Temple of Aeryn Reviews

The dev put a lot of effort into making this. Temple of Aeryn is more in depth than it looks. It's not my sort of game (I'm too much of a zoomer for this sort of retro experience) so I was hesitant to buy it at first, but I got pleasantly surprised since it's kind of fun.

It's a turn based combat game where the overworld map is plodding along a path in small legs with chances of random combat thrown in during your travels. Sometimes paths are marked, sometimes not, so you'll spend a lot of time hitting WASD every time your dot stops on the map as there's no indication otherwise of a path. Combat is a grid of nine panels, and thus far it's only ever been a dirt field with some sparse grass as your battlefield, even in what should be a city with cobbled/paved streets. Combat is your standard action/movement set. Move twice or attack once, every time I move and try to attack, the enemy is always out of range. The enemy seemingly has no such restrictions on move/attack. If in the beginning your enemy party consist of anything more than three goblins, you're starting over, which you'll need to hit "END GAME" rather than "CONTINUE" as continue dumps you on a screen showing your placement in the world at the time of your death, or this I assume as there is absolutely zero documentation, and the game tells you nothing beyond some basic tips and that is marked as 'Help' in the menu. It took me a minute to realize that it was even there. There is absolutely zero character customization, not even a name option. You'll [i]always[/i] start with 36 health near a crossroads absolutely confused on anything to do. The aesthetic is nice, it is aiming for a C64/ST800 feel and it is absolutely awesome in that regard...but the dev should've taked heed at the QoL functions that exist nowadays (there's no more limitation on space so you can add a few extra characters) and realize that if you are shooting for a legit mid-late 80s retro CRPG feel, [i]they had copious amounts of outside information[/i]. I didn't even enjoy the initial loop enough to get really anywhere as the start is very deadly, but not enjoyable enough to tolerate how deadly the start is. I'm still not even sure what this game is about. Sorry, but it's just not enjoyable enough to get through the initial stages, and I gave it a solid half hour.