Разработчик: Fledermaus
Описание
In The Waste Land you are the King Zyron III, ruler of all the known lands, who’s actions on a an ordinary hunting trip cause a rip in the balance of nature. Creatures mutate sending your once loyal subjects into a state of fear and it is up to you to set things right. Seek out more powerful weapons and secret items to give you an edge while exploring the vast lands in your quest to take down five giant beasts to reset the balance of nature you upset.
Features
- “Metroidvania” style open world with over 15 hours of classic gameplay
- Find and collect hidden Upgrades, Secrets and Bonuses that boost stats and abilities
- Discover 10 deadly weapons, 5 swords and 5 arrow types, imbued with unique properties such as the Battle Sword, Chain Sword and Katana as well as the Fire, Bomb and Cursed Arrows
- Slay 5 giant twisted Bosses that include a mutated slug, colossal hornet and demented whale
- Encounter colorful characters in each town you discover
- Watch the ominous moon rise each night as the skies darken and light with the Day/Night cycle
- Explore vast maps across 7 continents, each with their own challenges to overcome
Поддерживаемые языки: english, italian, german, russian
Системные требования
Windows
- OS *: Windows XP/Vista 7/8
- Processor: 1.2GHz processor
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: DirectX 9.0 compliant
- DirectX: Version 9.0c
- Storage: 50 MB available space
- Sound Card: DirectSound compliant
- OS *: Windows XP
- Processor: 1.4GHz processor or faster
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: DirectX 9.0 compliant
- DirectX: Version 9.0c
- Storage: 50 MB available space
- Sound Card: DirectSound compliant
Отзывы пользователей
Busted old game that got abandoned by it's devs and producers. Can barely manage to get the controls to work, and even then there are so many broken instant death and OP boss moments, it really doesn't make the game worth playing. Better off with a more polished Metroidvania title.
If you want something like Castlevania 2, but a little more modern, here you go. Plays a lot like a forgotten NES game, and I mean that in the best way possible.
can't even change the controls.. wow... This game feels like it was made 30 years ago, rather than being an homage to games from that era. I mean this in all the worse ways.
«The Waste Land» most likely «The Waste of my Time». This is a real «Simon's Quest» metroidvania. You never know where to go, and the NPC's always saying something nonsense. I spent 3 hours on exploration of multiple similar looking locations in the first region and all of this time I was listening same monotonous endless soundtrack loop that really starts to get annoying after only 5-10 minutes. Every enemy in this game simply inhibit your movement. There is no EXP or GOLD, but they can drop items that taking away your health, which means there is tottaly no sence to killing them! Isn't it fun? The technical part of the game (controls, hitboxes etc.) is poorly made and hasn't been improved over the years. There is also easily recognizable redrawn character sprites from other games, such as Julius Belmont from the «Dawn of Sorrow».
Tags: Platformer - Metroidvania
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library
TLDR: Flat boring levels. Assets are constantly the same and level design is almost always flat land with a bunch of critters around making every level look and feel the same. Gets disorienting fast and the plot is not good at keeping you on the rails towards progression. Dont waste your time
Decent work on the animation and the custom sprites. The early plot hook is well done but the story quickly falls flat on its face after the initial scene. You are then left going through screen after screen of flat levels with varied corrupted wildlife harrassing you all the way. Combat is floaty and unsatisfying. Mostly melee with short range and odd hitboxes. Some of the assets were of clearly lower quality, such as the pink/violet CGA trees and the brown butterflies blending in with the brown backgrounds for example. The sound also loops quite a fair bit. The game does not save but has checkpoints you can activate. There were also odd things happening such as monsters dropping loot that then harmed you if you touched it.
Conclusion: Between the crummy level design, quickly derailed plot, floaty combat, broken loot system, lack of minimap and bunch of padding/filler levels and a small loop for a song, you quickly tire and never want to play this again. Only consider if you are a hardore retro metroidvania fan and need more content.
Another review says the follwing about this game: '[...]if you were a fan of old metroidvanias, you will like this game'. In a way, they get it right, but also wrong. I definitely was a fan of them long ago(twenty or so years), but it takes a lot of charm for me to like games that capture too many of the elements that I hate about the games from my childhood.
I really wanted to like this game(paid full price; Engl. nerd), but it was 'meh'. I can deal with games that emulate the feel of fourth generation console games(slightly sluggish controls make timing essential, etc, etc), but this game didn't do it for me. I recall the enemies being particularly unimpressive. I guess that about sums up my experience with this game: unimpressive and lacking charm.
If I was stuck somewhere where could sit in idle thought or play this game, I'm sure that I'd enjoy playing it after tiring of idle thought.
I wanted to like this game so bad, but there isn't even the courtesy of a game over screen. If you die you literally have to exit to the main menu. Can't program a reset button? Really?
For me this game is very reminiscant of the games I would play on the Spectrum or early Nintees pc. Games that didn't hold my hand to get me through the game but made me think about how to get through an area. I'll admit that I have gotten to a point (Fighting the whale) and after many trys have gotten a bit frustrated. But in all honesty I think I have overreached and need to explore a bit more and find something! The game has dark tones but the fodder design (Killing Giant Slugs and Tortoise) is a bit lame!
I Bought this around the same time as I bought Shovel Knight and have had coversations about which is better and my argument has always been that even though they are both good, it's like comparing Mario to Castlvania 2 Simons Quest!
If you like games and gaming you may like this! If you are a Gamer and want a Pre Metroidvania style challenge I'd recommed this!
I can only recommend this to people who are smitten with the art style and the Eliot/Fraser allusions and who also loved the stiffness of the early Castlevanias so much that you'd play a game that chose to impose that limitation on itself.
For me at least, a Metroidvania comes down to rhythm, and this does not leave room for rhythm. Combat is largely a jumping straight up in the air, seeing if an enemy enters the range of your sword, maybe scoring a hit, then repositioning and jumping straight up in the air. An initial frustration with the tiny hit area of your starting weapon gives way to boredom once you learn the patterns of the three or four enemy types (in the opening stages), at which point everything becomes a slog.
A perfect example: There is this terrifying, gigantic fire-breathing zombie dog that is maybe seven or eight times the size of your character. You walk up to and go "oh man, I am gonna get wrecked by that." After one such encounter, you will have discovered the completely foolproof strategy for defeating it, which is to stand perfectly still and mash the stab button in order to stun lock it until you hit five times. (This does not take precise timing, and because of invincibility frames, this takes a solid four or five seconds. That sounds like a ridiculous complaint, but the time spent standing there just ruins any sense of fluidity or rhythm.)
It's one thing to ask you to grind through enemies that are more annoying than challenging, but there doesn't seem to be any reason behind the grind. There's no experience or money or anything like that. The only thing that enemies drop is food that restores HP that you lost to other enemies you didn't have any reason to fight. They're just an impediment, which is so much worst in an exploration-heavy game that has you clearing the same screens several times in order to make progress.
Oh and the music that plays through the opening areas is just awful and repetitive and somehow both droning and intrusive, yet it goes on forever without variation.
Again, gorgeous game. Lots of beautiful grace notes (there's a brief character moment in the cathedral that isn't to be missed), and maybe for you there's an 8-bit nostalgia factor. I wish I wanted to finish this.
This is the first time I have ever written a negative review. The game is just that bad.
I mean I was trying to overlook its glaring weaknesses - the repetitive soundtrack (eight 30-second loops that get old really fast). The fact that you can't mute the music. The worst writing I've seen in a game. The massive areas that had nothing but hordes of boring enemies you have no incentive to fight. The "exploration" aspect that most of the time ended you in massive enemy-filled dead-end. After all, this is an indie game and the core combat was somewhat solid.
And then I reached the end. And in the end there was a boss. And I just realised - hey, at a certain point of development the dev thought that fighting this guy would be fun experience. And that moment he lost all credibility in my eyes.
Without spoiling anything - it's a luck mission. He has means to draw out the fight almost indefinitely, attacks without any delay or setup and in his second phase he can punish you for attacking him regardless of your actions - basically attack him and get randomly hit for massive damage.
Overall the game has not been fun experience and I've played for 8 hours just out of some perverted curiosity.
I love Metroidvanias. Probably my favorite genre. Couldn't play this for more than an hour because of the one audio track that constantly plays.
I can deal with the random drops sometimes being posiononous (and even killing you), brutal difficulty, repetive enemies, fall damage that just KILLS you (never seen that in this genre before, probably because it is obnoxious), terrible jump mechanics (if you press down while mid-air you just drop like a stone), and sluggish controls, but I just cannot deal with that one audio track. I find it kind of funny considering how good the title audio track is.
Realy glad I bought this on sale because there is a very good chance I will not be loading this again. Absolutely would not reccomend. It's not even so bad it's good, it's just bad.
I believe this is a unique and atmospheric adventure. The unusual but effective music sets up a somber and dead serious tone. The world in which this game takes place is meant to be bleak. I believe it shares some common traits with Castlevania 2, such as towns and the overall adventure aspect. As a lifelong gamer, I have a preference for pixel art and bit-mapped games. This game definitely targets the nostalgic segment of players who prefer the old vs the new. I am very thankful for the indie revolution in gaming, without it we wouldn't see games like this. It may not be for everyone, but I thought this was a unique and atmospheric effort.
A terrible game developed by an obnoxious jerk. I was the first player to write a negative Steam review of The Waste Land (in September of 2014). My review was sincerely critical of the game's glaring flaws, and the Italian developer, Fledermaus, had his friends in Italy follow and attack me everywhere they could on Steam for about a month.
When I posted my original review, within one day my review was swamped with about a dozen childish insults written in broken English by various degenerates living in Italy. Sure enough, these were Fledermaus's lackeys coming to aid him. In the first 24-hour period, my Steam review of The Wasteland had 19 downvotes, 2 upvotes, and comments like "Gues ur wrong!", "If it is bad why is youre review so hated.", "Try righting a rel review."
It didn't stop there. Almost daily I was getting harassed with insults from random Italians on my public Steam profile. I got fed up with the attention, so I took the review down, especially seeing as how the indie game was already an enormous financial failure.
Comments still trickled in on my profile for a couple days, with stuff like "Why you take the review down?", "Upset cuz your review suks?" before finally stopping.
Hopefully next time Fledermaus makes a game, he will focus less on attacking his customers, and focus more on making a fun game.
==THE NEW REVIEW==
The Waste Land is an awful game that should not be played. I spent over 12 hours in The Waste Land, wasting my time 100%'ing the game just to dispel any notion that I misunderstood the game. Never have I been so bored exploring a metroid-style game. The environments are unnecessarily gigantic and empty. The whole game world takes about 40-minutes to traverse end-to-end, and yet it still feels stripped of content. The monsters sprinkled across the game are pathetic and easy to avoid, and the lack of any coherent level design makes the whole game feel like a bloated, disorganized mess. The only aspect of the game that is not horribly inadequate is the outdoor visual design. Unfortunately, the crudely drawn enemy sprites negate the effect that the environment backgrounds create.
I would also like to point out that the game contains random acts of sex, prostitution, nudity, and implied rape. In the game world, you are the king of the land, and you are entitled to free sex in any of this sad kingdom's brothels. This is all offered without any context or reason, so it comes across as randomly shoved into the game as poor fan-service. The girls aren't even pretty.
I recommend the game when it's cheap. It has some great atmosphere, with dashes of Vampire Hunter D and Miyazaki's Nausicaa, but it gets really tiresome in spots. The problem is that there is too much featureless open space (save the cool background graphics) between location nodes and no fast travel, so you walk and walk and walk and walk before you get to the next important quest -- and lord help you if you get off of the beaten path! It may take nearly an hour to get back on the right track again.
The story is pretty cool, though, and most of the boss battles are pretty neat. Developer Fledermaus obviously has no problem whatsoever cooking up great game assets or scenarios; they just need to concentrate on improving their level design. If they keep that in mind for their next game, It is sure to be an unqualified winner.
(Interestingly enough, though many parts of the game were tryingly tedious when I just simply sat on the couch and played, my one-hour stationary bike sessions blazed by ultra-quick, quicker than when I play more exciting games. Yeah, a real funny feeling of time dilation . . . Maybe I felt like I was pedaling through those monster-infested wastes with the guy, eh?)
This game is a love or hate work. And I say work, because the work put into it by only one man is anything but unnoticeable. Made with lots of heart and dedication, very very well drawn pixel design. Now this game is a love letter to old games. But do you know old games? Many sucked! Many had poor level design, poor gameplay, poor difficulty curve... but we still played these as kids, because that was all we knew, and thought it was great! This game is about that. It is not just "a la metroid" with modern gameplay or revamped level design. No. It IS oldschool content in EVERYTHING. I hate arty movies that try themselves in black and white or in silent mode, but with all the rest that looks fake and new, "because it is modern times". This developer here thought of doing an old game, like old game. And that's it. Plus, he enjoyed Eliot and his tale, and it is true that the atmosphere in this game IS unique, and peculiar. Objective definitely successful, I would say. You have to understand all these to enjoy that game. As a video game in modern terms, I would not recommend that game because it is not good. Gameplay and level designs are mediocre. And I do not care if it is intentional or not. All I see is the final product, which I decided to take as a work in shape of a love letter to old games, period. In that, it is a very nice experience. Do recommend this experience. Looking forward to see more works from this man if only it can be improved.
Very fun and moody metroidvania. Huge world and a deep sense of exploration and discovery and nintendo-hard gameplay.
The most similar game I can think of is probably Castlevania 2 on the NES, only better and in a world that feels much bigger. Get it only if you are a true retrogamer and like that kind of gameplay, you aren't going to be disappointed.
An 8 bit Metroidvania with a massive world, but rough around the edges and monotonous.
Pros:
No hand holding.
Massive interconnected map mostly open from the get go.
Great Nes castelvanina aesthetic with a day and night cycle.
Huge Bosses.
Cons:
Focuses too much on combat, with few environmental or platforming puzzles. You mostly go from point A to point B or die trying.
All upgrades bar 2 are damage and life upgrades.
Enemy variety a tad too low.
Late game there are no incentives to fight enemies as they drop no money nor experience (While that negates any form of grinding it is still an issue).
Some bugs, mostly benign (crashed twice, music disappeared rarely).
Hyper Subjective Notes:
I wish there were more music tracks in the game (there are about 8 tracks).
Tackling bosses under equipped can be a very very long slog.
The final boss was underwhelming.
Some limited form of fast travel might have been nice, mainly to search for secrets in a swifter manner (or to negate pointless enemy encounters late game as mentioned above).
Sparse writing was better than expected.
Who Should Get It:
Fans of 8 bit 2d action RPGs such as Castlevania 2, Zelda 2, Faxanadu or Clash at Demon Head, as this game emulates and surpasses all those titles in some ways. Other buyers need ask themselves whether they prize exploration above all elements of a game, as travesing the massive 8 bit world is The Waste Land's best feature, not its secrets nor its combat.
7.5
Great game, crafted with a lot of love and perfect recreation of what made 1st gen metroidvanias so fun back in the day. This game plays well and has a great atmosphere, plenty of exploring and gearing and period perfect music. Highly recommended.
It's basically a less linear Castlevania 2 with better controls and no grinding for money. Tries to be artsy or something. You literally go on a sidequest up your own colon halfway through. The final boss is the sole difficulty spike.
I was a bit skeptic on this game after reading few reviews that said it is boring as a metroidvania, i was born in the early 80's so i know what they are talking about, but i bought it and tried it myself and i have to admit that despite its limits, (no markets in the city, the power ups are limited to health boosts, a pair of boots and weapons) is a good game, it gave me the right amount of nostalgic feelings and i had my dose of fun, i can't understand the people complaining about many screens being fillers because i don't find it boring at all, maybe a bit repetitive but i'm used to this sort of games and stands upon its aspects. I'm still at the beginning, just beated boss 1, the giant worm, but i'm looking forward to complete this game, the only aspect i didn't like much is the difficulty in finding spawn points after the first boss, for example if I need to quit the game, because i'm suddenly busy, i loose all my progresses as i should spend 30-40 minutes around the map finding a spawn point to save the game. In any case it's a good title, worth the cash it costs.
This game is pushing nostalgia buttons that I wasn't even aware I had. I don't remember playing this in the '80s nor have I read the poem. Whoever dug this up, good show!
The 8-bit yet sophisticated graphics, dark and purposeful palette, chiptune music, mature and frightening enemy design, and cryptic and quirky dialogue show the developer's intimacy with that era's games that most "retro" games miss. It very much plays like an adult oriented NES Castlevania, Star Wars, or Battle of Olympus minus the screen flickering of those old cartridges.
People who need constant direction and rewards will be turned off that you need to do a lot of exploring on your own and each swing of your weapon doesn't bestoy you with xp or loot. The upgrades are static and required to progress to new areas like in Metroid. There's no xp or random gear loot, just rotten meat that will hurt you for even expecting such things.
I played past the first of five world bosses and will be playing this game to completion and I can already recommend it for anyone who wanted more from those days.
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Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Fledermaus |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 19.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 44% положительных (52) |