Demon Lord Reincarnation
Homepage: None?
Version 1.0.6.0 (Linux) : 28 February 2024
Price: $5 USD
Blurb: “Assemble a party, explore the dungeon, fight your way through hordes of monsters, and defeat the Demon Lord in this brutal dungeon crawler. Are you up to the challenge?“
OK, I could not find Grave Robber Foundation, it seems to be an indie game studio, as everything points to Steam, but the developer and the publisher are the same, so I cannot tell you too much about them, other than I have never heard of any of their other four games. I missed the 1.0 of this game last year, as I generally avoid party-based games, but due to the insistence of Grant and Roger wanting me to give it a once-over, I buckled. (Thank you for the copy!)
With a name like Demon Lord Reincarnation, it is no wonder you need 666MB of drive space to install it. I was never really a fan of Wizardry from Sir-Tech, or Legend of Grimrock, but I liked some of the single player ones in the genre, like Barony. I don’t like thinking for other people, I suppose, hahaha. This is not like Legend of Grimrock with high quality gameplay and really good looking environments; the developer here went with the opposite aesthetic, low budget and monochrome, to make it feel like something you would play on your NES (I suppose?). This does not mean that it is bad, not by a long shot! The first thing that came to mind was Return of the Obra Din, and the second thing I noticed, which was a breath of fresh air, was that the standard HUD for this type of game was not there. Just that alone peaked my interest. I like it when indie games try something new.
Since I started talking about graphics, let’s talk about the visuals. My first impression was awww… and then I moved to, and through, the first door. Technically it is amazing, because first impressions can be deceiving! Yes, at first I thought this may be an e-ink version of Daggerfall (which is free on Steam, btw), but it is not; this is actually high-resolution emulating low-resolution, tricking your brain. You see, with a title like the return of the Obra Din, it mimicked a very old apple computer, something like the apple II, making sure you saw the pixels in the shading. This game mimics that style, but in HD, and is continuous and smooth instead of flip screen. The only thing that let me down a bit, was that you do not see anyone on your screen. What I mean by that is that you will enter an empty room, and suddenly your screen will change to a portrait of someone, and you will be in the chat option or combat option. This means that you literally need to enter every small room, just in case it contains an encounter, and while I am all for exploring, I have FOMO in games like these, so it really works my nerves. On top of that, the scenery does not change much, so you will get lost. A definite oversight on the developer’s part. There are also some really dark corridors with no way to cast a light spell or take a torch from a wall.
The music is also something you can take note of. The first tune, “bonfire”, is just what I expected, a sort of low-budget church bells-sounding thing to go with the title of the game. The mood suddenly changes to an amazing fallout-style atmospheric tune in the second tune, “camp”. The third one, “entering the maze”, will fill you with dread. I’m not going to lie, but I like the emotional rollercoaster ride the music provides. The upbeat drum beat, and the organ music of “monster massacre”, had me expectant and tense immediately. The melodic industrial sounds of “confusion” gave the game a more futuristic feel, well for me at least. You may read something else into it. I can definitely recommend the soundtrack to anyone wanting to sit in a dark room with your eyes closed and letting your mind wander. There are a few tracks that are short (by this I mean like 30 second tracks) in the mix. Some, like “Trial of Heroes” will have that NES-style music, but with a modern take, so if it was nostalgia you were looking for, they catered for you. The downside is that every combat encounter uses the same tune, which is noticeable.
The game play is where I feel like there is room for improvement. You see, the combat system is like a JRPG, the combat HUD is simple and similar to old console titles, and you have that turn-based, I go, you go, system. It is easy to pick up, lowering the bar for newbie players of the genre (but not easy). A game map is conspicuously missing. I did break out the grid paper, until I found the Steam community dedicated to mapping the game (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=30098326763). You see, rather than procedurally generated hoodoo, this was lovingly hand-crafted. Much of the dungeon looks the same (which is a shame!), so you cannot really remember where you were, making mapping a necessity. I would have preferred a bit more decorations, like vines or roots on the walls. As I told you earlier, the game feels like a JRPG in the fight scenes, but unlike the other games in the genre, you do not have two guys in front and two in the back, usually two tanks and two ranged, but here everyone is in a line, with enemies usually attacking mages first. Ouch. Your options are fight, defend, repeat or escape.
The game also stuck to the usual Wizardry tropes with the enemies; you will run into “the usual” like goblins or zombies, but breaks from the recipe again with no character management or equipment management. I like finding treasure, my inner treasure goblin was crying at the windows, banging on the walls, but nothing. You may come across a chest that may, or may not, be trapped, with something that increases or decreases a character's stats, but it just flatly changes the number. Again, sparking no joy. No gold or jewels or toilet paper, just a whole chest containing one vial to restore one character's health. C’mon developers, I need some dopamine! The same goes for leveling, your characters level flatly, level one he has 32 hit points, level two he has 61 hit points. This does not spark joy.
Did I mention the story? No? Well it may not even be there, that’s how shallow and generic it is. I will not waste your precious time with it.
My impression:
The game is an indie game and only costs a fiver, so I can forgive a lot of things. The game looks gorgeous and plays very smoothly. The art is great, the music bumping. The enemies feel unimaginative, the combat feels boring, the dungeon feels soulless as it is empty from your point of view, and the treasure is just, meh.
The Legend of Grimrock is just two dollars more, with enemies you can see, inventory management, food, torches, and lots of loot, just saying…
If you feel we treated the game unfairly: misc@fullcirclemagazine.org