Grim Trials

First, I was quite familiar with the local Indonesian developer "Glory Jam," having played and thoroughly enjoyed even unlocking 100% of the achievements for their previous title "Hello Goodboy" which featured a beautiful art style and a simple yet unique story. Additionally, one of their game testers, @fabahrulous (@playerdua), recommended Glory Jam's upcoming project, "Grim Trials" which draws inspiration from action roguelikes like the Hades series. Combat is fast-paced, featuring a mix of melee (hack) and ranged (blast) attacks, all set to a heavy metal soundtrack that intensifies the in-game atmosphere. Weapon and Gear Customization, The game's roguelite elements center on flexible build experimentation, allowing players to freely modify weapons and Avelin’s combat mechanics to suit their individual playstyles. Academy Exploration & Social Hub, Beyond the dungeon-crawling action, the game features narrative interactions within the Academy; players can build relationships with fellow Reapers and mentors to unlock backstory sequences.

Short and sweet roguelite with a gearing/crafting twist. Your quest is to defeat 7 sinful souls spread across 4 worlds/biomes. I completed the game to 100% (minus the skill tree) in 9 hours and 40 minutes of in-game time. Don't worry about crafting, the game respects your time. There's a QTE minigame whenever you craft gear. Nail every prompt and you'll create a mastercrafted item. Miss a few (or all of them) and you'll receive a weaker version instead. Thankfully, you can easily reforge those items instead of crafting them from scratch, and reforging only requires one of each material. Potions are also crafted, and you can carry up to 12 at a time. I never had any issues keeping a healthy supply, as perfect QTEs usually reward you with bonus potions on top of what you crafted. There are bond mechanics and a relatively small hub area. During your trials, you'll be offered 3 blessings after clearing each room, with rooms arranged in a hexagonal layout. While the combat loop starts off as a fairly standard roguelite, it gets better as you progress. Gearing becomes increasingly important as you create strong synergies between your equipment, skill tree, and chosen blessings. I must say I didn't particularly enjoy any of the available melee weapons besides the starting Reaper Scythe. They often slowed the pace of combat, and despite experimenting with different builds, I never found them particularly rewarding. Environments become much busier later on, and you'll often be swarmed by enemies that spam ranged attacks, periodically become invulnerable, or simply dash to the other side of the map. To deal with this, I usually prioritized stun effects, melee damage bonuses, and HP restoration on kill. Those blessings eased the pressure and made close-quarters combat much more manageable. There's definitely some thought put into the melee gameplay; however... Nothing compares to ranged weapons. Every ranged weapon feels incredibly powerful, each with its own set of perks, and they can completely trivialize the game. Even though I often felt like I was cheating, the ranged combat loop is extremely satisfying. Combine blessings that let projectiles ignore environmental obstacles or split into three projectiles with a homing crossbow, and bosses simply melt. There wasn't a single boss I couldn't demolish with a ranged build. Perhaps the developer never intended the game to be particularly punishing and wanted to keep things on a smaller scale, but ranged combat completely overshadowed melee for me. This wasn't much of an issue in the first two biomes, but the swamp area convinced me to fully commit to ranged combat, as props within the environment constantly blocked my attacks while enemies kept peppering me with off-screen projectiles. Most bosses weren't particularly memorable, but I really enjoyed the final encounter. Since you enter it without any room blessings, it strips away much of your excessive temporary power and lets your chosen loadout and permanent progression do the talking. Meta progression is forgiving and fast-paced, although I still had around 15 times more skill nodes left to unlock after defeating the final boss. In that regard, fully completing the skill tree will probably add another 4–5 hours to the completion time. Overall, I don't know whether this will end up being a hidden gem once it launches, but I certainly hope it does well. It definitely deserves a chance. And don't forget to pet Breone & Nameles. [b] ★ ★ ★ 1/2 ☆ ☆ [/b] [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/theDeusExFox/curation] Please take a moment to check out my curator for more in-depth reviews [/url]