NYKRA: Before

Followed the development for a while and had really high hopes. But sadly the game crashes far to much for me to play through it. Additionally, the developer is looking to move on from this project:

https://twitter.com/ENDESGA/status/1506797384801521668

It's sucks, but understandable given their circumstance. However, the game cannot be recommended at all. It's visual and world are great, but the bugs just make it impossible to get through. Maybe next time Edg.

I have followed the entire development of this game. From a visuals standpoint, it is amazing. Absolutely stunning. Sadly, it suffers from a stupid amount of bugs. Bugs the dev knew about. It was even released with an incomplete final section.

I have loads of respect for ENDESGA, and the journey they took while developing this game, but that doesn't excuse a poor release, and next to no support for the endless bugs. I have only played an hour, and had to reset my progress 3 times. That is BEYOND frustrating.

If this game ever gets to a properly playable state, I'm sure it will be one of my favorites, but as it stands it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

This game is beautiful and has amazing visual and auditory effects, but I unfortunately can't recommend it. The mystery was intriguing, but the pacing feels rushed and the story never really coalesces into anything that makes sense. I'm not going to speculate on the game's development, but it does feel like it's missing content or at the very least, it feels like a game with a lot of unfulfilled potential for something greater.

FINAL UPDATE 12/27/21: I have "finished" this game and will be retaining my negative review, and not change it unless a major content update is made. This was mentioned before and I will mention this again: this game is not content complete. I say finished because the game ended on a glitch. This has the polish and feel of early access which is marketed as a final release of the game. This is ethically reprehensible, and I can't help but feel let down.

The writing began for the story began to diminish in quality by Chapter 3. NYKRA's bugs were amplified in the later chapters and the save system is non-existent. NYKRA has a whole lot of potential in its set-up, and there's clearly a lot of love put into it. But there's not enough polish to say this should be sold as the final product.

Overall, this game is a buyer's beware product. It lures you in with beautiful graphics, a story ready to set up, great presentation. But then once you try to finish it you are given the paradox of no end, not of the game's design but of there literally being no ending. There is no save state despite it being presented with one upon starting this game up. For note I bought this on sale, this is not a 20$ priced game despite being sold as such.

td;lr this is not a complete, polished game and is an early access game being marketed as a final product.


The following are my previous 2 reviews of NYKRA before this final review.
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Something good: This game has amazing visual effects and graphics. I was blown away by the ingenuity of the creator by what I was given. The concept is amazing, the overall game is visually beautiful and stunning. The creativity taken with the user interface was something to behold in the main menu and the pause menu.

Something bad: This game is riddled with bugs. This should have been released more as early access. I lost my save file and there is no way to skip any of the dialogue or cutscenes, leading to a protracted attempt to restore said save file to the progress. Alongside that, the only way to access other Heptaverses is to quit the game and restart.

Something to improve: The dialogue sound design is pretty off. The dialogue is much too fast and the vocalization sound bits are strung together. Instead of sounding like a smooth sentence, it sounds a bit choppy. This is not the issue, the issue is the combined with pacing of dialogue often results in meshing of sound bits. It often sounds like two different sound bits playing at the same time during dialogue.

As of 12/19/21, I'm going to give this game a thumbs up and recommend it because I've been loving what I'm seeing. I've been following the creator on twitter since launch as this game came to me in a retweet. However, the bugs seem to be a growing issue that I've been encountering.

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As of 12/24/21, I have redone my review from a thumbs up to a thumbs down. I do not recommend this game as my save files being eaten/corrupted/destroyed is such a common occurrence that I practically need to play the game in one sitting. I reached chapter 3 and the game bugged out and the save is soft-locked and unusable. This is the only bug that I can really give my note to, and so far the game-breaking bug.

The story upon further notice is definitely something I should re-address. It's a meaty, lengthy story that I can tell has a lot of thought into it. Most worldbuilding project do. However, not all worldbuilding projects have all that thought written out. This is one of them. There's so much going on between a whole dictionary for a conlang as a main menu option and books and everything, but to me it feels as if there's so much left to mystery. I was only able to reach Chapter 5 before my body crapped out and went to bed only to rediscover my save file soft-locked. Throughout all of it, I felt like I was able to gleam a lot from visual aspects but despite that, there was not a lot said and written that was also intelligible. I get the aspect of wanting to use a con-lang, even with the voice synthesis.

The overall choppiness of lore connection tells me the writing suffers from an overload of ideas that cannot match the supply of energy and writing that can match NYKRA's development. Almost too much is left to mystery, but for a solid three-four chapters I had essentially retained nothing.

Something to note, the massive punctuation errors, the most notable of which was a lack of periods. Punctuation helps convey ideas in text, which in NYKRA is essential because most characters do not convey emotion through their vocals due to the pace of dialogue all being fast and matched between characters. This is compounded by the choppiness of audio when characters are speaking, which I referred to vocal sound bits that were synthesized and subsequently strung together. Emotion, storytelling and character are essential with text dialogue, which NYKRA dropped the ball on.

Overall still giving it a try tonight and throughout next week, but my hopes are starting to diminish considering the soft-locking problem.

I was waiting for this game but didn't buy it on release. In retrospect I'm glad since I don't have much patience for bugs and such. I was almost not buying the game at all given the negative reviews but then I went with my guts and got it.

I am so glad I did.

First of all it must be noted that the developer worked on this ALL - BY - HIM/HERSELF and it took 8 years. When I read that in the latest patch notes I was stunned. As an artist myself I am always so moved to see fellow makers/dreamers/artists work hard on their projects to bring them to life and 8 years is a long damn time!

It shows motivation, patience, willingness to learn new and challenging things! And to quote Einstein: “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

The game itself is a gem, it has a few bugs (like, I can't seem to exit the game properly) but it is a lovely experience in which one must submerge, as if you are watching an intense sci-fi movie. The books lying around are my favorite thing ever as they feel written just for me, clearly they aren't and bring thus a new realization which is how universal our feelings as human beings can be.

I suggest you play it despite its flaws, which ARE being addressed by the developer. This is not some abandoned game that was in early access, took your money and ended up forgotten in the attic. This is a project born from thoughts, feelings, the desire to communicate to others what we experience in life. As any project it will end eventually, to make room for new things that will carry its artist forward but for now it is very much alive.

To Endesga, please do not stop sharing your visions. I, for one, very much love them.

I want to love this game. I really do. I have however lost 4 different save states due to corruption or the save state causing instant crashes (including after the patch to "fix save states" my save just loaded to an empty sky and upon quitting, the save is gone completely).

This game is swimming with potential, beautiful art, music, word building, but absolutely its not even close to being ready to ship to the public in terms of bugs.

NYKRA, my MAN. my buddy. where did we go wrong
from the moment we met on some random twitter post to the moment we met again when my good pal told me "this slick gms game is releasing soon lets get it" to when i actually bought you to when i realized i needed a git repository in my save folder to when not a single person alive was able to beat the game due to something that isnt exactly a crash at a certain point in the game

where did we go wrong


so heres the deal: game doesn't work for shit. not even close.
when i said i had to put a git repository in my save folder i was not joking. i went through three entire saves that got fully softlocked before giving it that treatment (git is a program that lets you backup and load backups of files on the fly)
- first planet, i die in some mines twice, it crashes, i reopen, i can no longer open my inventory (books got deleted, it crashes when loading the empty array)
- second planet, there is an arch structure near a loading zone, i jump on top of the arch for fun and the into the loading zone, im permanently in some fake debug rooms and cannot leave at all (game autosaves when entering a room)
- second planet, i go under the arch it works fine, i find the big cube, i press the button to start the big cube puzzle, i leave the room, i come back, the cube is reset and the button no longer works. cant progress
and after that i started using git. there were just as frequent softlocks, but i could undo them if they happened.

game looks fantastic, wonderful not-shader shaders, pixels are plentiful and bright, lighting is colourful. effects are fitting and sharp, music is smooth, whatever
basically none of it matters since you cant play the game for more than twenty minutes without the command line open
you keep your eyes up head down feet forward and hands in your pockets if you want to make any progression here. don't go anywhere or do anything you do not absolutely 100% have to or the game is almost certain to stop working in some way, be it picking up an empty book that bricks your inventory, a loadzone that takes you to debug mode hell, or just a plain old crash that makes you sit through the two minute wholeass startup animation.

the story of the game makes mention to how like the universe is falling apart and is structurally and fundamentally unstable and at one point the dev himself has dialogue in the game that says "yeah. its busted". and man. like monika has jack shit on this guy, no fake glitch aesthetic, no funny gifs, no Fun values, it just actually does not work at all. you just have to take it as a real avant-garde game about unfinished games or its just. a game that isn't finished.

as of writing this, not a single person has beaten nykra. there is no documentation, anecdotal or actual, of anything past a certain point in chapter six. the game "crashes" after trying to get to the next part, but here's the funny part: the game doesn't crash.
gamemaker crashes, as you will be familiar with if you've played this game, bring up a white window with an error. this "crash" fades to black over the span of a second and then closes the game, no errors at all. i had it log what it was doing to a file and there was nothing out of the ordinary. and, do correct me if i'm wrong, i believe this means that for some reason, the function game_end() or an equivalent is being intentionally called.
after five patches, the only thing that is actually unavoidable has not been patched. a version in which code is visible through the use of normal gamemaker modding tools has not been released. a substantial amount of the games' files use proprietary, unknown, formatting and compression. it is very difficult to see what is going on in nykra and when you do you are unlikely to find references to or data regarding parts past this point in the game
following this, there are rumors that the game is not complete. that only up to the sixth chapter can be played because there is no seventh chapter. like god damn man. you can delay the game a bit more if you have to but you cant do this
and i can't even believe this but i've been hearing from everywhere, apparently chapter seven is to be the final chapter??? i know this game has a thing with sevens but that is just unbelievable because chapters are super god damn short. i must have been going through them in less than 30 minutes apiece, a solid half of which is cutscenes. not to mention theres a ton of planets that look like i can do a lot more things in but can't because i don't have a key or it crashes or whatever and theres so many story things that couldnt possibly be made sense of in the length of even three more chapters and the incomplete ptaloth chart and the combat that hasnt shown up in the last hour and the bot that literally does completely nothing so far and the planet at the start i couldnt fully explore so man
man
where did we go wrong

i guess, like, play iconoclasts instead. one guy made it over i think seven by himself and for that game? it shows. same price.


edit: the game is now any%able and free
i suppose due to the latest patch being. seven. that there will be no further ones. i kinda doubt this fixes all the issues i ran into before, but i'm not gonna go n check.
also since it's free now like what did i even pay for

the ending area of the game is extraordinarily pretty just like everything else and lasts about ten seconds, just like everything else. still no combat or puzzles or anything to do with eo, you just kinda go there
if it wasn't so unstable this would be an incredible shell of a game
there's just nothing in it right now, which is a massive shame considering this is supposedly its final state

This is a wonderful game. Haven't had the time to go deep, but I have to say it is quite entrancing once you're in it. The story is great and interesting and makes me want to explore with the main character. I love the mystic flair and stepping into character - not knowing what is actually going on - is really well done. Coming from a fantasy role play background, I love to explore and get curious about what in store next. So far its a hell of a journey. Love the game play and mechanics are simple and easy. Will write more once I manage to finish the game. Awesome highly creative work Endesga! Highly recommend for a fun & wisdom laden story.

The game is really good, but unfortunately the sheer amount of bugs breaks the immersion into its world (which is very well built) and sometimes can even make it unplayable by permanently corrupting your save files :(

I really strongly suggest you either pick up Nykra right now and just not touch it for quite some time (you will enjoy it much much more this way), or put it on your wishlist, set a reminder for yourself for a couple weeks or whatever and just pick it up as soon as it gets stable


P.s. I will edit this review when I'll be able to actually finish playing the game (as of now my save got corrupted around chapter 5-6)

Work and progress review! Can't give a good review since the game is currently a bit unplayable, a lot of bugs unfortunately. Not control support at the moment tried with Dual Shock, Switch Pro & Xbox One controllers, neither recognized D-Pads only jumping and starting buttons. I will be updating once the developer pushes an update with the controller support!

Good game. Everything is pretty cool. Obviously dev is working to fix bugs which is chill. Overall very nice.

Edit: Ok, I still cannot get even 1 hour into this game without it fully crashing. Shame.

Well the game is unfortunately broken, the atmosphere is there and the gameplay is also not bad, but when I cannot even finish the game due to many bugs, it just is not fun to play.

Here are some bugs I have found, I hope this will help the developer to fix this game.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jKdG_jQyXQ4tQb03nZU4vwRw0OgA1003?usp=sharing

This game has a lot of potential.
The setup is intriguing and the characters are believable.

Unfortunately I can't recommend it right now.
I tried to look past the bugs, but they broke the experience for me.

It would have been fine if it was one or two big bugs that could be fixed soon.
But there were a lot of little things that piled up and ruined the experience.

I got softlocked 2 hours into the game. At that point I was not in the mood to replay everything again.
On top of that ive heard of other softlocks, and I really dont want to go through that again.
I would rather wait for a stable build.

I know this game is good under the surface. The charm is definitely there. But this stuff can't really be overlooked, especially when money is involved.

Great graphics and movement, but I found the writing a bit weak and the book-deleting bug annoying. I've only played the first hour and a half, so my opinion may not represent the full game.

no controller support, and game is buggy. tried to find an input setup I liked but after an hour of play I'll just get a refund. After 8 years in development I would have thought the game would have had a smoother start. If it comes up for sale after awhile and the bugs are fixed I may buy again.

Nykra seems to be my kind of game, and I'm planning on purchasing it later on. At the moment, unfortunately, the game is simply broken: I've had numerous CTDs, the book inventory gets wiped out when loading a save game and I even heard a couple of people complaining about not being able to advance.

There seems to be a great game in Nykra, but I must suggest waiting a while before buying until the issues are fixed. I honestly hope I can delete this review and write a positive one in the near future.

I don't remember when I saw the first trailer for NYKRA, but I remember the feeling while watching it. A swarm of thought and emotion, a bristling of hairs, a sense of falling in love and being heartbroken. Out of all the projects I have followed over the years, this spoke to me in a manner quite unlike the others. Something resonated on a deeply personal level and has haunted me ever since.

Now that's some highfalutin speech right there, but all I can say with certainty is as soon as I saw it had released, I was driven to purchase it.

Having played for a little over two hours, here is my current take:

Right from the outset, there is a sense of place and time. Not quite here, and not quite now. This is a story of existence, not our own, but not unlike our own.

Unseen forces shape the world and the events we will see. We are born or created as an avatar, not just for the player but also for these unknown entities. We will learn as our avatar learns, we will discover this place and time together. What is being presented is not just a story, but a mythology and cosmology of which we are a part. A way to understand the true nature of things.

This is a narrative adventure, with a story told through character interactions, recorded texts and inferred meanings. The world is detailed and full of interest, but it is alien and strange. Our character has as many questions as the player and we are both trying to figure out what is important to us. There are moments in conversations when we must literally compose a question to ask another character, and in these instances, there is only time to ask one from the many possibilities. The journey to understanding is to be a personal one.

The pixel art is gorgeous. Landscapes are surreal and melancholy. Characters are fluidly animated and rich in personality. Interiors are nicely decorated and all have a story to tell.

Sound design is incredible. There is a dynamic ambient soundtrack which ebbs and flows along with the narrative. Subtle changes in the music signal which direction and action are necessary to continue. Shifts in tempo and pitch signal story beats and dangers. All the while, the music helps to create a rich sense of cohesion. This is another world, this is an adventure, this is a wondrous, fragile and dangerous existence. Effects are likewise well designed and clever use of left and right channels make the sound much more convincing.

Levels are linear, but this is a narrative adventure and we must play through the story in a logical manner. Backtracking is seldom but you are free to explore.

As you play you will gather tools and equipment to aid you on your mission. So far I have collected a basic melee weapon and an interesting relic called EO which so far is proving mysterious.

And that's as far as I have reached. Unfortunately I encountered a bug whereby entering a room led me to an inescapable black corridor with no way back out. When I reloaded, my EO relic had changed and I am not sure whether this will impede my future progress or if it is merely a graphical glitch.

This is a labour of love, crafted by an individual over a period of eight years. Each element is designed with a singular purpose, to deliver an existential experience. The art, the music, the sound, the narrative, the character and world design, the mythos are all carefully shaped to lead the player to some destination both within the game and within themselves.

I will return to this existence soon, and am left with questions swirling in my mind. Questions not only about the game, but about the nature of things far beyond code and language.

My sincere congratulations to the developer for having created something this epic in scope and clear in execution. It will not click with everyone but for those with whom it does, they will likely have a deeply affecting and rewarding experience.

The are certainly positive components to NYKRA: the overall gameplay mechanics are well rounded, the vistas (especially for it being a pixel-art game) are impressively appealing, the story/dialog can be very compelling at times, and there's a few fun areas to explore.

However, all of that is bogged down by all of the technical problems this game is riddled with. I experienced numerous game breaking bugs, one of which currently has me hardlocked from progressing further in the game. And to make matters worse, the developers were aware of these issues but still decided to release the game in its current state. It would be different if they decided to release NYKRA into early access and charge a lower price, but asking your consumer base to pay $20 for a game that is fundamentally broken, is out of this world unreasonable.

If you are thinking about picking this up, I would wait until further patches and updates have been released.

ive been following this game for around 5 years now and i can honestly never say ive been more excited for a release date than i was for NYKRA. ive only played for a short while at the time of review but already im completely hooked. the story is immersive, the characters interesting, and the puzzles challenging enough to make me take my time, but one of the most amazing things about this game is the language ENDESGA created for it. 10 minutes into the game id already grabbed a notebook and pen so i could start translating the little notes i found around the world. of course this isnt 100% necessary in order to play the game, but after following this game for a while and seeing how much word went into it i couldnt help myself. the visual and music are incredible, and so is the technology that went into creating some of the effects in this game. if you want to support a single person developer, and experience a beautiful, and interesting foray into existentialism and vulnerability, i couldnt recommend NYKRA more. well done ENDESGA

I've been following this game for years and I'm so excited it's finally out! I got my hands on it as soon as I could and I'm so happy I did! This game is beautiful, all the way from the environment to the music to the character's witty banter. I'm so happy and I cannot wait to sit down and be able to play it all the way through!

Congrats Endesga on the release! It's crazy to me to finally be able to play this, I can't wait for what's in store! <3