Prey for the Gods

The closest thing you'll get to Shadow of the Colossus on steam, with some survival crafting elements stapled on. Considerable jank, but a commendable effort by a developer trio. If you liked SotC I would give this a chance at a discount.

Great indie game, often underrated. It’s an excellent open world, with fantastic boss and mini-boss fights. The survival aspect is also present. To fully enjoy the game, you need to play on the highest difficulty, which allows you to truly appreciate it while adding a more realistic survival element, without making combat any harder.

This game was good for about 15-20 hours of frozen wasteland exploration and boss killing then I didn't have much desire to continue exploring after I beat the game. A visually striking boss-focused adventure with some memorable moments, but repetitive exploration, shallow progression systems, lack or character development / story make it a 1 and done.
SPOILERS: I've done two playthroughs of this title. First one was during early release before the game was complete and then I just did a new play through in 2025 (most recent on hard/survival). So first, you don't have to do the bosses in any order after you beat the first guy and there is no real prerequisite to fight any boss (except last boss, which is beat all the others). The way you get more health and stamina is by collecting golden totems which does give you incentive to explore the remote portions of the map. I don't care for that as it makes the exploration feel forced. I feel like a mixture of other ways to up your stats -- in addition to the totems would make the game more fun. To find all these totems you basically have to wander frozen wastes while consuming food, resting and sitting by fire. Over and over again. There are 'champion' type bosses you can find in the wild (on your search for golden totems). It is kinda cool to just happen on a big guy during a blizzard and take em down. I found 3 overall, but they were all the same guy just in different locations.
You can get other gear that affects you cold resistance, speed, and defense by going in caves and solving some puzzles -- but I wasn't really motivated to find them as the starting set was more than adequate to finish the game. There are collectible notes and journals too, but beyond giving you a few hints about different ways to tackle a boss or hinting that there is gear in caves-- its mostly "its cold," "there's no supplies" and "we're dying over here."
There are very few non-boss enemies in the game. Some undead pop out of the ground here and there so you can beat them down with a melee weapon. Some wraith enemies will pop out of nowhere so you can one shot them with your grapple hook. Most of the enemies you will end up killing are rabbits, crows, deer, and pigs. Oh you'll also kill a lot of trees so you can cook all that meat from the animals you will mostly fight.
Crafting. Even after killing all those animals for food you will still end up not having enough hides unless you grind for them to fully upgrade your initial gear. Everything else comes out of wooden crates found scattered around the world. So get used to fighting those wooden crate enemies as well.
Lastly, the bosses themselves. There is something cool about a tiny little character fighting a monstrosity 10-100x their size. The intro to each fight gets you kinda hyped to fight it because they do look epic. When it comes down to actually beating it though it basically amounts to: find a way to climb it, push the little piston, tap right click till they stop wiggling around, repeat two more times, climb to another piston, repeat. The only boss that I thought made this more challenging/fun was the Yeti. Climbing on certain portions of his body can result in you getting insta-death eaten and there are multiple ways to begin the climb (foot stuck in the snow, arrow to the eye, jump off a high place/grapple hook onto him). The boss after the Yeti is basically the boss you fought before the Yeti -- just with alot more right clicking. The thrall boss does introduce a new mechanic, however, I didn't find him very immersive. I found if you just stood at certain spots in the arena it would stop moving/attacking altogether. The boulders change direction in mid flight depending on your which way you run, but all you have to do is roll and you are immune to damage. A direct hit doesn't even matter. It's not the fun kind of dodging. Also I think the whole "I'll stand completely still after every attack so you can attack now" took away from the excitement. It just felt shallow / incomplete.
Overall this is a solid, playable game which I enjoyed enough to come back and see it in its complete form. Now that I have I'll probably never play it again, but I don't regret playing it. Mediocre experience: 3 out of 5 stars.

The story is not how I PREFER having a story told. You pick up a lot of it from items you find around the world rather than it engaging you directly. However, the mechanics are a lot of fun, and I find the setting and atmosphere inspiring. I've ended up incorporating a cold mechanic into my Dungeons and Dragons games, inspired by this game. Also the aesthetics are personally right up my alley.

It has a lot of potential and it's pretty well done for a team of 3. It is a bit janky with the combat and clibing the bosses so I decided to not finished the game but I had fun with it, the music is good, it runs a 60fps and I like the vibe of Shadow of the colossus and Castlevania LoS it gives. Will be looking out for the next game for sure. If you can get it in sale, it's the best deal I think for this kind of game.

There's a fine game if you can get past the awkward name. Praey for the Gods isn't shy about its influences: Shadow of the Colossus, Breath of the Wild, and a hint of a Princess Mononoke vibe, all in a Fimbulwinter sort of scenario. The catch with paying homage to some serious masterpieces is you're doomed to be constantly compared to some real heavy hitters. While I wouldn't Praey for the Gods on the same pedestal held by the games it pays homage to, it's a competent entry that is able to stand on its own and does a lot more right than wrong. If you've enjoyed said influences, you really ought to give it a shot.
Being the gaming masochist I am, and hearing others call the game a tad on the easy side, I started on the hardest difficulty and full survival settings and kept both there throughout. I can certainly see where others are coming from if they played on lower settings but I'm not about to fault a game for being accessible and you can change difficulty whenever you want so don't be shy about cranking that up if you're not feeling it otherwise.
To be clear, the difficulty mainly comes from the survival gauges, which degrade faster than they really ought to. Getting hungry and tired while trying to scale a boss is a bad time, as you won't be able to take advantage of the rare opportunities to recoup stamina. By the same token, snow storms are just plain obnoxious and come up more frequently than they probably should, to include during any boss fight that takes place outdoors, which is most of them. It's certainly dramatic when that happens though and satisfying to overcome. Managing the gauges forces you to spend time hunting for resources and building a stockpile of items to see you through the next boss battle and really ups the run time. Having to stock up and prepare to fight a living high rise that wants to kill you makes sense though. Health and clothes would be entirely irrelevant, were it not for the freezing damage that can outright kill you on higher levels. The undead that pop up occasionally aren't really a threat and frankly are more scarce than I'd have liked. They feel a bit like an afterthought. Swapping some snow storm frequency for more minion combat would have been nice.
There are plenty of little puzzles, secrets, and lore scattered around an interesting environment of frozen ruins and giant shackled figures, and while most gear doesn't make a huge difference, they provide enough reward to make exploring to find them feel worth it. The big piece of equipment that stands out is what amounts to the hook shot from many of the Zelda games. Despite being popularized by the franchise, even Breath of the Wild was too cowardly to include it in its open world, so it's quite nice to be able to grapple around and take the edge off of a lot of the climbing, plus it adds some interesting options for boss fights. By the same token, the paraglider cloth, more or less straight Breath of the Wild, is a very welcome addition to scaling giant bosses. Using them in tandem? Very good times.
What the game really does right is a lot of the little things. I mentioned adjustable difficulty already. Key remapping is there and works like a charm. I played with mouse and keyboard and had no troubles with anything, thanks to being able to set it up how I like. The often changing direction of the wind matters not only for the sail cloth but it can slow you down on foot walking into it and you'll put your arm up to shield your face when doing so. Crafting, repairing and eating all have animations rather than Skyrim-style "open the menu and eat all the cheese". Beyond good aesthetics, it forces you to be deliberate in minding your gauges and resources, and when you recover. A good thing in my book. Being able to whittle a bundle of arrows from wood basically any time is also really nice. Your gear changes appearance as you upgrade it. Snow is deep in places and slows you down. You, enemies, animals and even fallen items leave depressions in it as you trudge through, which is a great detail. Warming your hands near a fire, limping and coughing when seriously hurt, shaky aim when freezing, all good little touches I appreciate.
I'll leave off on a big one. To the game's immense credit, and despite the bosses being literally numbered, you can fight them in any order, save for the first and final ones in their respective places. No baloney gatekeeping, no broken cutscenes, no screwed up narrative or progression: if you find it, you can fight it, and you can kill it. The world actually is open. Bumbling into a boss while exploring happened more than a few times and I love that it's just a thing you can do, few games allow that. I wound up defeating them pretty wildly out of order: 1, 2, 4, 6, 5, 3, 7, and 8.
Like I said at the top, Praey for the Gods does a whole lot right and while it's not perfect, it's certainly worth your time. It's not like "giant boss climber" is a very populated genre and it's been a hot minute since Shadow of the Colossus graced the PS2 so if you have any love in your heart for said genre, or curiosity, in the case of having missed out on such a classic, Praey for the Gods is a worthy entry. Apparently it came out of a Kickstarter too, so it's really nice to see a quality project rise through a crowdfunding channel, you can tell the developers had passion.

Well, I'm rating it positively but I will not be playing more for now I think. Shadow of the colossus is one of my favourite games so I got this, but the story beats so far are exactly the same but just not as good as a timeless classic. You start off somewhere, you climb a wall, you fight a first colossus, you show up at a sanctuary where an icon of the first colossus fades showing more remaining. A faceless and powerful voice talks to you except its not dormin its the norn sisters or something. the language is a made up language.
I feel like it's basically going to be the exact same game but simply not as good in the environmental storytelling. BUT if you really need to scratch the itch and don't want to replay sotc for some reason this game will do exactly that.