"Alienated Land" review: The sleeping man waits for the dream

The birth of Howard Philip Lovecraft has just passed, this man of destiny in the life of more than 40 years for us to build a Cthulhu myth system of the world full of innamable things, and the Cthulhu myth has also brought a profound impact on the artistic creation of later generations, after the supplement and improvement of authors such as August Wilhelm Drees, Countless novels, movies, games and other derivative works have begun to wake up from Lalayer.

This time, "Land of Alienation" is a roguelike horizontal customs clearance action game with the background of Cthulhu mythology, produced by domestic game developer Steel Wing. The game can be clearly known from the screen style, scene construction and backstory of the production team's love for Cthulhu mythology style.

The game adopts a bleak oil painting style to draw the overall painting style and scene. In the process of your game, the ubiquitous tentacles will wriggle their heads out of the broken walls, there are always a few twinkling eyes staring at you in the dark, and various body parts and magic array of unknown meaning can be seen everywhere in the room. Different kinds of monsters will keep coming at you, and the overall atmosphere of the game is surprisingly good.

In addition to the external appearance, the core of the game also has a full Cthulhu mythology style, this game has three available characters and a hidden character, and all the cause is that the black magic capital of Cedray reappeared in the world, a researcher named Eloris has been missing for three days, the three main characters because of their own purposes into the land of alienation Sedray began to find Eloris's whereabouts, As the story of the game continues to advance, we will find that they also slowly enter a point where it is increasingly difficult to explain, and it seems that everything is starting to go wrong.

As a roguelike horizontal clearance action game, randomness and death punishment are naturally the top priority. The randomness of this game is mainly reflected in the random drop of weapons, equipment, various potions, props and attribute increase items, among which weapons and equipment have various rarity, and in addition to the characters' own skills, weapons will have a second skill. Reasonable collocation of weapons, skills, equipment and props is a very important thing in the game process, but the problem follows, because the skills and weapons are bound, which leads to the choice of weapons becomes narrow, when the weapons and skills conflict, many times there will be forced to choose the situation.

But it is commendable that the props system is very rich, from traps to bombs can be said to be everything, and the operation of props circulation is not uncommon.

There are a wide variety of potions in the game, and it can be said that most potions are random. According to the developer, the probability of positive and negative effects of potions is the same. However, it is not known whether it is due to survivor bias in the use of the game, I feel that the negative effects occupy the majority of the effects of potions. Moreover, the negative effects of the potion are very serious, and once the negative effects of the potion are drunk several times in a row, it will bring greater frustration to the player.

The action setting of the game is very rich, the four characters in the game have their own unique skills and action modes, and the setting of tumbling and dodging attacks and launching attacks will consume stamina also gives the game a hardcore atmosphere, but some characters do have a little stiff feeling in the action performance. Different kinds of weapons in the game will have different section moves and storage moves, once smooth use can play a very beautiful section, but the same problem is the above, some weapons section and storage heavy hit in the case of fluency and strike are lacking, but fortunately, the production team is very good at listening to the player's advice, This was improved in later versions of the game.

The setting of the shield is a very important point in the game battle, the game will be able to replace the shield every time you defeat the BOSS, a full page of collectible shields also makes the shield's status in this game self-evident, but different from the general game is that in the Alienated Land, as long as the direction is correct, After raising the shield, all the ordinary enemy attacks you will be defended, and the trigger mechanism of the shield is to raise the shield at the moment of the enemy attack, so the problem naturally comes, how to 100% shield?

The answer is to raise the shield frantically, if no shield is successful, but you are in the shield state when the enemy attack falls on you, so you can defend against the damage, and then it is repeated until the shield is successful. This process may sound complicated, but in practice it is only necessary to repeatedly raise the shield in the correct direction for a few seconds to reverse all ordinary enemies.

The reason for this is nothing more than the setting that all ordinary enemy attacks will be defended after the shield is raised. Generally speaking, in such games, if the shield is not raised at the moment of the enemy attack, it will not be defended, but if we stick to the setting that all ordinary enemy attacks will be defended after the shield is raised, A new solution may be needed, then, to avoid a situation of mindless maneuvering.

Of course, I think the production team will solve this problem soon, the game's action and percussion are gradually becoming more and more excellent in front of my eyes, and I just tested the enemy attack our character without feedback, but after an update, there is a significant improvement, and then the gamepad operation tips were added to the game, and the monster attack tips also began to appear. Almost every day updates let me see with the naked eye that the production team is constantly fixing various bugs and game Settings, which makes me feel that at least the attitude of the game production team is very positive.

Having said so much is not so good, now let's talk about it. Ok, another setting of the game is a very good interpretation of the Cthulhu mythology style of the game. During the game, we will have a slot called the rational slot, which is generally reduced when accepting gifts from evil gods or offending the dead. The reduction of the rational tank will bring about a reduction in the percentage of attack, defense and vision and other attributes, which can be said to be a very terrible DEBUFF state, but the vast majority of the rational reduction is not because we accept the gift of evil gods or offend the dead, but we drink the blood bottle at the time of death.

Yes, the most special setting of this game is that drinking the blood bottle will lead to a decrease in sanity, and the decrease in sanity will lead to a decrease in the percentage of your attack, defense, vision and other attributes, so that when you do not find a potion or means to restore sanity, it will form a terrible vicious circle, when your sanity is reduced to the bottom. All you can see is a circle around you, and the unknown fear will come to you, and at that moment, the game's Cthulhu really seems to wake up from Lalayer, and start to whisper to you.

To some extent, this is not a simple game, the game from the design has been staring at the difficulty of this point continues to move forward, and now just released soon, I believe that many unreasonable will eventually be swept away, if you are a horizontal version of the customs clearance action game or Cthulhu myth fans, then you really can try this game, at least you will not be disappointed.