The Waste Land Reviews

Great game, crafted with a lot of love and perfect recreation of what made 1st gen metroidvanias so fun back in the day. This game plays well and has a great atmosphere, plenty of exploring and gearing and period perfect music. Highly recommended.

I was a bit skeptic on this game after reading few reviews that said it is boring as a metroidvania, i was born in the early 80's so i know what they are talking about, but i bought it and tried it myself and i have to admit that despite its limits, (no markets in the city, the power ups are limited to health boosts, a pair of boots and weapons) is a good game, it gave me the right amount of nostalgic feelings and i had my dose of fun, i can't understand the people complaining about many screens being fillers because i don't find it boring at all, maybe a bit repetitive but i'm used to this sort of games and stands upon its aspects. I'm still at the beginning, just beated boss 1, the giant worm, but i'm looking forward to complete this game, the only aspect i didn't like much is the difficulty in finding spawn points after the first boss, for example if I need to quit the game, because i'm suddenly busy, i loose all my progresses as i should spend 30-40 minutes around the map finding a spawn point to save the game. In any case it's a good title, worth the cash it costs.

This game is a love or hate work. And I say work, because the work put into it by only one man is anything but unnoticeable. Made with lots of heart and dedication, very very well drawn pixel design. Now this game is a love letter to old games. But do you know old games? Many sucked! Many had poor level design, poor gameplay, poor difficulty curve... but we still played these as kids, because that was all we knew, and thought it was great! This game is about that. It is not just "a la metroid" with modern gameplay or revamped level design. No. It IS oldschool content in EVERYTHING. I hate arty movies that try themselves in black and white or in silent mode, but with all the rest that looks fake and new, "because it is modern times". This developer here thought of doing an old game, like old game. And that's it. Plus, he enjoyed Eliot and his tale, and it is true that the atmosphere in this game IS unique, and peculiar. Objective definitely successful, I would say. You have to understand all these to enjoy that game. As a video game in modern terms, I would not recommend that game because it is not good. Gameplay and level designs are mediocre. And I do not care if it is intentional or not. All I see is the final product, which I decided to take as a work in shape of a love letter to old games, period. In that, it is a very nice experience. Do recommend this experience. Looking forward to see more works from this man if only it can be improved.

Busted old game that got abandoned by it's devs and producers. Can barely manage to get the controls to work, and even then there are so many broken instant death and OP boss moments, it really doesn't make the game worth playing. Better off with a more polished Metroidvania title.

This game is pushing nostalgia buttons that I wasn't even aware I had. I don't remember playing this in the '80s nor have I read the poem. Whoever dug this up, good show! The 8-bit yet sophisticated graphics, dark and purposeful palette, chiptune music, mature and frightening enemy design, and cryptic and quirky dialogue show the developer's intimacy with that era's games that most "retro" games miss. It very much plays like an adult oriented NES Castlevania, Star Wars, or Battle of Olympus minus the screen flickering of those old cartridges. People who need constant direction and rewards will be turned off that you need to do a lot of exploring on your own and each swing of your weapon doesn't bestoy you with xp or loot. The upgrades are static and required to progress to new areas like in Metroid. There's no xp or random gear loot, just rotten meat that will hurt you for even expecting such things. I played past the first of five world bosses and will be playing this game to completion and I can already recommend it for anyone who wanted more from those days.

I recommend the game when it's cheap. It has some great atmosphere, with dashes of Vampire Hunter D and Miyazaki's Nausicaa, but it gets really tiresome in spots. The problem is that there is too much featureless open space (save the cool background graphics) between location nodes and no fast travel, so you walk and walk and walk and walk before you get to the next important quest -- and lord help you if you get off of the beaten path! It may take nearly an hour to get back on the right track again. The story is pretty cool, though, and most of the boss battles are pretty neat. Developer Fledermaus obviously has no problem whatsoever cooking up great game assets or scenarios; they just need to concentrate on improving their level design. If they keep that in mind for their next game, It is sure to be an unqualified winner. (Interestingly enough, though many parts of the game were tryingly tedious when I just simply sat on the couch and played, my one-hour stationary bike sessions blazed by ultra-quick, quicker than when I play more exciting games. Yeah, a real funny feeling of time dilation . . . Maybe I felt like I was pedaling through those monster-infested wastes with the guy, eh?)

🕸️ «The Waste Land» is more like "waste of your time". It's a bad «Simon's Quest» metroidvania. You never know where to go, and the NPC's always saying nonsense. I spent 3h exploring a few similar locations in the first region, and the same monotonous soundtrack was playing in the background the whole time, which becomes annoying after a couple of minutes. Every enemy in this game just slows you down. There is no EXP or GOLD, but they can drop items that take away your health, which means there is no point in killing them! Isn't it fun? The tech. part of the game (controls, hitboxes etc.) is poorly done and hasn't been improved over the years. There is also easily recognizable redrawn character sprites from other games, such as Julius Belmont from the «Dawn of Sorrow».

A terrible game developed by an obnoxious jerk. I was the first player to write a negative Steam review of The Waste Land (in September of 2014). My review was sincerely critical of the game's glaring flaws, and the Italian developer, Fledermaus, had his friends in Italy follow and attack me everywhere they could on Steam for about a month. When I posted my original review, within one day my review was swamped with about a dozen childish insults written in broken English by various degenerates living in Italy. Sure enough, these were Fledermaus's lackeys coming to aid him. In the first 24-hour period, my Steam review of The Wasteland had 19 downvotes, 2 upvotes, and comments like "Gues ur wrong!", "If it is bad why is youre review so hated.", "Try righting a rel review." It didn't stop there. Almost daily I was getting harassed with insults from random Italians on my public Steam profile. I got fed up with the attention, so I took the review down, especially seeing as how the indie game was already an enormous financial failure. Comments still trickled in on my profile for a couple days, with stuff like "Why you take the review down?", "Upset cuz your review suks?" before finally stopping. Hopefully next time Fledermaus makes a game, he will focus less on attacking his customers, and focus more on making a fun game. ==THE NEW REVIEW== The Waste Land is an awful game that should not be played. I spent over 12 hours in The Waste Land, wasting my time 100%'ing the game just to dispel any notion that I misunderstood the game. Never have I been so bored exploring a metroid-style game. The environments are unnecessarily gigantic and empty. The whole game world takes about 40-minutes to traverse end-to-end, and yet it still feels stripped of content. The monsters sprinkled across the game are pathetic and easy to avoid, and the lack of any coherent level design makes the whole game feel like a bloated, disorganized mess. The only aspect of the game that is not horribly inadequate is the outdoor visual design. Unfortunately, the crudely drawn enemy sprites negate the effect that the environment backgrounds create. I would also like to point out that the game contains random acts of sex, prostitution, nudity, and implied rape. In the game world, you are the king of the land, and you are entitled to free sex in any of this sad kingdom's brothels. This is all offered without any context or reason, so it comes across as randomly shoved into the game as poor fan-service. The girls aren't even pretty.

can't even change the controls.. wow... This game feels like it was made 30 years ago, rather than being an homage to games from that era. I mean this in all the worse ways.

An 8 bit Metroidvania with a massive world, but rough around the edges and monotonous. Pros: No hand holding. Massive interconnected map mostly open from the get go. Great Nes castelvanina aesthetic with a day and night cycle. Huge Bosses. Cons: Focuses too much on combat, with few environmental or platforming puzzles. You mostly go from point A to point B or die trying. All upgrades bar 2 are damage and life upgrades. Enemy variety a tad too low. Late game there are no incentives to fight enemies as they drop no money nor experience (While that negates any form of grinding it is still an issue). Some bugs, mostly benign (crashed twice, music disappeared rarely). Hyper Subjective Notes: I wish there were more music tracks in the game (there are about 8 tracks). Tackling bosses under equipped can be a very very long slog. The final boss was underwhelming. Some limited form of fast travel might have been nice, mainly to search for secrets in a swifter manner (or to negate pointless enemy encounters late game as mentioned above). Sparse writing was better than expected. Who Should Get It: Fans of 8 bit 2d action RPGs such as Castlevania 2, Zelda 2, Faxanadu or Clash at Demon Head, as this game emulates and surpasses all those titles in some ways. Other buyers need ask themselves whether they prize exploration above all elements of a game, as travesing the massive 8 bit world is The Waste Land's best feature, not its secrets nor its combat. 7.5