Avis sur GRAVEN

Graven is not a boomer shooter, it is a retro fps with RPG elements. By that It means you have an inventory, few weapons of your choice as you can not equip all of them at the same time, shops to buy equipments and upgrade it. NPC will give you few quests that will involve looking for specific items in places you already explored. A lot of monsters can be killed through melee giving you the possibility to save your ammo for stronger foes but there is enough ammo scattered through the levels as well. The univer is a dark medievial plagged by a curse and you fights with staff, sword and strange crossbows lookalike weapons and few spells. The spells are used as weapons but also to unlock blockers during your exploration. I liked the level design which seem to be more realistic that just some random room/corridor as you can see in other fps or Doom. It "clicked" and just worked well. You will explore towns, ruins and swamps. A journal will give you in your adventure but the game offers no map which can make the game difficult for people who have issue to orient themselves. The game is globally dark and with the addition of fogs in some areas, a carriable light or torch to lighten your path would have been a plus. You get a bit of light from a green gem you equip on your staff and get later on in the first chapter but it is still not powerfull enough. This gem allows you to break some walls and to discover secrets in previously visited area. You will have to re-explore the first areas of the game but these secrets are really rewarding. Gold, ammo and even weapons that seem to be the only way to get them can be found in these secrets. By the end of the 1st chapter, I count 6 weapons and two spells. 2-3 of these were from secrests. Know that some places can be reached by climbing barrels and crates that you stacked. The first chapter offers a small town that serves as a hub. There is no quicksaves but checkpoints to respawn when you die. When you reload your game, you will always spawn in the town and monsters and items will be respawned. It serves as an artificial mean to extend the game length. Some people don't like that, it is understandable. Speaking of death, upon your death you will lose a good chunk of your gold and a portion of this loss will drop on the floor giving you an opportunity to retrieve it. The problem with this is that if you die by falling in a pit, you won't be able to retrieve the gold. It does not re-appear on the border of the pit unfortunately. Moreover, there were few locations where I would respawn in front of the mobs and would lose more gold. I don't know if it was due to my difficulty settings but the gold loss was important. As explained in the documentation, the difficulty is well done. It is not just some artifical damage boost and resistance for the monsters. The placement and type of monsters you encounter are different in the hardest difficulty. Loot might be more scarce. The game is not exempt from bugs unfortunately. Some monster can thrown explosive at you that can oneshot you. They won't hesitate to wait for you behind a corner and explode on contact with you. Some arbaletist cultist will randomly just gatling you instead of their usual attack pace. People have complain about softlocking. For example, some elevetors that work only once. My advice: make often backup of your save and make sure to explore enough to unlock path to the hub before closing the game. You can check the Guides, in the "modding and configuration" section, I wrote a script to automatically make regular backup for you which will prevent losing your progress. Despites that we are in the 2020's, it seems designers still don't know what to do with ladders. It easy to climb up but climbing down is a pain in the %$§@. Just jump down and try to grab the ladder in the middle to work-around this issue. Puzzles are hard but there are solutions posted by people in the discussion and guides. I noticed as well that, once you have unlock a path in the hub, if you go back in an area in a reverse way the monsters won't spawn. The spawning of monsters seem to be triggered only when you walk in the correct way. A bit strange, they could have just spawn every monsters at once. This is a good concept that lacks polishing but I still loved the game. From what I gathered in the discussion, it seems the staff was fired and only 2 devs are patching the game on their free time.