Those Who Came: Healing Solarus

"Those who Came" is a beautiful team co-op non-combat-based action rpg for 2 to 7 players. When entering any game, the first thing I do is turn off music, voices and all other sounds. I do not want to be presented with claims of copyright infringement on sounds if I want to record a video of me playing computer games. So I don't want to rate the sound design of computer games. Someday I will sue all the publishers of computer games and record companies that violate the right of players to play computer games and stream with the sound on. I'm kidding. I'm not a music lover. But in some games, muted sound can cost the hero's life. Recording your gameplay and posting to youtube is helpful. For example, I wanted to play the game again, the name of which I forgot. I was tormented. Then I found it. Played. And I would go and look on my channel and find out the name. I advise everyone to start their own channel and publish their gameplay on it. The game "Those who Came" reminded me of an mmo game. I don't remember the name. And to look for laziness. There you need to run on an alien planet. Kill monsters and other players. Install equipment for resource extraction. Protect drilling rigs from groups of monsters. This is called fulfilling contracts. The more contracts you complete during a match, the better. In the game "Those who Came" I did not like the fact that you have to jump on the rocks hanging in the air. You can fall into the abyss. And below there is some kind of slurry or magma that looks dangerous to health. But many people like it. There is a whole genre of games, mainly 2d, in which the whole gameplay is built on jumping over rocks hanging in the air or jumping over chasms. In the game, I used a keyboard, mouse and EXEQ Destroyer controller.

Game has a lot of potential, healing the map feels satisfying especially if you play with friends. I hope they add more content in the future.

It's a great game! Even you can heal planet earth at the end!

Those Who Came is an ambitious exploration game with puzzle elements. It features vast, open-world style levels and gives the players one of four different powers to explore them. I believe it's a pretty interesting concept, but too ambitious for a smaller studio without experience in open world games. Perhaps the biggest problems is that the world doesn't feel fun to traverse. The powers are varid, one's a jetpack, one allows you to phase through doors and a third lets you move blocks. They have the potential to let the players solve the same puzzle in different and interesting ways, but due to the open-world design most of the time you can simply platform your way up. And it doesn't help that the jetpack is primarely used to skip difficult platforming bits. The game used to feature gathering and crafting in the beta, but has moved away from that for the full release which I think was a smart move. It already tries to do so many things, and it is wiser to hone in and try to perfect what you have than to stretch too thin. There are a few minigame puzzles when opening certain doors or healing plants which help to vary up the gameplay, but they are more akin to palate cleansers than anything that truly challenges you. You will also be assaulted by a variety of hostile elements and enemies while exploring such as spikes, poisonous terrain, and pockets of high-gravity, tentacles and little rat creatures that charge after you. While the inclusion of these different elements make the game more challenging they could use a lot more refinement as they often feel unfair or don't prove a threat at all. The spikes do a lot of damage but can be bypassed with the jetpack while the poison damages you even if you're high above the purple grass which seems to emit it. This could be an intentional decision to make the jetpack less of an obvious best choice in most circumstances but it does make it difficult to know what you are taking damage from at times. The tentacles hit anything around them hard and very fast, so frequently in fact that you cannot properly avoid them from some angles. Finally the rats all seem to aggro one player and chase after them endlessly. While playing with a friend, the rats would all follow him or me and completely ignore the other player. Since there is no way to fight back and no dodging function, you simply want to run as far away as possible from all enemies. Quests feel very simple in design which isn't necessarely a bad thing if the core gameplay loop is fun and engaging, but I believe they could use a bit more variety here. There was also one questline that saw me going up and down a mountain to talk to the same NPC multiple times in a row. Climbing the mountain the first time was kind of fun, but by the third time it felt like a chore. It also seemed pretty strange from a thematic sense that highly technological lifeforms who have perfected space-travel don't have access to anything akin to cellphones for long-distance communication, but maybe I missed something there. Things like enemy AI and cooldown timers for tentacles can be fixed in upcoming patches but there are other fundamental problems with the game that aren't as easy to solve; such as levels feeling rather empty or not taking full advantage of your energies. The game also suffers from performance issues even on my GTX3060, Ryzen9 setup, so it could use a lot of optimization work. Thankfully the devs are still putting out patches to improve performance, but it is no longer in early-access so we have to treat it as a full release. I wish the developers the best of luck and I found it pretty impressive as a proof of concept from a small indie team, but as a game I unfortunately cannot recommend it in its current state.

I'm really looking forward to see where this concept is leading. I like this games because it's comfortable to play alone, a lot to do and to explore. Also great to play with friends. Perfect game for a chill game night ♥

Playing this game with a couple of colleagues has been fun, although there are bugs to fix and things to polish. More content in the future would also be appreciated.

Juego que apuesta por el modo cooperativo de hasta 4 jugadores, muy entretenido, con varios acertijos en los que hay que cooperar, con un sistema de habilidades novedoso. Juego ideal para los amantes de la temática del espacio. Un juego que te puede dar horas de diversión.

Developed and published by ROLLDBOX GAMES, Those Who Came is an Early Access game which in its current state cannot be recommended. its claims to be an RPG but reality it plays as platformer with puzzle elements. Whilst I commend and support the concept of a cooperative non-combat-based game its implementation leaves much to be desired, before I continue I will disclose I received the key for free after been approached by ROLLDBOX GAMES. I actually declined the key initially due to the games multiplayer focus and my own limited schedule causing me to be uncertain if I could film a feedback video but after receiving a key regardless and then four further email reminders when I didn’t use the key I finally found time to experiment with the games Early Access. [h1]Story [/h1] The concept behind the game is sound, a group of refugees from a destroyed planet discovering a new dying world then working alongside its inhabitants to try and save it so that they may live together. Other than cutscenes the mission descriptions and several characters dialogues are main source of any story telling however its very easy to have characters interrupt each other and with no way to review dialogue or objectives this becomes a problem for both story and progression. The game also seems to be uncertain in its identity, its a scifi setting but the characters abilities are ‘Magic’ rather than technology focused. This alongside many hand waved plot holes in the current story only serves to undermine the experience. [h1]Presentation[/h1] To put it bluntly the game constantly invoked memories of Deus Ex Invisible War (2004) as in how certain visual effects are achieved, obviously the character models and shading are superior but the clunky, crude area design overfilled with items or nonsensical placement, clunky HUD and overly present variety of lighting effects that cause a visual mess are very reminiscent of early 2000s design. The model and texture quality varied considerably and the NPCs were lifeless and robotic in their movements often misplaced with whatever they are interacting with. The music quality is decent and inoffensive, very suitable for its role bot most people will have no recollection of it the second the game turns off. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] Mechanically the game is a broken buggy mess, I had to reset the game twice just attempting to get the tutorial mission to work, object interaction wasn’t always clear and the landscape is littered with inescapable holes or invisible walls due to janky hitboxes. The games main progression is via various mission which can be selected in any order as well as an exploration mode, from what I’ve seen these usually consist of platforming puzzles on the way from point a to point b following a beacon. In all honesty with the lack of movement options combined with the large cluttered landscape makes the general gameplay a chore and exploration unrewarding. Each player can equip a very basic power such as gliding or light/melting obstacles at stations in the hub or around the map so its beneficial to have multiple players with a variety of powers in order to have maximum versatility. It should also be noted that powers have limited uses and take some time to recharge, this makes mistake or experimentation extremely tedious and punishing. Finally to prevent players from roaming too far in the early game certain areas have properties that require certain equipment to be crafted in order to progress through them. As previously mentioned its very easy to have characters interrupt each other and with no way to review dialogue or objectives this becomes a problem for both story and progression. I’ve had several instances where the objective also simply don’t work or I’ve gotten trapped in the landscape. However overall its a combination of its design and not the bugs that make the game a mediocre experience. [b] Pros: [/b] - Interesting concept. - Music is pretty decent. [b] Cons: [/b] - Plot holes and Genre Confusion. - Gameplay grows very tedious and repetitive due to basic abilities limited to one per player. - Area design is a sprawling cluttered mess that is slow to navigate through due to limited movement options and bad hit boxes. Also its easy to become trapped. - Achievements require other players - Lots of game breaking glitches throughout the game. - No Control options - Is not suitable for solo play at all even when its present as an option. - Far too expensive in its current state Video gameplay (Available December 2021): https://youtu.be/qL7hLxfV4Yo https://youtu.be/IB4b3CwQVmw