Разработчик: Pathless Games
Описание
Face merciless gameplay to explore a cursed castle, discover the dark tales of its inhabitants, and kill the gods of a decaying world. Eternal Return combines retro graphics and old-school mechanics with modern nonlinear level design and storytelling.
Survive to Explore
Slow pacing combined with tight yet unconvential controls builds stress, tension, and horror during gameplay, rather than taking a hack & slash approach. Players build their health, stamina, and arsenal up from nothing - and earn points by killing enemies to use special weapons to fight their way to the next shortcut.
Discover a Story
Speak to NPCs, find written messages, muse over paintings, and explore story-filled architecture to learn or infer the forgotten tales of the crumbling castle and its fading inhabitants - including yourself.
Features:
- Starting with 1 health and 1 stamina to be built up by exploring for upgrades
- Stamina management-combat
- Unique controls for toe-to-toe combat
- No Air controls! (How do they do that, anyway?)
- Realistically-paced attacks for strategy rather than spamming
- 3 primary and 3 secondary weapons
- Gathering points to use secondary weapons
- Returning to your place of death to recover points
- Looping level design around only one central checkpoint with unlockable in-universe fast travel for great immersion
- Locked doors and optional secret areas
- Hardcore areas with invisible enemies and other crazy challenges
- Secret healing checkpoints to help further your exploration
- 9 NPCs with voice acting and subtitles
- 20 Levels
- 13 Bosses
- 50+ unique enemy types
- Discover phonographs to find the game's soundtrack
- 64 colors!
- Philosophy!
- So many jars and barrels that need smashing.
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- OS *: WINDOWS XP / WINDOWS VISTA / WINDOWS 7 / WINDOWS 8 / WINDOWS 10
- Processor: 2 GHz Intel Core 7
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel HD 530
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Mac
- OS: OS X 10.6 or greater
- Processor: 2 GHz Intel Core i7
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Linux
- OS: glibc 2.15+, 32/64-bit
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz or equivalent
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: OpenGL 3.0+ support (2.1 with ARB extensions acceptable)
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Отзывы пользователей
This is a good game! Despite of some gameplay problems, this game has a very very very good story and a nice atmosphere building, it would be interesting if another version was developed in more polishedly.
The difficult gameplay is very chanllenging and I really enjoyed it.
I would really like to contribute as a developer or at least in crowdfunding.
My friend is making a video about this game! Will be released soon!
I'll not prolong myself. Sometimes we gamers and developers are not open to new experiences, we often avoid anything that isn't "player-friendly", but doing this we close ourselves to experience other kinds of emotions. Eternal return is one of those games that try to achieve something different, something that defies the norm. The lack of polishing works in its favor, creating a world that is hard even to move around. If it was the intention of the creator to create this feeling or he just accidentally did this, we may never know for sure. In my opinion, Eternal Return ask a question to us " Do we really love video games as a media for any kind of experience, or we just love to be spoon fed and gain instant gratification?"
If your answer is the first one, then you should play this game.
Best terrible game I've played in a while. The game is interesting in concept, but it's very sloppy in execution. It would be a funny parody of Castlevania, except that it isn't trying to be.
Not the most flattering pixel art.
It's true that there is no controller support, but that can be easily remedied with an additional mapper program which assigns your controller presses to keyboard strokes. It's a mild annoyance to deal with.
If you get a kick out of difficulty for it's own sake, you'll probably get a few chuckles even as you're put off by some weird AF mechanics - like your secondary weapons bouncing off enemies and hitting you in your own face. Or some funky collisions with the starting dagger where slain enemies still manage to hurt you as your stab continues to slide toward them. After you find the throwing knife and axe, killing bosses mostly becomes a matter of grinding a tad for ammo and then raining knives and axes from a safe distance.
You'll die a lot, which you're expecting if you pick up a game like this, but you're probably not expecting that they won't pay you the courtesy of giving your character a death animation. Rather the screen will unceremoniously turn black and ask you, "Exist?" Other little bits and pieces of the game feel half-baked, which really kill the mood.
I also somehow thought this game was going to be more of a randomly generated rogue-like similar to Rogue Legacy. Not sure why I thought this. It's not that kind of game.
This game encourages you to explore, which means wandering around in a perpetual maze until you wrap your way back to doors that only open from the inside. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum because you eternally return to the original starting point when you, just with shortcuts opened. Not the worst idea, perhaps, but the level design is only occasionally interesting. I stumbled around long enough in this game to run into one of the bosses, the Hell God, before I finally realized I just don't care to continue.
If you have an itch for a retro metroidvania, there are better ones on Steam. Check out Momodora or La Mulana or Cave Story (if you somehow missed it).
Good game, does a nice job of scratching the classic Metroidvania itch, and the dev genuinely cares and is involed and making ongoing tweaks and improvements. The controls are a little slow and take a bit of getting used to, but its not a big deal, and for me evokes more of the classic C64 gaming aesthetic, which is by no means bad. I think its very worth it if you enjoy exploration with a little dark atmosphere..
Eternal Return is one of the worst games I have ever played its worse then Ian's eyes, worse than Eldritch Hunter, worse than Goodnight Butcher, hell I all most say it’s worse than Kio's Adventure. Fuck at least those games were playable.
But this, fucking this. Now you see I like to beat the game first before I review it. But this game is so broken I sadly just can’t beat it.
First is the Platforming it’s so broken, movement controls are very slippery. Your character is plagued with ice-level-physics at all times,
Then there is the Jumping you don't have control in the air, it seems like the environment is designed to need at least a little air control due to platform spacing, but nope you are fucked.
Then there is the fact that you start with nothing in the game. Now I know this is a dark souls/Metroidvania like game. But here is the thing as you go through games like them, you get stronger and get new powers. But in this game, Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. ALL THE FUCKING NOPE. The only things you get are health you find or stamina, that’s about it. Combat is kind of dull too.
But the worst thing about this game is, I can see it being fun, I really can, But in this state. No way in hell. If you want a fun dark souls/Metroidvania like game you can do so much better than this rip off.
EDIT: Have now finished. Difficult!
This game is hard as hell. I haven't experienced any glitches or bugs in my time playing.
At the start I also was like 'bad movement, die too quick, enemies take a million hits to die' = poor game. All of that was wrong. I'm still not some legendary gymnast fencer, but getting experienced with hard and quick weapon swing timing plus the backstep, high jump AND LOW JUMP ('hop' in the controls) is game changing.
A very cool part of this game is how it enforces being spoiler free. There is virtually nothing out there on how win / find stuff / what the various choices you make do - the discussion forums on Steam are the best resource right now and they're not very spoilery at all.
Honestly it's just really good. I'm writing this with 11.3 hours in - I don't know if I'll put more in as I am gated by just really difficult bosses now, but the journey here, now paved with many dead npcs, was very enjoyable.
A very fine minimalistic game with gradual progression and unforgiving combat. At first it may seem impossible, the controls are a bit much to handle at first, but once you get into the game you will not be disappointed.
I was expecting a Souls-inspired platformer but this game feels like it still needs a lot of work. The controls are really floaty/slippery and this makes it really unpleasant to play. Deaths don't feel fair when you can't control your character. Physics and hitboxes seem bizarre also. The game has a retro/pixel art style, like an old NES game; but the thing with most NES games is the controls are least feel predictable and responsive.
It's disappointing because the concept of the game is great and the art and sound, voice work are also fantastic. It's reminiscent of Grimstorm, but without a polish. I hope the dev can patch the game and improve the physics/controls, then I think this would be a really good game.
Very slow and clunky game (I assume intentionally), art is okay though a little lacking, "Metroidvania" aspects are a little poor, very glitchy and unbalanced, the tutorial missed some things that I still don't know, controller support that doesn't work for movement, bad keyboard controls (in my opinion), some enemy animations make fighting them stupidly slow or "difficult", the jumping is a lot like the retro Castlvania games because you don't have control in the air, it seems like the environment is designed to need at least a little air contol due to platform spacing, ect.
It's a unique concept that was executed very poorly, it may be fixed later but for now save some money and skip this one.
I am LOVING this game! It's punishing, challenging and confusing, but it fills me with the same wonder and determination felt when playing challenging games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Castlevania 1 (all those years ago before the advent of save files).
I recognise that I've done alot of name-dropping right off the bat, but this game has a personality and atmosphere all its own. The subtle terror of what islurking at the bottom of this pit, or beyond that gate, forces me to give pause, and feel a little more unsettled than I'd like to be. The creators have done at excellent job at teasing the horrors that players may face if they persevere through the game, by making use of clever dialogue and notes sparsely dotted through the areas.
The obscure nature of everything adds to the mystery of what is really at play in this game, and just how far down the rabbit hole players will go is half the reason I keep coming back for more. It truly feels like the first accessible areas are just a thin crust covering a horrendous abyss, filled with all kinds of abberations with unexpected ways of wrecking you.
Your character looks like a weak, little monster, and the enemies really make you feel that way!
I also love how open the levels are. There is no set path, and your only guide is the difficulty of certain enemies, locked doors and how prepared you are to delve into dangerous areas. I feel like if I'm careful (and lucky), I just might be able to make it a little further into one particular area, and that feeling is exhilirating! This is what exploration in games should feel like!
It's important to know what you're getting into when starting this game. If you are expecting the fast-paced, fluid combat of the later Castlevania games, you will be disappointed. I believe that expecting tighter controls from this game is like expecting Devil May Cry combat in a Souls game. The deliberate, delayed controls force you to play carefully. Many people may be put off by the controls, and cry out for them to be patched. If this were done, the game wouldn't be what it is: a tense, ponderous labour through overwhelming challenges.
Bottom Line: This game is unforgiving, haunting and amazing.
Now, what you have to understand about this game is that it takes a generally accepted gaming genre and scenario and flips it on its head in a way you dont expect. The early level layout is something that someone like Alucard would probably be able to moonwalk his way through in its entirety in around five minutes with his only concern is having to convince the maid to work late that evening to help clean the blood of his victims off of his fancy shirt. But instead of a glorious example of stunning manhood, you get to control Dave from the mailroom. You know, Dave, that guy who probably worked out a few times a week in his thirties but now is spending his days eating reheated KFC from yesterdays dinner, head down trying to keep out of the way of HR for the last few months before his retirement? Now imagine that guy, thrown into a strange dark labrynth (that doesnt have any filing cabinets), and then hand him a three foot long pointy metal bit, and see how long he goes before he ends up split in half by a flying axe. Or lit on fire by a fireball. Or impaled by a poleaxe. Or, well, you get the idea.
The entire idea behind this, I think, is the vast crushing weight of putting an average-ish man in a hopeless situation and see how long it takes before the crazy comes home to roost. I could talk about the philosophy and reference people and things, but thats not really what this review is about, so Ill skip the academics here, and instead focus on the gameplay. Now youll see a lot of reviews saying that the controls in this game are shit. Well its not really that the controls are shit, its more that these controls remind people playing that there is no possible way they could swing a heavy sword over and over and not get tired. What the controls are is predictable. Dave swings his sword slower than a diabetic puts down a candybar, but the timing is consistent. The game rewards patience and accuracy, with a particular emphasis on understanding how enemies move and timing your plodding strikes to just squeak inbetween their swings. Not something typical in a Metrodvania, but its an atypical piece I rather enjoy.
That doesn't mean its not infuriating, however. Even with unlimited respawning, dying over an over in the same hallways to the same axe swinging armored tosser will become almost painful, and the fact that just behind that particular tosser is likely another tosser with a slightly different attack patter that youll likely die to just makes the experience more hopeless. Add to that the fact that all the enemies respan when you do, and its a recipe for your own personal hell.
All in all, I highly recommend this game, but that being said I am a bit massochistic, so read into that what you will. I think this one will be a solid example of an interesting way to remake Nintendo Hard for the new Indie generation, and I congratulate Pathless Games for paving a new road to hopelessness for many many gamers.
Recommendation: Buy. Also perhaps buy some antidepressants.
Great game so far, could use a bit of work on controller support, xbox one joystick controls wouldn't map for some reason. Also the atmosphere is pretty great.
This game plays like an old school NES game-- it also has the controls of one. If you've not gone and played an old platformer NES game recently, I would encourage you to play one to get an idea of how difficult the controls can really be on those old games. I would liken this game to the original Castlevania gameplay-wise with Dark Souls-esque theming.
This game has a very steep learning curve (cliff) and it is more (brutally) unforgiving at the beginning of the game than it is towards the end. Once you're able to locate a few heart and stamina containers (and get a solid grasp on the controls) the game is more forgiving of minor mistakes you make. Unlocking the other primary weapon and the throwing ones also help turn the tide in your favor once you find them.
Pros
+Challenging gameplay
+Good atmosphere and background/sky art
+Varied and unique environments
+Non-linear progression
+Fun and interesting bosses/mini-bosses
+Giant Snail (My favorite)
+Killable NPCs
Neutral
*Weird verbose philosphical dialogue from the NPCs.
Cons
-No checkpoints (so there are long walks back from spawn if you die)
-Some of the 'jump challenges' (especially over liquids...) were kind of ridiculously hard due to the nature of the controls (so with a lack of checkpoints-- I almost had an aneurysm a few times)
-Extremely easy to get 'lost' due to the looping and visually identical nature of some areas/rooms
-No music unless you find the phonograph for the area when you enter it. (might have been nice to have an alternate track play from the phonographs instead-- if the music played regularly)
As far as the price/value-to-gameplay/content ratio goes, its worth it. I really enjoyed this game and would get it again, but I would not recommend it to anyone but devoted masochists.
I have very mixed feelings on this one, but I'm afraid to say it's mostly negative and thus I cannot recommend it. I've been following this game for a while now, since the inspirations of Castlevania and Dark Souls, two of my favorite game series of all time, appealed to me quite a lot. Unfortunately, this game doesn't really marry the two concepts very well. I'll go down a list of point-by-point details as I go on. Please note that I'm going to be comparing the game to Castlevania or Dark Souls quite a lot, which I feel is fair given the gameplay style and its theft of assets (more on that later).
First, the positive:
+COMBAT: The combat style is a mixed bag, but it is quite interesting. Before each swing, you can hold down a direction button to dash in that direction upon the completion of the swing, allowing you to dance away or towards enemies while still attacking them. There are, however, notable flaws as well, which I'll address in the next section.
+ATMOSPHERE: While the art isn't particularly good or is downright hideous in some cases, the atmosphere presented is quite good. It takes place in a Germanic castle with plenty of grotesque scenes and undead abominations to behold. It is quite a good blend of Castlevania style gothic horror, and the foreboding isolation of Dark Souls.
+STORY: From what I've seen, this is a pretty well thought-out game. Learning more about the lore and history of the characters presented (most of which even voice acted!) was almost enough to get me to continue slogging through the game. Almost.
Now the negative...:
-COMBAT AGAIN: Interesting idea, but it is just not implemented well enough to be a net positive. The clunky style and attack delay are akin to Castlevania, but amplified by a huge degree. The attack delay is massive, forcing you to be very procedural and methodical with each attack. Not a problem on its own, but it's made incredibly frustrating by...
-CONTROLS: Opposed to the very precise and reliable attack, your movement controls are VERY slippery. Your character is plagued with ice-level-physics at all times, and you are given two different types of jumps, the velocity of which can vary WILDLY with minute differences in your current direction, speed, etc. Castlevania's clunky and precise combat style was actually benefited by the jump arc, which was consistent and predictable every time you jumped. In Eternal Return, it's hard to get a good grasp on all the variables when you hit one of the TWO jump buttons, if the character decides that he's going to jump at all. Also, as a side note, unless you change it manually, the attack button is right next to the button that causes you to commit suicide. Have fun with that one.
-ENEMY BEHAVIOR (AND DOORS): Enemies do not follow consistent rules throughout the game, changing hitboxes and patterns seemingly at random. The basic spear-holding enemies sometimes glitch out and begin spinning back and forth in place, becoming a long-distance tornado of death with no real way to approach them at random intervals. The basic shambling zombies sometimes take an extra step or two before collapsing, damaging you if you had the audacity to not use the back-step attack, and come in huge droves making the process of eliminating them VERY tedious. And God help you if you have the audacity to enter a building, since the game keeps track of the infinitely-spawning crows and vultures on the other side which WILL damage you the nanosecond you step foot outside that door with no warning or indication they might be there. All you can do is pray or swear, your pick.
ART STYLE: As a long-time consumer of Castlevania games, I found it pretty hard not to notice that a lot of the sprites are just minor edits of sprites from the NES Castlevania games. The two preacher/plague doctors near the beginning are just zombie villagers from Simon's Quest. The swordsman are taken from Castlevania III with potatoes instead of skulls. Axe Knights have a slightly different helmet, but otherwise look like their CVIII counterparts. You can actually see the CV Bloody Bones taken wholesale in one of the screenshots above. And these are just the ones I've noticed, it got me wondering what all else was taken from other games... Add to it that the sprites made (supposedly) from scratch are just absolutely hideous and poorly done. It all looks incredibly unprofessional.
-GLITCHES OH GOD GLITCHES: These could all be potentially fixed in the future, but as they stand now... JESUS. I find it a little off-putting when my character's sprite is utterly consumed by THE SKY behind him, rendering him completely invisible until I manage to get in front of a wall again. I think it's a little upsetting to find out that if you accidentally trigger a weapon spawning and are unable to reach it before you die, it is lost PERMANENTLY. It bugs me when the game's projectiles just randomly stop in place and become permanent obstacles instead of fading away like they do every other time. It... could use some work.
I really wanted to like this game, I really did, I swear. I could get past the poor sound design, the stolen art and music assets, the sometimes god-awful sprite work. I could, if only the basic game design was so poorly implemented. I want to hold out hope that this game can get better, be updated with bug fixes and maybe some tweaks to the controls, and then I could heartily recommend it. But in its current state, I can only suggest that you AVOID IT at all costs.
Ignore the downvoters, this is excellent. Just don't expect to have your hand held all the way through.
A sort of "Dark Souls, but 2D", with all the banging-your-head-against-a-brick-wall-over-that-one-boss that implies.
Controller support would be good, mind.
I can forgive the graphics but not the controls, what a waste of money. Hit the attack button 3 seconds later it'll do something. I love metroidvanian games, they are my favorite.
This needs alot of polish.
Controls feel like walking on ice all the time the character slides all over creation.
Default controls are very aquard. Cannot rebind controls.
This game begs for controler support.
Combat is clunky and slow,.
Charactor dies at the drop of a hat and it is hard to avoid enimies as you are sliding all over creation.
So yea game in current state is not one that I can reccomend.
It's like this game wants to be dark souls and a metroidvania but it fails at both.
>barely any tutorial
>unity splash screen
>assumes you can remember every single button from the input settings in the unity launcher
>controllers don't even work properly
>clunky "commit attacks" movement
>"you can jump and backstep" YEAH BUT TELL ME HOW
>keymap pops up hidden in some sewer but doesn't even explain what the buttons do
>random german text that I don't know if is intended or not
And this is a steam release, it's not the beta, it's not early access, this is a released game.
I find the game more frustrating than fun.
EDIT after the first bout of anger left me:
The problem is that it tries to pass frustrating gameplay choices for challenge.
I can understand that the dev was aiming for a challenging experience but it's just too much.
Here's some actual issues that are not due to "design choices":
- Controllers don't work properly (just the face buttons are recognized)
- Animations freak out a lot and aren't properly culled
- Tutorial is not the very first thing that happens
- Suicide button right next to attack button, seriously?
Controls are not good and def. could use a controller support. One hit your dead is not fun at all. 4 mins in and i almost broke my computer in stress after waiting for this game on my wishlist for quiet some time and left me only in sadness
An interesting idea for a "metroidvania" with decent art, stale animations and flimsy controls. Lacked basic functions using a DS4 joypad, might be because of Unity. Would recommend to wait for updates.
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Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Pathless Games |
| Платформы | Windows, Mac, Linux |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 01.02.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 52% положительных (23) |