Blackfaun Reviews

The game has bugs on the Mac OS X version. When you die, a screen pops up with no options to click on. It's blank. I had to force quit the game and lost all progress. Sadly it's not ready for OS X user's. It could be the Steam client also. My PS4 controller didn't work either. The game it's self seems okay, but a little slow for an Action RPG Twin Stick shooter type of game. I need more time with it to really review it, but in it's current state, I can't play it and progress. Oh well... This is just a warning for OS X user's. I'd report the error, but I am tired of reporting OS X errors which seems to be many here on Steam these days. I never have this issue with Mac Game Store, App Store or GOG games. They all work fine with Mac OS X. Even games I have on Steam that don't work, work when purchased them again from those other sites. Not sure about Steam anymore... I have a lot of games that used to work here on Steam that don't work anymore due to Steam updates. EDIT: I read the forums and this is a KNOWN bug!!! Windows user's are having the same problem. Fix it please!!! Hardware Overview: Model Name: MacBookPro 11,5 (Mid 2015) Processor Name: Intel Core i7 Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz Number of Processors: 1 Total Number of Cores: 4 L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 6 MB Memory: 16 GB Type: DDR3 Speed: 1600 MHz Video Card: AMD Radeon R9 M370X, VRAM 2048 MB Operating System: OS X El Capitan version 10.11.6 (64 bit OS)

Not Impressed so far I play I go thru the entire 1st level and never get a drop, then of course I die to the boss. Try again, same thing happens. I have tried 5 times now and have seen one measely weapon drop.

Pro's Very pretty Simple, classic Mechanics Cons Early game killing bugs (Area 1-2 floating untargetable goblins who prevented me from leaving the area I didnt get far enough to really see much else in the game. Purchase with caution as it is very early access. Looking forward to future updates. Edit: 3/31/16 After a very short window the issue with floating enemies was resolved in my case, and I actually got to play up to zone 2-2. The game is of course a rogue like and as you play more of it you will unlock fancier gear which provides fancy new abilities most of which run off your mana. These drops radically change your game and with a bit of luck mean you'll be set to the very end. I've changed my rating on the game as it is quite a bit of fun with a beautiful styling. I'd love to see melee weapons implemented too, but that might be later in the game, or perhaps not the direction the dev's want to go in. The game crashed after the face melting dragon shotgun dropped which is a shame, but now I know it can drop and I want to find it again.

This is a visually stunning game that flows wonderfully...I see some comparisons to Diablo and such, and there's some of that..in the best sense...and also has kind of a Torchlight feel as well, which is nice. Very happy to have gotten this game. It's in it;s early stages, and in a sense, so am I as I write this. Admittedly, it's quite a task to move around with ease (I'm using Keyboard/Mouse)...walking around feels like driving around in Grand Theft Auto III...that kind of wonky feel, yet still I am getting tremendous enjoyment from Blackfaun thus far. TL;DR: Comparisons to other games are much more blessing than curse; and the positives completely outshine the negatives. No regrets about getting Blackfaun, and lots to look forward to! Enthusiastic thumbs up from me! :)

*posted in may* Game is still in very early develpment and it shows. The photos of the game are quite misleading so please be careful about purchasing it. Combat is still clunky and getting stuck in rooms can be annoying. This aside the game shows some promise in terms of its core idea. What they are trying to do is very appealing. *Update 11/6/2016* Well I put in a run took me an hour, I can honestly say the game has drastically improved and I am quite impressed with the changes. The rooms are not glitched anymore and the items are very interesting your buld can change from one floor to the next. The candle system in the game is very strange but i think it can be gotten used to. Before you buy keep in mind the game is VERY simple. If you are expecting a Torchlight or Diablo experience you maybe disappointed, However in the time played, as of this point I find it to be fun and I hope it keeps getting better. I see the price of this game to be worth while for a few hours of fun for someone new to the ARPG genre.

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this game in it's current state. It has come out of Early Access a few months ago, but still has some glaring bugs and incomplete features. It also seems the developers have abandoned the game, lots of unanswered threads in the forum, including the bug report I submitted two months ago.

It can be a fun game in theory, but there's just too many bugs. Rooms that fail to unlock after you defeat all the enemies, thus trapping you inside and obliging you to return to menu and restart the level. Enemies whose health falls to zero and then goes negative, drawing a health bar extending backward out of their health-bar-box which only grows as you inflict more damage, rendering them unkillable and again obliging you to restart the level. Achievements with bugged conditions (failing to register 8 lasers having been candle-dodged vs. Mosh; failing to register 20 turrets destroyed vs. the hydra boss [destroyed 25 just to make sure, but no achievement]; failing to register winning the game as Pan toward the win-game-x-times achievement; ...). Cannot recommend.

Blackfaun is a nicely done roguelike wich plays like a Diablo-game. You move with WASD and use skills and aim with the mouse (or gamepad, if you so choose.) You find all sorts of loot, which can be better or worse, depending on your skills that you use. When you level up, you can spend attribute points for damage, life or magic find. Every stage has a boss you must fight. When you finish the last boss or die during the dungeon, you can start over with better passive skills to begin with. These passive skills are unlocked when you find them as itemdrops or as achievement rewards. They can alter your gameplay a little bit every time you play. There are no bugs from what i experienced, and i finished the game a few times already. The music and sounds are well crafted and fit to the gameplay. Graphics are nothing you buy this game for but they aren't too shabby. Unlike the performance, fps go below 60fps on my Nvidia Titan X, which is irritating. On normal difficulty, the game is a bit easy, but it's a good difficulty to learn the mechanics. Then you can start with "blackfaun"-difficulty, which increases every time you finish the game. This game by now is a great roguelike, if they add more content (like stages, loot, skills etc.), this will be a steal for the price they ask. If you like Diablo-like gameplay, you should definitely try this one out.

This game looks amazing, but its downfall is the horrible controls. With keyboard, you use WASD to move. The problem with this is, I had to press both W and D to move in a straight line. And that only worked sometimes. With a controller, it is even worse! I had to set my own controls, which I thought was a bit odd. I tried both the stick and the D-pad on my Xbox controller. To move from left to right, I had to press up, right, down, right, down, right, down. This got me across the opening area. Then I had to press up, left, down, left, up, down to get to the door. And the action button to open the door never worked at all. I definitely had more fun with keyboard (both because I actually made some progress and because, since it had been on my wishlist for so long, I willed myself to find some pleasure in it). The graphics are quite nice, but that is the only redeeming quality. The onscreen dialogue between the two playable characters (you have to unlock one I think; only one could be chosen from the menu) is painfully cheesy, the nonsense you would expect from siblings on a Disney show. The game itself had some oddities. I am not sure why I was collecting purple balls of light; they did not appear to do anything at all. And my weapon in the hotbar was a stick (really, it was a twig), but I was shooting balls of light. Was this a dollar store magic wand? The game seemed to imply there are more weapons, but in three levels, I never found any. There were armour pieces I could buy from a merchant, so perhaps I just never got far enough for another weapon. This was a major disappointment. I had wanted it for quite a while and when I finally pulled the trigger, the game was pure crap. A huge thumbs down. Refunded.

Blackfaun is too early for access. It looks like it will eventually be a decent rogue like. As it stands now, it is overly unclear what is happening (why am I picking up different colored hearts?, what does a candle do?, etc) and it has some game breaking bugs. Example: After stage one my weapon dissapears and I get spammed with error messages. This is not a one time occurance. It happens every time. I look forward to changing my review when some of the major issues get resolved.