Kalaban Reviews

I have not played so far yet, but I really love what I have seen so far! The atmosphere is really great and almost feel like stepping into some twisted nightmare! Can't wait to play this more to see how it develops further in! Also love the fact that the game is set in Finland which is quite unusual as far as I know and it also adds to the uniqe feeling of the game.

The game have great music, atmosphere and story. I really liked it, haven't finished it yet but first impression are really good.

Good, but flawed. The main problem is that it needed the controls to be tightened up. The character tends to slide against things even when there's room for them to walk normally, and the menu's can be hard to navigate because it won't register something, or it will think you clicked on something you didn't. My other complaint is that at the end of the dialogue I would click to exit and the character would shoot. The enemies also tend to be bullet sponges. I was still having fun until I got caught in an insta-death loop. I kept loading right outside a door and the boss monster would kill me in two hits. Also, you can't load the menu to quit from the death screen. So you have to reload, then QUICKLY open the menu and quit out. Yeah, having that screen up didn't stop the monster from killing me when it did every other time. I look back over all these complaints and it seems like a cut and dry case that this shouldn't be recommended. But at the end of the day it's only a dollar and it is fun to play.

In it's current state (it just came out at the time of writing this) I find it has too many bugs for me to continue playing it now but I'm still recomending it because the game itself is great. I typically grow bored with most games before beating them but as soon as a few of the major bugs are fixed, I can see myself getting addicted. I've only played for an hour so far but I can tell this is one of those rare games that the developers really put their hearts into. Even if it's buggy (which is expected right after the release), buy the game anyways. It's cheap and these are the kind of game devs that deserve the support. I'll update this review after they release enough bug fixes for me to keep playing.

I have no clear memory how I got this ^|^ Well, it´s finnish but so far I didn´t manage to get the heat on in the sauna ; ) No crashes yet (Win10, old but decent rig), might be a bit buggy but still fun. Thrill factor high, completing the achievements shouldn´t be too hard, I got about a third of them in my 1h+ playtime as of writing this review. Still I´d recommend buying on Sale .. Expect to be scared !

A poorly designed game with far too many ways to softlock yourself, Kalaban is ALL about the rich, horror aesthetic without every actually trying to commit to it. Enemies are spongey, and take a lot of damage (Sometimes they don't take damage at all, but that isn't intentional) and characters are weak, uninteresting and static. It is a poor copy of Darkwood, which should be obvious from the screenshots, but remains a terrible attempt to try and ride the back of an already well-made game. Got me to play for three hours, but I was not enjoying my time with it.

Sorry, Iìm not the type to over criticize indie games or cheap games. But the game is simply too buggy to give some decent fun. I expected a couple of hours of fun, nothing more, but the experience is ruined by the difficulty by some nasty happening: such objects that disappear from inventory and quests that crash. And, overall, it's a shame as I like the atmosphere and the environment, and also the story is pretty good. It's a 5,5/10, only for who have some patient to recover the game from crash and problems.

Edit: The developer is looking back into his game after this long, this itself is impressive. This is not a bad game, I mean the environment is very nice. If some of the game-breaking bugs are fixed, this can be nice game. The concept and art are impressive, programming is bad.

As an American and former lumberjack I could not help but play this game. Overall, I enjoyed it, but I would not recommend it for everyone. The story mode is pretty short with ten different areas that are well designed. I wish there were either more sub maps (that is, buildings or just unique locations or events) or more areas in the game. Maybe Bethesda has spoiled me here, but I think this game could use more. I was actually surprised by a few moments in the story and for that I would recommend this game even though it has an unfinished feel to it. I really don't want to describe those moments as it may spoil it for some. There are, however, certain "choose your own adventure" type events in the game which can possibly lead to immediate death which in a way feel out of place. Combat is pretty basic. At first you start with an axe (a good lumberjack would have spare chains...) and this can either give the game a survival horror feel, or make the player incredibly bored. Essentially you will be running backwards trying to time your swings just right to hit charging enemeies. I don't have any problems with it, but I can definitely see others not liking it. From there you slowly collect other ammunition types and then build up your arsenal: pistol, shotgun, submachinegun, revolver, and even a flamethrower. Combat will present the player with two choices for healing: use an item to immediately heal or eat food to slowly regenerate. If you take your time you can save your instant healing items for hard spots (and there are a few). There are only a few different enemies, but they all fill a certain combat niche: a couple are ranged, one is melee, and one does area damage. More enemies would always be nice, of course, but I never felt like there needed to be more. Dying is not really a problem, as the player can just relaod the "scene", or area map. I'm glad this isn't yet another permadeath game, as it doesn't need that element. Maybe some people would want this choice, but I don't miss it in this game, especially since there is already a horde mode. The horde mode is a nice addition. The story mode itself does not have a lot of replay value, but I did go through that a couple times. In horde mode you just run around a couple of the area maps from the story mode trying to survive as long as possible against enemies that keep spawning in. It's a good idea to add replay value to the game, but it's not exactly Crimsonland. There just seems to be something lacking, but it's hard to describe why. Besides the obvious, the way the two modes play are different. You won't be accessing your inventory in horde mode, you just try to pick up what you need when you need it, if the enemy is kind enough to drop it. It can be a nice frantic pace, but sometimes the enemy pathfinding is bad and there can be a lull in what should be a frantic mode. Overall I enjoyed the game, and I'm glad to see there will be more updates. This was a good effort and I hope to see more from those involved.

After completing the game, I have rewritten this review. Also, please see the developer's response to the previous version of this review in the comments as they explain that they plan to make improvements to the game. Kalaban is an interesting game, which unfortunately suffers from the fact that the developers had to release it before it was complete according to their vision. It's still very enjoyable and playable, but you can tell some things could be improved (and according to the developper, they will be). It's not that it feels unfinished, it's just that the developers wanted to do more. + The atmosphere and the plot are great. Some games in this genre just stitch together random spooky things and hope that players will enjoy it, without really any concern for how it all comes together, and often it ends up like a collection of sad horror stereotypes. But this game's atmosphere seems to have been carefully designed, with an interesting plot. - On the downside of this, the game lacks in storytelling. The character doesn't really make detailed observations about the environment or the events around him, so it's hard to really get immersed into this game. This is one of the things the developer said they plan to improve. + The combat is easy to pick up. It's simple and straightforward, there's nothing complicated to learn and no complex thinking required. Lots of games try to be original but end up being frustrating because the mechanics are hard to grasp. Kalaban gives you a standard combat mechanic, yet the fights can still be challenging. + The monsters are original. At least it's not zombies, for a change! I agree werewolves aren't exactly rare in video games either, but there are other unusual monsters in this game that set it apart. + You can use accessories like a flashlight and torches. + There's a lot to explore and investigate. + There's quests, and they're interesting and not repetitive. + The dialogues are well-written, every character you encounter sounds different in the way they speak. This is great, because too many indie games have NPCs who all sound like the same person talking. - On the downside of this, characters don't always feel very realistic in the things they say or do. You'd just expect people to behave differently in a situation like this in real life. But that can probably be said of nearly all video games, and sometimes to have an interesting story you need to take some liberties. - Despite the developer's response, I'm still not convinced by the food meter mechanic. Its only purpose is to regenerate your health over time (except on hard difficulty, where you lose health if you are hungry). There are already healing items, so I'm not sure why the game needs two different healing methods. Was the purpose simply to add a survival element to the game? If so, I would say that a single survival mechanic isn't enough to make a game into a survival game. If I want a survival game, I need more survival mechanics than just a food meter. If I don't care to play a survival game, then I don't need a hunger mechanic at all so just give me additional medkits to heal myself instead. Hunger mechanics work in true survival games where managing your food and other supplies is important. But this is an action game, so this hunger mechanic only serves as a secondary healing system (and on higher difficulties, to make you race to finish the game before you run out of food). I just don't see what's interesting about that. Also, having to wait for your health to regenerate isn't the most interesting thing to do. It just makes me watch as the health bar goes up before resuming my exploration. Again, I'd rather have more medkits instead. Finally, the food meter goes down a bit too fast for my taste and it annoys me to constantly have to eat anytime I need to regenerate health. I'd rather find less food and have the food meter go down more slowly, so that I can focus on actually playing. Also it would make food consumption feel mor realistic, which would improve immersion. I must have eaten 1 week's worth of meals while the game takes place over the course of a single night! Anyway, on to other things... - The game is quite short. It's long enough for that price, but I would have loved it if it were longer. - The ending left me unsatisfied. I hope I'm not spoiling anything, but the main objective is to escape the town. There's a secondary objective, which seems to be optional, which is to uncover the cause behind the mutant outbreak. The ending I got for escaping didn't make a lot of sense to me (didn't feel logical), plus some plot elements remained unexplained as if the game had suddenly forgotten about them. As for investigating the causes of the mutant outbreak, I'll just say that I found answers, but when this part of the plot was completed it was barely acknowledged in game. It was kind of "Oh, seems I figured out why these mutants have appeared. Whatever". Overall, I'm getting the feeling that the developer ran out of time to work on the endings properly, and hopefully this is something they will improve as well. - While looting the environment, some visual feedback would be nice. Like containers having an open animation when you search them, or at least an inventory window opening up to show you the contents of what you are searching. Right now the world feels too static. Thankfully this is another things the developer mentioned they want to improve. - Finally, there are quite a few bugs. None of them prevented me from enjoying the game, I did have to reload the last checkpoint a few times due to getting stuck or crashing, but you never lose much progress if you do this. Bugs are being worked on quickly anyway, so this should soon no longer be a problem. Overall it's a very good game despite some minor flaws. It has an interesting plot and a creepy atmosphere, you can tell the developers had a good vision that they really wanted to put into a game. The gameplay is also enjoyable. The endings need work though because they're a bit of a disappointment right now, and it's too bad the game isn't longer. But overall it's a good experience and I recommend it. I also hope for a sequel that explores more of the plot related to he mutant outbreak.