Any good?

[MMDE]

Mostly, yes.

 

It's a take on the old-school dungeon crawler genre, similar to games like Wizardry, which is actually pretty clearly the root of games like King's Field and subsequently Dark Souls etc, but with some twists. For one, it's all black and white, you're in an "ink" world. Another interesting mechanic is eating, which allow you to eat items and get some of it's properties. The game mostly consist of a couple of small towns and some few dungeons and towers. The game has "perma-death", but some points carry over to the next character creation screen, and you can technically quit the game, back up save and continue from there etc. You got 4 different classes, and you gotta beat the game with 3 of 'em. They really don't take all that long, you'll just have to get used to the game and it's quirks. It's not particularly difficult or time consuming, especially if you figure out some exploits early on.

 

Honestly, it's just an interesting take on the genre and a good time. I wish there was more to do in the game however, modernized a bit with more quests and NPCs etc, but this works too, just would have been more interesting and fun I guess. You will spend most of your time exploring dungeons, which is kinda what this genre is generally about. If you're into the genre, then this is definitely worth checking out, especially if it's on sale.

 

Playlist of me getting the platinum, I did figure out some exploit near the end.  

 

[the1andonly654]

It's weirdly fun. It shouldn't be, because it's extremely basic and kinda feels unfinished, like someone had an idea, gave up on it halfway, but released it anyway. The item eating mechanic is actually quite interesting. Also comes with a bug (at least I think it's a bug) that heals you even though you don't have the "stamina" or whatever it is to eat an item... You try, the item doesn't disappear, stats don't change, you get a free heal. Makes the difficulty trivial. 

Honestly, the idea of freely customizing your character's stats through the consumption of items is something that I would like to see in a bigger game, with proper balancing. 

I'm surprised how unpopular this game is, being so short and easy to platinum. 

 

If anyone has rng trouble with the items needed for two trophies - find five cats, save before the 6th. If it doesn't drop the thing you need, close the app, reload, skip this cat and try another, until you get what you're after. 

 

[MMDE]

56 minutes ago, the1andonly654 said:

It's weirdly fun. It shouldn't be, because it's extremely basic and kinda feels unfinished, like someone had an idea, gave up on it halfway, but released it anyway. The item eating mechanic is actually quite interesting. Also comes with a bug (at least I think it's a bug) that heals you even though you don't have the "stamina" or whatever it is to eat an item... You try, the item doesn't disappear, stats don't change, you get a free heal. Makes the difficulty trivial. 

Honestly, the idea of freely customizing your character's stats through the consumption of items is something that I would like to see in a bigger game, with proper balancing. 

I'm surprised how unpopular this game is, being so short and easy to platinum. 

 

If anyone has rng trouble with the items needed for two trophies - find five cats, save before the 6th. If it doesn't drop the thing you need, close the app, reload, skip this cat and try another, until you get what you're after. 

 

 

The eating has an exploit, so you can get insane stats btw.  

[the1andonly654]

8 hours ago, MMDE said:

 

The eating has an exploit, so you can get insane stats btw.  

Didn't know that, but I'm not surprised. Two big exploits in one game mechanic, at this point you gotta wonder if it's an oversight or it's simply intentional. 

[MMDE]

5 hours ago, the1andonly654 said:

Didn't know that, but I'm not surprised. Two big exploits in one game mechanic, at this point you gotta wonder if it's an oversight or it's simply intentional. 

 

If you watch my last video, you'll see the exploit in action. Basically, when you eat something, it will improve some stats and "equally" reduce other stats. The exploit is that a stat can't go below 0, so if you decide one stat that can be 0, then you can eat stuff that improves other stats at the expense of this stat. It's hard to do this "clean", as in, only affect this one stat negatively, but as long as you gain more in other stats than you lose in other stats, you're overall improving your stats at. You're basically not getting the same "equal" reduction anymore, you're net gaining. I thought speed wasn't important, and it really isn't, but you'll not move particularly fast, and you honestly don't want to move too fast, as it's impossible to navigate then. There is one stat that improves how much xp you get, namely intelligence (IIRC). You'll want to focus on this stat getting the most improvement as fast as possible. This allows you to level a LOT more.

Before you even start leveling, you'll want to improve your intelligence. Pick up mushrooms (they respawn if you enter a dungeon and come back) and trade them for a shield of the lady next to the mushrooms. Bring the shield over to the face where you can trade it in for some coins. There's multiple stores in the game, but without needing to go into dungeons, there's two in the overworld (you need to go through the forest to get to the other one), hopefully one sells something that can be eaten to improve int at the expense of speed.

 

When you start leveling, you'll gain levels like crazy. If you level a lot, then die, in your next playthrough you'll start with a lot of "points" that can be spent on improving your characters before start. Here you can actually buy weapons, and if you get some lucky roll with the weapons and rings you buy, you can start to improve int as much as you can before you do anything else. You can't eat infinite, as it will consume your "eating stamina", and that stamina won't recover in this menu. So much make sure your couple of purchases is worth as much as possible in terms of int. Then you can buy a lot of that experience item, which you can consume while in the menu to start leveling up. As soon as you can do the "int" improvement in the level up menu, you should improve it, until max. This should make you level up quite a bit. I was able to actually break the game this way by overflowing to negative stats.

 

Several exploits.

Edited October 8, 2021 by MMDE

[visighost]

Thanks for this. I briefly tried the game and found it pretty hard - your tips should help! I'm a sucker for anything that looks unique (I also got Death Crown recently, which I've yet to try but that also has the black and white aesthetics), so I'll get back to it one day!

[MMDE]

43 minutes ago, visighost said:

Thanks for this. I briefly tried the game and found it pretty hard - your tips should help! I'm a sucker for anything that looks unique (I also got Death Crown recently, which I've yet to try but that also has the black and white aesthetics), so I'll get back to it one day!

 

Yeah, it can be a bit brutal early on, but I beat it once without even using the eating function. Once I started eating and understood int affected how much xp you got, I started trying to take advantage of this to maximize leveling. Then I noticed it didn't ever go below 0 for speed, and you could get net positive increases. The fact you got an infinite source of income and you got stores that sells infinite amounts of equipment (their inventory is randomized at start of game), then you could really go all out on this. And it carries over to next playthrough as well, where you can give yourself back all the xp, and more.... There's no real reason in terms of difficulty you can't finish the game.

 

Btw, the killing of all types of enemies must be done in one playthrough, and some enemies are unique to near the last part of the last dungeon etc (one enemy keeps spawning and you get no xp for killing it). In case you struggle unlocking that trophy. You can enter the last dungeon from the getgo, nothing blocking you from entering it IIRC, so it's a pretty short game if you got insane stats.

Edited October 8, 2021 by MMDE

[the1andonly654]

4 hours ago, MMDE said:

 

If you watch my last video, you'll see the exploit in action. Basically, when you eat something, it will improve some stats and "equally" reduce other stats. The exploit is that a stat can't go below 0, so if you decide one stat that can be 0, then you can eat stuff that improves other stats at the expense of this stat. It's hard to do this "clean", as in, only affect this one stat negatively, but as long as you gain more in other stats than you lose in other stats, you're overall improving your stats at. You're basically not getting the same "equal" reduction anymore, you're net gaining. I thought speed wasn't important, and it really isn't, but you'll not move particularly fast, and you honestly don't want to move too fast, as it's impossible to navigate then. There is one stat that improves how much xp you get, namely intelligence (IIRC). You'll want to focus on this stat getting the most improvement as fast as possible. This allows you to level a LOT more.

Before you even start leveling, you'll want to improve your intelligence. Pick up mushrooms (they respawn if you enter a dungeon and come back) and trade them for a shield of the lady next to the mushrooms. Bring the shield over to the face where you can trade it in for some coins. There's multiple stores in the game, but without needing to go into dungeons, there's two in the overworld (you need to go through the forest to get to the other one), hopefully one sells something that can be eaten to improve int at the expense of speed.

 

When you start leveling, you'll gain levels like crazy. If you level a lot, then die, in your next playthrough you'll start with a lot of "points" that can be spent on improving your characters before start. Here you can actually buy weapons, and if you get some lucky roll with the weapons and rings you buy, you can start to improve int as much as you can before you do anything else. You can't eat infinite, as it will consume your "eating stamina", and that stamina won't recover in this menu. So much make sure your couple of purchases is worth as much as possible in terms of int. Then you can buy a lot of that experience item, which you can consume while in the menu to start leveling up. As soon as you can do the "int" improvement in the level up menu, you should improve it, until max. This should make you level up quite a bit. I was able to actually break the game this way by overflowing to negative stats.

 

Several exploits.

I didn't think this would count as an exploit haha. I didn't fully understand the system at first and used eating only for healing, until any normal weapon hit for 0 damage. I was using that shovel unique weapon that hits for 57dmg, it got lower and lower to the point any other weapon did nothing. Finally figured it out and pumped str back up. 

 

But after that I did the same with leaving speed at 0. For easy int, there's paper at the town merchant, costs 10 gold a piece and gives +1 int without any penalties. There are some fairly common weapons that add both to int and str (looks kinda like a staff) at the cost of speed and maybe def. Hammers and axes are very common, so str is not an issue and you can easily sacrifice some to pump def by eating shields (a lot of them have something like -2str, +5 def). 

Weird and very flawed, but pretty fun system actually.