The Count Lucanor Reviews

never looking at goats the same way again.

Abysmal. Stay far away. Even though I got it at a discount it still feels like a waste of both time and money. Definitely do not get this for the full price even if you are just morbidly curious. [i]The Count Lucanor[/i] has a certain vibe to it, namely that of Baby’s first horror game but in a very bad way. It reminded me of other retro-styled titles like [i]The Witch’s House[/i], [i]Ib[/i] or the various games by Uri which are all originally available for free but at times make their way to Steam. Child out and about stumbles into some spooky supernatural adventure, of the “led by a fairy-like creature” variety in this case. It is the usual and that is not an issue at all, indeed such inspiration can work out nicely, yet it seems the wrong lessons were learned. I mostly blame the gameplay loop here that does feature some interesting ideas which turn out rather poor in execution. For instance, Hans moves at a sluggish speed which gave me a bad impression the moment I gained control over him. There is meaning to this, as he is but a boy traversing into the woods on his own. Of course he does not run like the wind. And later on you will likely be carrying candles most of the time, again you do not run like the wind. However, the first bit of the game features somewhat large areas through which you have to traverse and even if you do not go and explore everything, it takes a very long time to get to your destination. You quickly find yourself in danger and slowly waddle away from enemies who just slightly faster than you, always biting at you just [i]so[/i]. You can usually evade these attacks and it does add some tension, yet soon you find yourself with very little money and an incentive to find more and save up to buy a very expensive key. However, money is also used to pay for saving the game. And that is a red flag right there. The idea is not bad. The entirety of the gameplay is built around Hans’ slow speed. You have to trick the enemies, hide under tables and walk around traps which [i]just so[/i] fit your pace. However, when you are still new to all of it and/or just trying things out, it gets tricky. Suddenly you have to very slowly walk everywhere, trigger whatever events and try your hand at them. Some of them involve waiting for the enemy AI to have a good day and walk just so you are not caught, which is particularly bothersome with a certain instant kill enemy. If you die, you go back to your save, which has probably not been ten seconds ago, so you get to do it all over again. Slowly. Ever so slowly. This turns into tedious boredom, rather than terror. Again, this is also how games like [i]The Witch’s House[/i] work, but here it feels tedious and boring rather than either tense and interesting or at the very least kind of funny, even if only in a “what if?” kind of way. Except the game suggests you better save your money, since vendors exist, so maybe there are more later? Maybe they get new stock or something? Do I really want crawl back into the save room to burn another coin just in case the next bit messes around again? As I played through again, if only to try some alternatives, I found myself trying to rush things only to get caught in trap hitboxes and maybe that just cues a reload. Of course, there is no actual money shortage if you explore thoroughly, but what I ended up with felt less like calculating when to use [i]Resident Evil[/i] ink ribbons in a survival style manner and more like another chore. “Do I really want to do it all over again in case I screw up or do I burn another coin? I have plenty, but it takes forever to go there… but so does redoing it yet again.” That is not clever game design at all, it is a waste of time. What is clever though is the candle bit. The castle is dark and at times claustrophobic (almost a blessing, it suits the movement speed quite well), so you are advised to put down candles at certain spots so you can see them from further away and see if something lurks there. If you do not have a candle out and there are no further light sources, you can barely ever see anything. That is quite committed to the idea and I rather like it. Unfortunately, this is roughly the only thing I really liked about the game, as the writing kills everything else. As the title implies, there are many allusions to fairy tales, which is neat, yet the game cannot decide on how it wants to go about it. We have a journey of self-discovery and realization, where a boy learns a lot about himself, is kind of treated as the man he fancies himself to be, yet he goes right back to boy again and gets a fairytale ending. And he lived happy ever after… with his mother. Forever. And though he saw grotesque horrors on his journey, he is completely unfazed. No trauma, nothing. Just a severe sense of “Well, press on!”. Is this supposed to be an actual child or just a child shaped avatar? Some games, like [i]Ib[/i], do at times remember that children are in fact not just tiny adults and mess with our perception, while [i]The Count Lucanor[/i] unfortunately rather forgets about the childhood bit fairly quickly. Ultimately, I found the writing to be too simplistic to find it actually engaging yet the game was apparently also not meant for a young audience (which would be perfectly fine, mind you), given how it tries to shock us with gore and violence. And that is exactly what I meant, it is Baby’s first horror game. The final nail in the coffin is the English localization, which I played primarily. The translation is riddled with (at times severe) errors which usually still allow us to understand what is meant but should not happen in the first place. Especially not in a game that costs about 10€ without a discount. This is what proofreaders are for. Considering how the words are torn apart in the textboxes, I am pretty sure that the English version actually uses an accent ( ´ ) instead of an apostrophe ( ’ ). This is not game-breaking in the slightest, but there are free games out there that do everything better, including localization. For a paid game, this is embarrassing, even if it is a first release. Thus, even though I did in fact like some aspects of it, I can at best call it a time waster. Often, super short horror titles do not amount to much more than that but at least they are a good time and might be interesting to think about, this one absolutely was not.