Last year, Xbox LIVE hosted the Indie Game Winter Uprising but this year it has moved to the Summer. The first line of offense in the Indie Game Summer Uprising is a little game called Raventhorne. It is a action/adventure platformer game set in ancient times. You, Raventhorne, are trapped in Yggdrasil(sort of like the afterlife but not exactly) and you must fight your way through 6 worlds to reach Asgard(Heaven) before Ragnarok(Armageddon) begins. Along the way, you are confronted by many evil beings and meet the 3 Norns(Fates) and a strange spirit named Loptr. As you can tell, this is based off of Norse mythology; even the hero himself resembles Thor.
The actual gameplay of this title is fun but not the greatest. Enemies have a difficulty range that make them begin to become very hard, very fast. I found myself having many Game Overs during my quest. The attacking is very basic, X is light attack and Y is heavy attack. Each attack or block you do uses up Stamina and once it is depleted you must wait for it to refill to act anymore which can leave you wide open. There are also spells to cast; a thunder spell that pushes enemies back, a healing spell, a
attack buff spell and an infinite stamina spell. These spells are invaluable in this game and you will rely on them a lot during your adventure. There are also 3 different “stances,” a defensive stance, neutral stance, and offensive stance. Each stance has a strength and weakness but I preferred the defensive stance most of the time.
There are crystals throughout the game that heal you, boost your magic meter, or grant you EXP. You also gain magic and EXP from defeating enemies. As you level up, your health replenishes and your attacks grow stronger. This is very helpful and when you die, you retain all EXP you had already earned so that eases the difficulty pain slightly.
Raventhorne is an Indie game that looks extremely pretty design wise, albeit dark. Everything fits the feel of the game very well and looks pretty polished. Easily one of the best I have seen on the Indie Marketplace. Even the spells are waves produced from attack looks very nice. The audio is also nice but very dark and subtle through much of the game. It has a nice Norse/warlike feel to the music.
Raventhorne weighs in at a fairly steep 240 MSP($3) which is pretty high for an Indie title. I really didn’t enjoy the game enough to think that the $3 price is justified but a $2 price on it would have been very appropriate and well worth it. The game will have you immersed for a good long while and really is one of the best available on the Indie market.
Pros:
- Fun little game that will questing through big places in Norse mythology
- Spells are very helpful and really add to the experience, making you fell like Thor at times
- Very simple controls that are easy to pick up
Cons:
- The $3 price tag is a little high
- Enemy difficulty is a little too steep since you sometimes are ambushed by 5+ enemies at a time and that really takes away from the entire experience
- Although you can pull off longer combos as you level up, the game gets dull fast because it’s a lot of smashing X and blocking
Score: 2/5
A $2 price is not possible on the Xbox Indies channel; Microsoft only allows $1, $3 and $5, and the 50 MB limit on $1 games means that a content-heavy title such as Raventhorne could not have been priced at less than $3. This is probably for the best; it slightly reduces the ‘race to the bottom’ effect in all games being forced down to $1.