izigame.me

This game absolutely blew me away. I just finished my first playthrough, with the intent to go back and do plenty more. In terms of playtime, the 20 hours I have on record is what I'd call mostly completionist. There is a lot to do, and I went out of my way to do far and away most.
PROS
- Creature design! You can probably tell from the screenshots, but everything is pretty rad. There are some minor issues I take with things clearly having the same skeleton or the fact that a lot of them are just different versions of "four-legged beast" but I'm picky. The dev (solo dev by the way) was working largely from folklore. It's not his fault that every myth ever is just yet another weird horse.
- The beginning of this game is near flawless. The tone is set so well, it is absolutely horrifying to hear something (you don't yet know what) sniffing you from who knows how close, only to check the wind and realize the wind is blowing your scent right towards it, or to realize those thunderclaps you're hearing aren't thunderclaps at all. The *entirely* diegetic HUD, keeping some info very specifically obscured from the player, while the info you *are* able to know is that you're running out of arrows. The game is deeply unchill, and it worked very well for me.
- The exploration is remarkably rewarding. There is something of a mission critical story path, and if you choose to deviate from it, get the maps, look around, investigate things that seem out of place, you will be heavily rewarded with stronger bows, new melee weapons, and more arrows to kill monsters with. Not to mention the monsters. The quicker you go through an area, the less likely it is that you'll see the rarer spawns, which are interesting, give you lots of XP, and usually make for memorable moments as you spend all you arrows trying to take down this one thing that will absolutely kill you if you get too close for too long. There are journals with interesting lore (and frequently incredible writing), random-ish floating XP, and surprising safe zones all over. Being incentivized to look around an area filled with monsters that all want you dead is awful, and I loved it.
IN-BETWEENS
- The graphics were beautiful! And If i had *any* of them enabled, I was dealing with 20 or so fps. This is a minor gripe because I need to upgrade my system (1080 Ti, thanks for asking), but it was an unfortunate blight on my time with the game every time it rained or.... something moved too much. Including me.
- The level-up system. This contributed to one of my Cons, so I'll go further into detail there, but I chose to focus *heavily* on upgrading my stealth, and it seems that I was just objectively correct to do so. There are 5 different things to level up, and none of them were even half as impactful as just making it so that nothing ever saw me. Build variety isn't the most important thing, especially in a game as well-defined as this one, so clearly focused on stealth as a primary mechanic, but I can see others being punished for wanting to invest more into magic and suffering as a result. I read at least one negative review of someone struggling through areas of the game where the monsters were just throwing them around so much they couldn't do anything. And yeah, that's a lot less of an issue when nothing knows you're there.
- The spawns are not consistent. Things that show up in a given area can and will show up *anywhere* in a that area. This can be good, it adds a level of unknowability no matter what you're doing, but it also means that if you want to return to that incredibly rare thing that just killed you, all you can do is run around and hope it spawns again. This ain't Dark Souls, no returning to fight the big boss. Ultimately a minor thing, just unfortunate to see One Instance Of Something and then, because you couldn't kill it yet, or it killed you, you now have to waste your time running around if you want to get all the achievements
- If you can't kill something yet, the only thing that's gonna change that is a new arrow type. You can't cleverly lure something into a nearby poison cloud, use any of the magic powers you've gone out of your way to find, make another monster hit it, none of that. Just come back once you've found the arrows 3 areas from now. It creates an interesting through-line for some monsters that you'll meet early on that you can then return to in a very satisfying way, but I felt unrewarded for any of the clever little ideas I came up with.
CONS
- Between my aggressive stealth commitment, and the power creep of collecting so many arrows and stronger bows, as well as a plethora of magic to choose from, the late game was easy. I cruised through the final area, unseen, killing basically everything in one shot. This was relatively satisfying, but it was so different from the intense and terrifying intro. Once you get into the 4th-ish area, You're not gonna struggle at all if you've played your cards right. The later into the game you go, the truer this is, I think. You are gonna get stronger a lot faster than the monsters do. and will inevitably just steamroll anything that comes near you.
-Another more minor result of the strength you acquire, is the fact that plenty of mechanics just don't feel important anymore. Following the creatures tracks? What's the point, it's right there waiting to get shot. Can it smell you? Who cares, it's already dead. And even if it sneaks up on me, I'm basically unnoticeable, so it doesn't matter that it might have enhanced senses. Running low on resources? No you almost certainly aren't. I have 20 arrows that come back to me as long as I get near them. Going through all of those would be a genuine feat. And healing is a non-issue because, again, nothing sees me, so they definitely don't hit me.
- The monsters, while unique in their design, were rarely unique to fight. With some notable exceptions (specific monsters listed: drekevac, migas, their variants, and to a lesser extent, screechers and anything non-corporeal ), what you the player are gonna do is pick the correct arrow, aim at a part of their body that's gonna take damage, and shoot it. Go for a weak spot if you're feeling crazy, but you might just be doing enough damage that it doesn't even matter. This, combined with the above, means that late-game looks a lot like walking through an area crouched, aiming and shooting at things that show up. This is a tough fix, and ultimately not the worst thing, it just makes it hard to be interested in playing more when I know exactly what the gameplay is gonna look like.
- According to the notes of our hunter as we go through and kill these things, they *should* be more interesting. Some monsters are supposed to blend into their surroundings, some monsters are supposed to be hard to kill with the bow, one is supposed to even throw arrows back at you. This sounds really interesting, and... nope! Almost every monster just kinda walks around, waiting to get shot in the head. It's hard to say if some of this is a product of my other Cons (maybe if they could detect me at all, they'd do more interesting things), but I didn't see so many of the behaviors that our character supposedly noticed. Some, like those mentioned in the spoiler text, did what they were supposed to. But far and away most creatures just mostly amble (frequently in tight circles, due to some difficulty with AI pathing, I assume).
CONCLUSIONS
I think it's easy to be critical of this game. It's a solo dev project from the guy who saw people enjoyed his stealth archery in skyrim and took it to the next level (I don't know if he actually helped design that part of skyrim, but it's funnier to believe he did). But, I think despite its hiccups, and its occasional flaws or minor boring bits, it's truly incredible. Its a wholly unique experience, not easily comparable to anything else I've played, and I'm out of characters, so :)