed.

also some of the movement seemed a little stiff.