Reviews for SOLUNA

[PeterKisner]

I liked the color scheme and art in general, and I'm not opposed to the idea of random sprites dispensing cryptic observations and wisdom in a game. But, that said, I have to echo some of the criticisms of earlier commenters:

The world is pretty samey throughout. Although the fallen-bridge lands provide some thematic difference from the under-lands, there is pretty much no difference in enemies and terrain challenges. In a way it's nice that you keep coming back to life, because I died probably dozens of times. But it's also unfortunate that you'd need to keep coming back to life, because as far as I can tell, there are neither strategic maneuvering, nor character growth means to prevent dying due to random lucky hits by the enemies.

The pause after falling seemed an odd choice (unless it's a bug), since it had no effect on either health or game progress. Is it just to provide a moment of being stunned for enemies to take a whack at you?

The boss also had me perplexed. After various attempts at jumping and maneuvering around the featureless plane during a few lethal sessions of plasma-burst badminton, I ran out of ideas on how to even begin to make a scratch on him.

VanDiest responds:

The boss fight was a homage to The Ocarina Of TIme zelda game. You are suppose to hit the energy ball back towards the boss and continue until he missed. Thanks for your review and for playing!

[Listen2Reason]

Honestly, it's kind of lame. The "combat" is pointless button-mashing. The exploration just barely kept me awake. The best strategy is to just run past the enemies...which is fine, but then when you fall too far the game "blinks" and makes you pause for a moment, which interrupts you. The game world is vaguely described, and it keeps talking about "You have to decide whether to bring back light or let the world slip into darkness!" and...why would I choose one or the other? What information do I have to base that decision on? In fact, what information do I have on this world AT ALL? What's GOING ON? It's meaningless jumping and sword-swinging. Just like how it says "Go west for your fate, east for your legacy"--Why would I pick one and not the other, and what do those things mean? Well, it turns out they don't mean anything. Anyway, I finally got to the boss, or something, I guess. First you have to fight more pointless baddies, which is impossible to do without losing a good portion of life. Then...well, since you can't attack the boss directly to get down his HUGE life bar, I figured you had to whack his attack back at him, but if you do that he just sends it back to you, so...I'm out of ideas. Oh well.

VanDiest responds:

Thanks for playing. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it as much as I'd like.
The whole point to vaguely describing everything was to keep the mysterious tone of the game and let your imagination fill in the blanks.
You are suppose to choose both your 'fate' and your 'legacy' aka the two gem pieces, not just one.
The boss fight was a homage to The Ocarina Of Time zelda game. You are suppose to continue to hit the energy ball back to the boss until he missed, which would take a big portion of the boss' health (4 hits to kill).
Also with the skeletons, You should try another strategy to fighting them. Are you constantly running around them and aggroing abunch? why not try standing still while attacking?

[Kratai]

As it's your second game, it's not bad to bring it to this. However, as to give you feedback, the game is lack of something. First of all, the global terran is a little bit too plain (though I can feel the afford you bring to the game). Then the control is not much handy. The last thing is difficulty as the first enemy alone can kill a newbie player in no time.
Please try harder and bring us an even better games, I'm sure you can do it.

[AlchemistWarrior30]

the game is good but there are a few things that you can do to make it better. One is the controls, I have a little trouble jumping at times especially after a ledge grab. Changing directions at a moments notice doesn't always work. Swinging the weapon can be quicker. Two is the health gem drops. If you can't up the attack speed then up the health drops because no matter what you will die after fighting like 5 enemies and then have to start from the beginning. Three checkpoints. This could solve almost everything with what I said so far. And Four is more of a glitch than anything else. If you choose to go to the right after the beginning and climb up that stone pillar and then do a ledge grab on the right you then end up on top of the entire environment and if you continue to go right you will then eventually drop all the way to the bottom without dying and then have to refresh the game.

[StrikeDOMXI]

good game, the opening reminds of "endeavor", which is not a bad thing.
damn your AIs are good and annoying as heck, i had a bunch of dudes swinging their blades chasing after my ass jumping and trying to chop me the whole time.
and love the music.