The Forbidden Arts Reviews

Only 30 minutes or so into The Forbidden Arts but this is really fun / polished game that I believe platformer junkies / adventurers will enjoy. 7.7 out of 10

Have played the game just for a little bit so far but I am enjoying it a lot! Having to time a jump perfectly to get to that hard to reach spot is a fun challenge. I am excited to see what this game brings the further a long it goes!! Keep up the good work!

I'm enjoying this game, pretty basic platformer! Love the narrative so far. Its not too challenging but fun!

Though this game looked great at the start, I'm not sure at the moment if it's worth it. I understand it came out of early access not long ago when I write this but I have several problems. Starting with the biggest glaring issue, you only have two hit points. I get you want to start out weak and such but for a few reasons I don't like it. The main character, Phoenix, seems to have some form of training in using daggers and such. I'd imagine someone trained wouldn't be easily killed by enemies in the second stage. And I don't mean because they hit fast, I mean because you will be one shot. Which leads to the next problem, enemies shouldn't be one shoting you in the second stage. Even the boss does less damage. The stages aren't bad, I liked the design of them. Alittle maze like but you have to look around for the gold to get the next parts. It insists on their being cool secrets or something. I couldn't find anything of importance but oh well I assume later in the game that it would be possible. My next issue with the game is mostly gameplay. The enemies are fine (outside of being oneshot) and they have basic attacks and such. What I don't like is the placement of some of them and how certain ones attack. The Gnoll will shoot a green blast repeatedly, which to fire quick enough, you have to shoot one waste fire ball, then either dodge the next attack they do which will kill you, or shoot another, losing your entire mana pool. Then in the brixies, I assume pixie like monsters, they shoot a straight line at your character. The issue with their aiming is that when they start the attack, if you jump to get out of the way, the beam will go at you still. The targeting is right as the beam comes out, not at the start of the animation of the attack. I know some of this is knit-picking and I'm sorry for thos who enjoy it. I will have to give feedback for the programmers, I know this game is only developed by a small number, if I remember reading right, only two people. I want to recommend a few tweeks. Give 3 hit points. If you do this way, at least then when an enemy hits hard, you still live and know to get away from it. Second, enemies need to be consistantly dead. If I die after 5 montsters, I don't want to be ported back and restart the same thing over again killing the same monsters the same way, it turns very methodical and repeatitive. Thirdly, you seem to be stuck in an area of both platformer and trying to stick to adventure games. The 3D aspect upgrades the plateformer style to something of interest, if you give powerups, (mana pool increases, and health increases), in random areas where the gold is, it'd be far more interesting to me. As of right now, I can not see myself enjoying this game and I feel terrible for it, a friend purchased it for me and I have to refund this for not enjoying what it appeared to be.

Highly recommended. This game is a total hidden gem! Something about this game gives me nostalia! It combines many of my favorite gaming elements from games I played growinng up! It has platforming, puzzles, great RPG elements such as interesting characters and abilities that you can unlock along your adventure. It's definitely easy enough for your average gamer to pick up, but even me (being a hardcore gamer) have had my fair share of deaths. You definitely can't just run straight through this game without paying attention to your surroundings! The levels are sidescrollers, but the 3d free roam in towns adds a great emersion element! I can't wait to see what else the developer has in store for future updates!

Old school difficult with a refreshing art style. Definitely nice to see something that is not pixel art in a side scroller. I also like the combination of the overworld map elements and the side scrolling elements, though the overworld map could use a couple tweaks: not being able to move backwards felt a little clunky. The mobs and main character are well animated and the sound design is pleasant and cheery. The bats knocking me into spike pits definitely gave me some Castlevania flashbacks. Overall cool game, definitely looking forward to finishing it.

This game is a free roaming side view game that lets you explore and replay old levels for bonuses and rewards. Only 17% into it with 2 hours played and I have a tough time stepping away it's got me hooked. The game definately keeps you on your toes as the difficulty can be quite challenging at times and make you think of ways to defeat a boss, level, etc. which adds to the excitement. Best $10 I've spent in a while.

I can't say I recommend it or not but I do see some issues that can be fixed! For instance the first stage introduces alot of what i saw of this games problems. The wolves and bears are find introducing some of the combat but when you see the Dark Elves everything just goes downhill for combat, as soon as the female dark elf sees you she immeditally attacks giving you little to no time to respond even by jumping, you're gonna respond with that alot. When the male Dark Elves see you they react how the wolves and bears react but they can teleport behind you striking you as soon as they appear making it a bit unfair. Now lets get to the real issue here about the enemies..... they're worthless.... yep worthless. They're there as an inconvinience not a challenge or a threat! You can ignore the entire first stage and the only thing you would have to fight is the friggin griffin! Next is that the collectables, gold in this case, can be used to fix these things called "towers" which give you bonuses..... like health.... yeah fair enough right? Well you have to do a challenge first to get it! I don't know what kind of challenges cause i took a break after the first level and I hope they fix it where the enemies are there as a threat and not a obstacle

This game is a great example of why to browse indie games on steam. New style graphics meets side scrolling action equals a lot of fun. For 10 bucks I have already had hours of fun, and because of the progress tracker in-game I know I have hours more fun ahead of me. I started playing with my keyboard and it was alright, but when I plugged in my ps4 controller and opened DS4windows the mechanics were way better. Great game, thanks.

I feel bad about this one. Lets go into the good first. 1. Cinematic experience, world building and art are outstanding for a game at this price point. Voice acting was good too! Now the bad. 1. The game The problem is this is an action platformer, and as that genre, its not very good. In an action platformer there are some things you just have to get right. Jumping is decent, but not super great. The 2D side scrolling levels have the slightest bit of lag effect compared to the smooth 3D world. Enemy combat is awful. No other way to describe it. Enemies have a weird invincibility window after you hit them, which is bizarre when you give your main character double daggers that can swing 2-3 times on them before another hit registers. Your invincibilty frames on your enemies should match the tempo of your characters ability to dish out damage. Once I unlocked the fireball, it didnt feel any better. Sometimes the fireball hit didn't register on one of the thief enemies as he was walking away. Further, enemies seem like they're no threat, or near instantly whip out damage. You need to give a little bit of a reaction window to the player, instead of the player just having to know something is coming. The teleporting and charging thief enemies need a slight delay on their attacks. Animation frames for enemies are weirdly limited at times too. I ended up beating a griffion and it flew away while it had its legs like it was still standing on the ground, lol. At least that's not gameplay however, and is delightfully forgivable. 2D level exploration feels like its big, but that its too focussed on your character for what you need. Imagine if you shaved two inches off the sides of a screen for a Mario game. The developers must have felt the same, because you have a mini map in the upper right corner that helps alleviate this claustraphobic feeling you get. Its a good fix, but the fix is to make sure your platformer doesn't need such a thing. I constantly felt like I was straining to see what was above or below. Its lots of other game design decisions too. There are gold pieces you can collect in each stage, and your character does an animation where they pick it up, and you don't have control for a few seconds. This isn't anything big like anticipating what's inside a treasure chest. We know its just gold, let me run over it, add it to my bank, and let me keep moving. What's worse, is checkmarks are based on these gold pickups, instead of where they are needed in the level. I took a detour in level 1, picked up some gold, then had to fall down (fall damage in a platformer btw, another bad move) and climb up some vines with spikes that stuck out then retracted. The problem is, the window to get past these spikes was tight, and you had to stop exactly in a safe spot for one retraction before moving on. There is no indicator of where the safe spot is besides your memory, and I was getting hit by having the tail end of my hitbox getting hit. You did good with some checkpoints prior with these "death checks", but the gold pick up ruined it. To the devs: Again, your artwork, sound, story structure, and world building feel so good. It crushes me to write a bad review, because I can tell a lot of work and talent went into it. Unfortunately at the end of the day, this is a game. Nothing, no matter how good it is, takes priority over the game play, and the game play design decisions, and actualization, is pretty bad. I am not refunding the game though, because I want to support a good effort. I feel you just picked the wrong genre that didn't play to your strengths. If this were a turn based RPG? I think you guys would have nailed it. As an action platformer, its just not any good. Good luck to you in your future, as I think there's some real talent here that just needed a different genre.