Driven Out

This is the Barbarian thing, the ever-present and never-dying Dark Souls thing, a thing in gloriously simple 2D, with none of the dozen layers of interlocking level-up systems that seem to thickly encrust -- like a disease of hideous, oozing warts -- all the "major" relatives of the Souls thing. It's simplicity itself, with three (literal) levels of attack and parry. Watch your enemy and read those tells, as the description says; it's just what you get, one hundred percent, and it satisfied the dickens out of me. Bizarre and strange and silly, lovingly crafted, but not without some quizzical bits of jank. Be on your guard for the jank -- for those rapier bees with no corporeality, for those projectiles that fly at you (but not too often) from the scene of your death and into your fresh load. But the really smooth bits are smooth indeed. It feels like an old game and a new game, and it feels . . . right to me.
Bastard's Tale was the developer's opening salvo, and it was rough but worthwhile, an indicator of things to come. This here is a lovely Nordic lass of a project, blonde and blue-eyed and tall, skin like milk, but still with some vestigial traces of youthful gawkiness (though with no actual shyness about what she is). It's good. Can we get another? I think we need another. That one will dance on a moonbeam.
(Okay, so I was playing Sifu, which I like to call "Seafood," and it's not bad in the least, far from it, but it's got systems, man, too many systems. "Unlock this ability five times to permanently unlock! Unlock this one with points and that one with icons . . . or something!" In this game, in Driven Out, you don't level up anything except what's inside your brain. You strain to make the thing -- that is your concentration, your reaction time maybe -- work better, and it does, after a while. I'm busier these days. I'm not young, I have some other foolish aspirations, and I can't abide all these damn systems in my friggin' action games!)

This game must be excited to see me, bc this mf HARD.
A little rough around the edges (e.g. it's not always clear exactly when enemies attacks go off / what their range is), but this lil game has some beautiful pixel art, and is challenging and engaging. I'm excited to see more from this dev!
Did I mention that this game is fucking CHALLENGING?

It's a nice and good game.
Just not my game. I can't get myself to like it. That doesn't make it bad.
The controls are quite simple: move with arrows, attack up/middle/low, block up/middle/low, run, turn and use "THE ARTIFACT". The artifact is a weird object that creates a respawn point, using energy that recharges when you kill a boss. You have 3 hitpoits, no more, and if you get down to 0 AND HAD A RESPAWN, you respawn in that place, and the respawn is used. Enemies can cheese destroy the respawn point, which is annoying, and makes you put your respawn way behind where the battle starts, and even then it's not guaranteed it's not going to be destroyed.
THIS IS NOT A GAME ABOUT BATTLE PATTERNS. Enemies mostly don't have patterns, you just have to learn how each of their attacks are and protect accordingly to their movement. Which basically makes it a reaction game. The gameplay is a bit repetitive to me, and I just don't like the design of it.
If you like grindy games where you have to learn each enemy by repetitive dying, then you'll probably have a good time.

It was worth the suffering, I don't know why but it was worth it.

hypnotic and addictive game play.

Frog man big