Koler Reviews

After some first impressions, I think that the game is great! The combat is pretty fun and satisfying, the enemy designs are actually really cool, and the animations are well done with great readability on moves. There are a couple things I'd love to see changed in the future The soundtrack is honestly not that good, it's just a bit uninspired and all over the place, and just is not fun to listen to. Preferred to turn it off, but when I set the music volume slider to 0, the music continued, I believe that was a bug. the main menu could use a touch up to be more interesting, maybe the main character sitting on a hill overlooking a large open area with enemies? Would be neat, the main menu right now is a bit uninteresting and doesn't get you interested in the game a ton. other than that some sounds effects start to get monotonous, like the voice of the main character, (there were only like 3 sounds she can make, which is fine but she is constantly making sounds everytime you do a move so it starts to wear on you) These were really my only issues, and it's just from my first impression, even then I still found the mechanics to be really satisfying and fun, and I hope to see more come from this game in the future.

This game is a few hours of fun if you enjoy the things this game actually does and its price is about right for that. TL;DR this game plays better as a craftopia/elder scrolls "break the game for fun" game than a roguelite, if that's what you want you'll love crashing the game going after maximum damage. And now for the actual review, where I give what is essentially useless advice because what I want the game to be is likely completely different from what was originally intended. I got this game after seeing a video and thinking that this game isnt tagged correctly. The game has dodge roll, i frames and stamina management, so i think its supposed to be a roguelite. But the enemy hp scales higher and higher as you progress making combat without using "break the game" tactics too slow while infinite chaining abilities completely invalidates dodge roll because so long as you dont get oneshot any life leech will keep you at max. The bosses are fun to kill but eventually the enemy hp constantly increasing makes them more boring than challenging. The tamed creature doesnt really do anything. A solution to the enemy hp could be to have every thing do some amount of max hp damage, doesnt have to be a huge amount but so long as the amount is uncapped it keeps the massive hp values in check.

Koler is an early access RPG with magic based combat and a system that reminds me of dark souls. You basically find/buy relics which allow you to customize your builds. Pros - combat is actually fun once you get the hang of it - bosses are really cool - crafting system for spells is unique - magic system is unique - lots of different ways to make builds (tons of relics) - cheap ($10 at review time) - cool ambiance to maps - music is fire lowkey - very frequent updates (almost every day) - multiplayer (fun with friends) Cons - buggy (early access) - can feel janky at times - save system is a little buggy (sometimes your game won't save) - visual style can feel inconsistent (personally I don't care about this but I can see that others might) - not a TON of content (expected because it is an early access indie game)

Honestly, this game isn't bad at all for your first game. I truly love the concept and idea of it. The concept of the color system and soul like rogue system is interesting. It felt good learning the system and there is a lot of potential in Koler. That being said, it is also very obvious that it is your first game due to some glaring janks. I think the camera jank is the most apparent one. In a fast pace and hectic game such as this one, you want the camera to be in full control of the player. At the moment, the camera is really wonky and feels floaty which reminds me of all the shovelware games that are made on Unreal Engine 3 or Unity. When one of the core function of the game doesn't feel good, it heavily affect the feel for the overall product. Character models, I think there is a lot of room for improvement. First thing I noticed was how inconsistent some enemies were. You have this cel-shaded anime-esqe looking world but the first few enemies you run into look like the player character from Dark Souls. I do love the design of some other enemies that gave me the Breath of the Wild Guardians. I think you should keep in line with those kind of models, even with fodders, so that way its easier for players to feel immerse into the game world rather than feeling like a game where people just dump random assets in. Pick a style and stick with it, otherwise it feels like an asset flip game which will turn most players away. Player model is a tad bit generic and, at least in the beginning of the game, gave me no reason to feel attached to the character at all. You don't need a deep story, but a little personality and introduction beyond a wall of text goes a long way. Per example, you can look at the main character from other indie-roguelikes such as Dead Cells, Binding of Issac, or Enter the Gungeons. You don't need a narratively enticing characters like Hades, but just a little something aside from just being dropped into the game world. In terms of character looks, it just feels generic. I feel you can do better with giving her a more unique look and feel. Abilities look cool but it doesn't feel like they belong in this world either. I personally feel like the abilities in your game should feel more colorful and vibrant since that is the theme of your game. As of right now they feel like your average ability from random Unity games. Environment is okay for what it is. The relic system is pretty cool, I like the idea of picking it up and upgrading certain relics. Some abilities are cool as well but need a bit of polishing for each spell to actually feel unique and satisfying. Some abilities may seem strong but has a severe lack of weight behind their powers. Music needs improving. I understand this one will be rough for a one-man developing game, but the music in this game is so generic and boring. There are certain ones I thought were well enough but overall, music left a lot to be desired. Same goes with sound designs behind attacks and what not. VFX goes a long long way to make abilities or just overall feel of the game feel that much more premium. Another quality of life I can think of explaining the game better. The color system was hardly explained at all so I was left confused on why anything was color related until I finally picked up some items that told me it was geared specifically towards one colored ability. Its honestly a cool system and I really hope to see you expand a lot more on this. Finally, my last word of advice (from a player's perspective) is to not focus on adding more and more features. You really want to avoid feature-bloat. They're terrible for AAA games and it would be double down on you. Instead of being meh at multiple things your game offer, polish the core of your game to its full potential first before you consider adding more abilities or more features like co-op. If I'm being honest with you, I want your game to be a fully realized 3-D version of Wizard of Legends. I get that feel while playing your game and if you mix that with the whole color system in a 3D environment, I can see it being an absolute blast! But this is my sole opinion. Overall, I can see your vision and the potential of the game. What you need to work on the most is polishing the core game and actually selling the game world to players to draw in new players. If it weren't for Iron Pineapple and your Reddit post, I would have never glance at Koler for more than a split second on the Steam page because there is a severe lack of identity. You need a hook to get new players in, something that'll sell them that this game world is what they want to invest into. Please take all of what I said with a grain of salt as I have no experience or knowledge in game development, just someone that play a lot of games. I'm not really sure if you can "save" this game and turn it into a success, but I do think that you can take what you can learn from this game and gain some pretty good experience for your future in the gaming industry.

I actually really like this game! I was hooked in by the concept, then first thoughts I was pretty disappointed. My disappointment however did not last long, this game isn't perfect by any stretch of the word but goddamn I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a ton of fun with it. The game is one of those games where it has good jank and unbalancing cause you have a lot of room to experiment and make really broken builds (once you unlock more spells and understand how the rune thingies work), but goddamn there is nothing like the roguelike/roguelite feeling of just having all the pieces click together and just making a op one shot build. I have not tried the multiplayer, but overall I think this game is solid and has the potential to be a 10/10 just needs more variety and content.

This game is still listed in early access, but seeing as the last update was around six months ago and it's now a year past its slated release date, I think it's safe to say that this is the final state of the game, which is pretty disappointing. I saw a bunch of other reviews mention trailers and youtube videos that brought them here, but I came into this blind. As far as I can tell, there's no story or even context behind anything you do in-game. The game consists of jumping into one of three themed worlds, ice, forest, or fire, and fighting enemies, and within the admittedly short time that I played there was nothing else to do. Without any sort of story to follow you would hope that the gameplay or atmosphere would step up to the plate, but those were disappointing as well. The themes all share the same enemies, so if you've played through one world you've played through them all. The levels are all procedurally generated, so none of them end up doing anything mechanically interesting. The dodge roll is clearly supposed to be a central mechanic; unless you find an ability, doing a perfect dodge roll is te only way to regen health outside of random item drops, and one of the only things that's explained in the tutorial is that dodge rolling gives you I-frames (if I hadn't already known that term it would have been extremely confusing). The issue is that half the time the dodge roll just doesn't work, and it's more effective to just circle enemies and spam ranged attacks until you win any fight. Almost every time I died was because a dodge roll didn't happen when I pressed space. The atmosphere is pretty bad. The music is uninspired and repetitive, and there's this gross motion blur that's on by default that ends up ruining the already pretty basic visuals. Actually, all of the graphics settings are set to maximum by default, which made the game chug hard until I turned them all down. Normally this isn't something I'd mention aside from "the game isn't well optimized", but the settings all reset to default every time I reopened the game. Within my 40 minute playthrough I had 2 crashes and 1 infinite slow motion bug before finally giving up. There are bosses shown in the trailer, but I never actually got to any without crashing or being dodge roll betrayed, so I can't really say if they're fun. There weren't any new abilities I got that were really game-changing, so all my runs felt basically the same. This game is listed as $10, but the EA notice says that they expect to raise the price to around $20 on release (never, I guess?) which is an insanely high price for something like this, putting it in the price range of most high-end indie games with large studios behind them (Cult of the Lamb is $25 and has a team of 200 people). I hope the dev keeps making games, but this feels more like a tech demo than something you'd pay money for.

Here are some issues : 1/ Slippery camera It might be a personal preference, but when I stop moving my mouse, I really prefer when the camera stops instantly. Although, the issue didn't bother me for long. 2/ The character avatar... Well, it looks generic. If you told me that it was a default model of a 3d software, I would believe it. 3/ There are crashes. I don't know why, but there are crashes from time to time. (Seems the homing blue spell can do that hen you fire it without a locked target then lock?) I stopped it after it happened thrice, sadly. 4/ The tutorial doesn't explain everything well. For example, in the tutorial, what is the slime that follows you? I thought it was an enemy at first. 5/ Once again, the tutorial. It could be interesting to change the tutorial into a kind of training area you can join at will to see exactly what skills does, with immobile enemies. 6/ There is a lack of... story. At least until I crashed. Who is the main character? Why is the main character goin in these labyrinth-like structures? Now, maybe it's explained after the crashes I experienced (in which case, ignore this) , but well, if it isn't, it should be at one point. Now the good stuff : 1/ Apart from the crashes, the game seems to work fine, no framerate issues. 2/ There's a variety of enemies. that seem quite creative 3/ The spells are different, not just "recolored fireball n°837" (from what I've seen). 4/ The gameplay loop seems quite interesting. I'll try to see more later on. 5/ The "heal your enemies to recruit them" seems like a nice idea, but I haven't tested in practice All in all, I would say that as an in-development game, it shows a lot of potential. But only the future will tell us if that potential will be realized. Do I recommend the game? In all honesty... If it was more than 10€, I wouldn't. But the game seems to have a lot of potential, and the game isn't sold at full price during the development, which is a good thing. So... If you are luckier than me on the crashes, sure, you can go for it.

I saw your game and heard your story from Iron Pineapple's recent video. Wanted to buy your game to support you. This game is a bit rough still but I can tell it's a project of love, so I hope you keep at it. I love what you've got so far and hope to see you improve the game and your skills as a developer! Here's to Koler's future <3

Just getting started, but can see tons of progress from the trailers in only a few months. Nice to get in on the ground floor of early access in a game with so much potential.

Koler is a fantastic game with many features to explore. The game is fun to play and has great potential. However, the difficulty needs to be rebalanced as it can be frustrating at times. Once you defeat the dungeon, the game becomes even more enjoyable. I’m looking forward to future updates