Toward Dawn Steam Charts & Stats

The full release lived up and exceeded the demo. It is really impressive that one dev manage to make such a wonderfull game with detailed battle mechanics and rich story.

Interesting and oozing with charm, a fantastic little RPG - although I recommend playing on the hardest difficulty as even standard is a bit simple... Have started streaming this on my Youtube channel and thoroughly enjoying everything about it thus far!!

A definite 10/10 for this charming game! Love the lore, conversations and especially the main CHARACTERS! An rpg that keeps you invested with great Welsh storytelling and fun gameplay! Writing this review after completing the game and it has left me kind of looking forward to a sequel! Crafting is simple, itemization and character customization is great, what more can I say?! GO PLAY!!!

What an amazing journey! Somehow a developer working all by them self crafted this incredible gem. The game feels like a proper cosy JRPG full of pretty forest dungeons, engaging combat with lots of combo potential and gear that you can mix and match for loads of different skills. The graphics are pretty, especially the backgrounds. The music is lovely. The game is just the right length too! Seriously enjoyed my time with this and am really looking forward to what this devleoper does next...

Great game. The world building is pleasant and the protagonists have their own charme. On my second playthrough because I missed some extras.

Having already played the demo and now some of the full release, I can already say with confidence this JRPG-style, Welsh-inspired adventure is a great achievement for a solo dev. The combat has a large focus on breaking enemy poise to disable their actions, and avoiding the same being done to you, leading to a sometimes tense back and forth of picking when to attack and what abilities to use. The story is compact and well told, with a cozy, classical fantasy feel and a clearly deep appreciation for Welsh mythology. No clunky exposition dumps here, and many sweet moments between the two main characters. That one of them is an awesome wolfman is a huge bonus too! Best boy deserves all the pats from Carys. The voice actors do a fine job as well. This game paces itself quite skillfully, with good onboarding throughout the first act to get you to grips with the combat system before really opening up in options and difficulty later. Please support this dev's work, this is one of those games that prove solo devs can and do put out quality!

Great little SNES-style RPG, well worth the 10 hours. Not perfect, but what is? It's solid for a one-person team. If you're here for the deep grand worldbuilding and a novel plot arc full of twists and turns, not the game for you. It's an overcoming-your-past story in fantasy Wales, and that's fine. If you're here for petting werewolves, some good traumatized characters, and a *very* good crunchy combat system, you'll like it.

TL;DR: A well-crafted novel presented in videogame form, with vibrant characters, intricate worldbuilding, and hard-hitting emotional themes. So that was an insane story to live through! I feel a bit blasted. Amazing worldbuilding, characters, music, feels, combat – The whole thing. I really enjoyed it. This is first and foremost a narrative game, and the story is quite intriguing and entertaining but one of the things that really roped me in was the layers of emotions and how all kinds of fears and trauma impact decisions and personalities, all extremely well portrayed, and very tactfully in terms of the really dark things. There is a lot of space made for nuancing why people do what they do in the story. Even the worst villain has their reasons. Overall, I think the story was really beautifully crafted and I feel like I’ve been part of a visually presented novel at this point. (If, like me, you are not familiar with Welsh as a language/culture/stories I recommend reading the mini encyclopedia ingame. Press esc for the menu, that’s where you can find it. It tells you how to pronounce things and gives extra details on the world as you encounter new things. There’s actually a lot to optionally explore behind the story, and I like that.) All in all, it’s obvious that a *lot* of work has gone into the characters and their world, and I really enjoyed it. *The fact that this game is made by a solo developer blows my mind!*

A short(ish) RPG created as a (mostly) solo project. I highly recommend it due to a tactical battle system that juggles statuses and action speed, a nice world rooted in Welsh mythology, and retro-styled art reminiscent of the SNES and GBA Fire Emblem games.

Excellent effort for a first game by a solo dev. The graphics are serviceable and the close up portraits are nicely detailed. Combat mechanic is addicting, needing synergies and exploiting weaknesses to 'break' armour so that your regular attacks can do more damage. I would argue that the dev has the intended roles of each party member so you can't experiment as much as you're first led to believe but playing them within their roles was still engaging. I don't really have any negatives besides wanting voice acting throughout (I'm sure that's a budget issue), perhaps slightly longer play time (I finished nicely within 8 hours so that's about an hour per chapter), and some skits with plot relevance being easily missable (again, there is a tracker in game that tells you how to get them if you miss them, but you have to replay the game if you passed the chapter or scene so the new game plus update is a bonus). Def looking out for either a sequel or a new game from the dev.