Codex Lost

I want to like this game so badly, but it's awful. I love the premise of playing a soulslike dedicated to magic, and am really interested in the spellcrafting progression system. You don't need to find the one person or chest that has the spell you're interested in, you find the components naturally as you play. The variety also looks great. The game just feels bad to play. Like truly awful. It's very very common to be caught on small level geometry. The animations of hitting enemies and being hit don't feel impactful, they feel muddy. You cannot buffer dodges or blocks in hitstun, meaning to block attack strings you have to mash the input to make sure you don't immediately die to a blender. I took a break from the game after being caught in the middle of an open room by a small spider, "cornered" by a small standing torch and an ankle-high portion of a ramp, unable to roll past their small body nor stunlock them with a quick string of melee ranged spells. This had been the last jank straw that broke me. Today I came back to give it another try, and started making some attempts at a stone soldier boss fight in an open room. The fight felt muddy and awkward, and after failing an attempt by being killed by the *startup* animation of one of his sword swings I decided that was enough for me. If you don't mind the jank there's a great game here. I just can't.

A very ambitious Action RPG, focused on magic and spell casting with lots of items, content and areas to explore.

Hey dev, hope you see this. I was absolutely obsessed with your game. It is such a masterpiece and it is wild to me that it sits at mixed right now. I loved that you leaned into a mage playthrough and it WORKED. Not being too easy or hard, and having to rpg/customize your approach to certain areas. Really incentivizing you to explore all the spell trees rather than just sticking to a few favorites. I was constantly in awe of the scale of the world and art direction despite obviously being indie. It was hard to fathom how one guy put it all together. I also think you did an amazing job recreating the dark souls 1 approach that is so abandoned by many souls games these days (areas looping on themselves). Some feedback, since I know you often asked for it on forums/reddit. I'm really excited for the sequel, but with me hearing it is going to have fleshed out melee content I do hope that you keep the series magic first identity and that melee is in most builds, a supplement. For example, it could be used to restore mana kind of like the manaless burst spell in each skill tree. There are more soulslikes each day that focus on crunchy melee content. Feedback - I hope you stick to using perfect blacks it made the game beautiful on OLED screens, even if I know so many people wined about it in reviews (magelight to be fair I didn't get access to until right before the last boss). Some areas got a little too confusing for their own good (notably too many exits in and around the castle area). I didn't love the platformy stuff toward endgame (dritholith, light lake). I think the endgame would have been more rewarding leaning into unique combat challenges for this area. Also the gimmick boss nature of the dritholith wasn't so fun. Idk what the control scheme is like for the new game...but I always wished on controller we could have more than 4 quick access... 8 if we used both triggers. Just overall was so glad I gave this game a try. Kudos to you. An absolutely incredible journey.

Played for a little bit, here's my general impressions: 1. The UI is atrocious. I'm sick of black backgrounds with some vaguely fantasy ALL CAPS white text. Not only that, the UI is hot garbage with a controller. As in, you cannot select an option in the settings hot garbage. 2. The enemy attacks are really strange. They run up to you all like "ooooh I'm gonna getcha" and then they their attack comes out within a couple of frames. It's not a huge deal since the parry timing is fairly generous, but yeah. 3. FOR THE LOVE OF ♥♥♥♥. And this goes to any developer of a melee combat game where lock-on is a feature. If an enemy walks up to you, TILT THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CAMERA UPWARDS SO THAT THE PLAYER CAN SEE WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥ IS GOING ON. This goes doubly so for this game where there are spell effects out the ass. 4. The combat is okay. Floaty, janky, but I can live with it. The hit stun effects could be improved here. 5. I like the level design. Feels reminiscent of of the Demon's Souls/Dark Souls era. Couple other things that irk me - the "settings" are laughable. You got your typical UE post-processing garbage that tries to mask the horrid visuals and you have to go fiddling with `.ini` files in order to fix this. Also why is the lighting so overblown? The dynamic range needs to be reigned in a little here. All told it's a very promising game but I don't think it's worth more than €20. Perhaps if the devs fix the UI, the settings, and other little grievances this could become a little cult classic.

Yeah its bad... was very hyped for this game did some research into it and finally decided to get it. Extremely janky, laggy, freezes constantly. Combat is the worst part claims to be souls like but combat feels like an old point and click MMORPG, no lock on and the ranged attack randomly shoots different places its just not good do not buy this game.

The lack of a map and online community make the game unplayable. I even sourced a 'sort' of map from Reddit. This thing is literally a work of art, but the diagram just proves how ridiculous the level design is. I have been playing for hours and encountered 1 boss. The game could have been very good, but you simply end up walking around in circles. I am gutted, because I thought this game would be brilliant - it is ruined by the lack of basic fundamentals for game of this genre. If I could get a refund I would, but sadly, I do not qualify. This is coming from someone who has completed, and pumped hours into, all the 'proper' souls-likes out there.

The lower budget 3d visuals actually give this game a very unique vibe, like a cartoon from a parallel reality. I found it challenging but really wanted to keep trying to beat the level. It's pretty good and it's a breath of fresh air that you're not a sword-swinging warrior for once.