Estencel

This is an astounding labor of love and dedication… and also quite rough.
To begin with, the gameplay is fun, fast, responsive and very varied thanks to the high amount of main and secondary weapons. The enemies and bosses are different with their own ways to deal with, they are interesting to fight (at least most of them). It has an appealing visual style, especially the lighting, animations and the character designs, very unique and intriguing.
When I say that is rough, I don't mean it's a buggy mess (it has some but nothing heavy) but because of some decisions of design. I do have a problem with the map layout, it's very unclear and easy to get lost, with many diversions and shortcuts that lead nowhere or back to previous path (in fact, I was able to bypass some sections by accident, making it even more confusing). Also some fights punish way too much, with the enemies grabbing you while on the floor or many attacks being hard to parry or dodge.
And last, it's too dark, even with some options (I had to turn off space lighting because of how bugged it was) it was really difficult to see in a lot of places.
The game clicked with me, I enjoyed it a lot, but I can't say it will happen with others. Being made by one person, this is an incredible souls-like with a lot more content than one can expect. It is, at the very least, worth checking it out.
Esp: Se trata de un fantástico trabajo de amor y dedicación... y también bastante tosco.
Para empezar, la jugabilidad es divertida, rápida, sensible y muy variada gracias a la gran cantidad de armas principales y secundarias. Los enemigos y jefes son diferentes con sus propias formas de enfrentarse a ellos, son interesantes de combatir (al menos la mayoría). Tiene un estilo visual atractivo, especialmente la iluminación, las animaciones y los diseños de los personajes, muy únicos e intrigantes.
Cuando digo que es tosco, no me refiero a que sea un desastre de bugs (tiene algunos pero nada serio) sino por algunas decisiones de diseño. Tengo un problema con el diseño del mapa, es muy poco claro y fácil de perderse, con muchos desvíos y atajos que no llevan a ninguna parte o vuelven al camino anterior (de hecho, pude saltarme algunas secciones por accidente, lo que lo hace aún más confuso). También algunos combates castigan demasiado, con enemigos que te agarran mientras estás en el suelo o varios ataques que son difíciles de hacer parry o esquivar.
Y por último, es demasiado oscuro, incluso con algunas opciones (tuve que desactivar la iluminación espacial por lo bugueada que estaba) era realmente difícil ver en muchos sitios.
El juego hizo clic conmigo, lo disfruté mucho, pero no puedo decir que vaya a pasar con otros. Siendo hecho por una sola persona, es un souls-like increíble con mucho más contenido del que uno puede esperar. Como mínimo, merece la pena echarle un vistazo.

refunded after having some issues but decided to re-purchase and the game was a lot better this time around after some patches. the combat is fun and satisfying, the world is interesting and it's very bloodborne inspired which is awesome. it can be kinda hard to navigate even with the map, as i feel personally it didn't really help all that much because it felt pretty barebones but eventually you kinda learn your way around even though it can be hard to decipher where to go. it's fun all around and it's definitely a good price considering the time you can get out of it, and even on a sale it could be worth more. overall it's a pretty decent souls game and may scratch the itch for bloodborne fans or other souls fans. recommended.

This one-dev game released in 2023, and let me tell you; at the time of writing in mid-2025, the dev is STILL proactively supporting and updating the game from the steam discussion board. That's dedication! Especially since the game has very little online documentation, aside from a handful of Let's Play videos and a barebones PC Gaming Wiki website.
A note for standard soulslike controller players: you'll have to change several buttons around to emulate typical soulslike controls, except for L3/LS, which is reserved for the map. There is an option in the menu to have the map display with 2 button presses. Lmao, read my second negative point regarding this.

+ The two weapon system; it's nice not needing a directional button press to switch weapons, AND you still have both light and heavy attacks, based upon how long you hold the button down for.
+ "Spells" are linked to stamina, and I LOVED having a "regen mana bar". I rarely use magic in general because I hate juggling mana and stamina in a bossfight, but it was enjoyable here.
+ Spell variety! And being able to have 8 of them? (4 per quickbar) Amazing. Fireball. c:
+ Souls are left outside of the boss room when you die. THANK YOU! This was something Lies of P also had, and I was so grateful to still be able to upgrade, despite being endlessly crushed by the bosses.
+ The return item is instantaneous. Great for when you're second-guessing yourself while in the boss room!
+ There is a table-looking enemy (complete with tablecloth) that double bodyslams you like you put its photo in MS Paint, cut it out with the free-form tool, and moved it up and down with your mouse twice. Idk, I just though it was hilarious. The enemy itself is actually frighteningly fast for its size.
~ There is a story, but I didn't understand exactly what was going on. I'm just here to Unga Bunga anyways, so no worries.
~ Easy mode; a good accessibility feature for people who have trouble with dodging. I used this precisely once - the final boss fight, where I found attack projection quite troubling, even after many, many normal mode attempts.
~ World map/game map; appreciated for general orientation, but several areas were just rooftops without any other map depth. The map itself felt vast, but quite empty at times, and I still got lost a lot.
~ The quickbar holds 2 items, total of 4 when using the swap key, and the Medicine defaults to 5 after you've used your surplus (10 max in your quickbar). I farmed a few times, but it wasn't too stressful, especially with the smaller healing item.
~ Healing blocking was alarming, until finding a plethora of the item to negate it made it trivial. The floor fires had much too small of a radius for me to bother running back to them.
- There are more actions than there are buttons on my controller; keyboard players will have no problem, but I love using a controller, and had to decide what I could do without. My workaround was mapping the forgotten key to 0 on a wireless numpad, and (hilariously) setting it on the floor. I called it Tic Tac Toe Tactics.
- I cannot tell you how many times I clicked L3/LS on accident (the map button). At some point, I felt like I was bad mannering the bosses I was fighting. I wish I could just rebind it to anything else (maybe in the config files?). The quickest remediation was the menu option for 2 button press for map.
- Blocking is tied to stamina while sprinting; it didn't feel great when running away to heal would also chip away at my already meager parry bar.
- Completely my fault, but I accidentally deleted my 23 hour savefile. ;-; The dev was very helpful in stating which files could be migrated, and I feel adding a confirmation screen before deletion would be helpful.
- Levelling; from the start, the game pushes you to parry. I usually play a strength build, and immediately noticed how many points you had to spend for a single stat point of STR.
- Vsync wasn't saving when I launched the game, and I would see screen-tearing. This was likely fixable in whatever config file, but I just manually set it in the in-game options every single time.
- Parrying felt nice when it worked. I still struggled with a lot of boss telegraphs, and parry timing during the endgame. There were also plenty of moments where I got stunlocked in multiple 9-hit combos (Thanks, RICHARD). Maybe I'm just getting old. :(
- I noticed some rare, but strange glitches; attacks not connecting? Rare, but annoying when you know a hit should have counted. And at some point, the map didn't load? I fell through the floor of the game, where there's a hole you're supposed to drop down through. I took screenshots to show the dev, but it happened once and then I never saw it again.
Overall, I would recommend this specifically for soulslike players who also enjoy seeing changes with the basic tried and true control scheme. I always enjoy seeing creative game mechanics in this genre, but please, no more pot men, nor 12 fireball scorpion tail guys. ;-; I bet they're in cahoots with fireball jail.

Loved the game, if you are into souls-like games this one is for you.
Some positive aspects of the game are:
+ You can parry almost every enemy if you get the feel of the mechanic.
+ Cool enemy design and everyone has their unique moveset.
+ It has secondary weapons that somehow renew the combos that you can do.
Even though I really liked the map design/layout and it's esthetics I got lost a couple of times (on the Esten Interiors and in the Forest).
At least try the demo, it does not reflect the final product in my opinion but it gives a glance.

This game is probably a lot more enjoyable when playing it single player, so I'm going to go ahead and say recommend for the price point.
If you're looking for a co-op dark souls experience, this is gonna be a little frustrating, summoned players get no items, the map doesn't sync properly, the enemies change target and direction instantly the second they take damage, so trading aggro is not a thing. The maps a really loopy and have way too many worthless shortcuts and it's easy to miss entire areas.

Last boss took almost half of my total playtime to beat and took something else from me that I can never get back (my ass hurts).

This game is ok for the money spent. I'm only recommending it for players that aren't faint of heart when it comes to challenging to straight annoying gameplay.
- I do not recommend playing coop like my friend and I did. The enemy ai is unpredictable on certain fights, will turn on the other player with little to no prompt, and forget about aggro trades. Punishes the cooped player and doesn't allow them to use consumables outside of heals.
- Area layouts aren't consistent, often times doesn't necessarily match up with the name of the area, too many unnecessary narrow winding paths and dead ends. Numerous short cuts loop in on themselves with some never being used again after initially opening them up. Wish there were more areas that weren't claustrophobic.
-We found ourselves missing entire areas because of how inconspicuous things are in general with this game. The NPCs are vague with directions, then disappear never to be seen again, only to reappear with none of the dialogue available from before. Cool, so if I didn't write that down in the moment guess I'm not knowing where to go next.
- The map leaves more to be desired. Barely used it with how bad it is. The default keybind for it certainly is a choice. L3? Really? Realllly?? Pro tip for any new player.: immediately turn on the setting to add an additional button combination for it to bring up the map. Otherwise, mid combat, have the map appear on the screen since there isn't any dead zone or long press associated with the default map keybinding. I found myself wishing I was in another more forgiving plain of existence, not in this one, where the abuse is clear.
- 2 bosses in this game(one of them being the final boss.) are egregious stat checks. For instance- if you don't have near max stats and all of the bulbs collected- don't even try attempting the final boss. Which brings me to the next point.
- I get it. It's the final boss of the game, but to demand absolute perfection with parries is ridiculous. No room for error or find yourself wombo combo'd. The entire fight is hurry up and wait for the boss to attack so you can parry to deal some damage whilst hoping for staggers. Otherwise the only way to engage- is to wait then parry. No- not even with max stats, and all light bulbs does this change. If you don't perfect parry the ground slams- it's gg. If you run out of tenacity- it's gg. Super punishing amount of damage and takes forever in a year to get back up again. Inb4 the dev states 'bUt i HaVe eAsY MoDe'. Lazy excuse for poor design.
I'm sure there is more, but this is what immediately stood out to me with it all still fresh in my mind.