Forsaken Spire Reviews

pretty cool

Either something about the controls needs to drastically change, or the devs need to put some explanation of how the controls work in-game. As it stands, I genuinely don't think the interactions shown in the trailer are possible. It seems you need to make sure your "fingers" in game need to be on opposite sides of an object and you need to squeeze the controller (on Index grip with your fingers and push on anything on the face with your thumb), but no matter what the fingers just slowly slip off the object. Or not so slowly. Trying to climb a vertical ridge is a guaranteed trip back to the bottom. The little bit at the start of the trailer where they grab a token and throw it into that bowl? That was actually [i]hard[/i]. Picking up an object shouldn't be hard. It's frustrating, because this game has a lot of potential. The concept for the grip system is interesting and unique, just not tuned right. The procedural towers are very cool, and I desperately want to explore them.

After getting used to the controls i had a lot of fun climbing the different towers available and i would recommend this game to anyone with a VR headset.

I found controls to be pretty disastrous (HTC Vive), others don't seen to have complained yet though. I had high hopes for this, thought it looked pretty fantastical, but basically I can't control the little bu&&er. Seem to be 2 sorts of action a pull (without button press) and a grip with trigger - neither are guaranteed to fix you in place - so you're constantly slipping and sliding away from your current position. Also you often find yourself sinking into the ground (reset camera/height does not resolve). Sometimes a hand won't detach as well, leaving you frustratingly stuck thrashing about. Having to slap-drag, grip the ground to move along particularly when going downwards (stairs, sand dune) is tedious. Particularly as each move seems to see you slip back a bit. No idea how the dev(s) have managed to perform that jump and grab onto a vertical bar and hold on, I can't grab one whilst (standing/slipping off) on a box below it. To me 3 things need to be fixed - the slap-drag and grip need to be more predictable - a grab is a grab, not this weak buttered fingered thing, standing has character fixed in one place and not slipping and sliding and some locomotion option for flat ground, moving downwards.

I see a lot of potential here but I found climbing certain things to be too unintuitive to actually beat a single level (like, am I supposed to be able to climb the poles? If so, how?). The physics-based climbing does make for some more cerebral wall-scaling compared to other games, which is neat, but it also means your fingers can get awkwardly stuck on more complicated geometry until you wiggle them out. Lack of snap-turning also potentially makes the game inaccessible depending on your setup.

Edit : I have played it for 5 hours now and I my opinion is still the same as it was before. Climbing works differently than you might have played before such as in The climb or Climby, instead of selected grab points your hands are Physics driven, you have three floating finger ends (like Rayman) and a palm you need to use your grip to hold on to objects. The game is procedurally generated so each tower is different, there are no check points so if you fall you need to climb from where ever you land. it plays a bit like Getting over it but in VR The environments are simple looking but stylized in a way that I think looks nice, I have notice some small performance hitches which are unexcepted for fidelity level. For the $12 I played in my local currency I really recommend the game especally if you like Climbing games but you might want to make sure you have some good VR legs first Since this is still in Early access some suggestions for the devs from me would be to add some more music to the game and maybe an option to control the tower height (and allow tall towers) maybe some incentives for reaching to top (like a trophy modeled after the tower they just climbed or somthing.