Imagine you were immortal – not your body though, that wilts fast. Just your soul.
On the upside, the spiritual can channel themselves into other bodies, slow down time, read other spirit’s minds and even traverse through dimensions!
Pretty convenient for a fate of facing otherworldly demons and varied grotesque creatures in what is essentially the dark, covered in ice remnants of god knows what was left of the world before.
…At the very least, that’s the trade off our unnamed protagonist faces in Kologeon, ChillCrow’s dark, mystic action adventurer set in a procedurally-generated world.
Armed with a ghostly scythe, wings, and most powers usually attributed to specters (and some attributed to anime ninjas), our silent protagonists journeys into what seems as a never ending nightmare in order to exterminate the demonic plague while establishing monuments to eave your mark in the world.
What happened to this world and what particular motivation our protagonist has for facing it remains unclear, and as ChillCrow points out, the game builds around ideas like freedom, exploration and self discovery, so no explicit quests or missions are given to you.
Combined with the fact levels are procedurally generated (preventing any 2 levels are the same) and no real “Hub” or base for you to get back to, there is a big emphasis on the “explore the world, never look back” mentality.
Your goals are unclear and up to you, and the game’s lore will be revealed on your interactions with the world, its atmosphere, and the bits you can catch off other spirit’s memories, all while your actions create new lore. Words are sparse – if there are any, as no dialogue is featured in the game’s trailer.
Kologeon wants to combine the best of RPGs (lasting of your decisions), Rouguelikes (traversing difficult, randomly generated terrain), action games (mobility-based, fast combat) and even anime (breathtaking actions and pauses).
Kologeon is visually gorgeous. All animations are just too vivid and dynamic (just look at those attack animations, the shaking camera trick can only get you so far), the worlds look incredible and you almost forget it’s still pixel art because of the smoothness of it. Style was clearly one of the top priorities and is excellently executed.
However, the gameplay doesn’t fall behind. Most of the trailer and teaser material presents battles in which you gracefully move across the screen, dancing between enemy attacks, slicing them or throwing your scythe just to teleport next to it, and abandoning your body to fly off to other dimensions, disrupt time, or just to borrow your enemy’s for some devastating seconds.
It’s hard to decide what makes what look better, if the fluidity of your movements and attacks or the stunning graphics work. Not that it matters.
If you liked games like Muramasa or Odin Sphere … well, this isn’t exactly it (it’s isometric rather than a side-scroller, for starters), but it certainly got the action, mobility and graphic departments covered.
Even if you haven’t experimented the joy of flying like a butterfly and slashing like a madman, Kologeon is something you should keep your eyes on.
Kologeon has just started it’s Kickstarter campaign, and according to it’s creators, funding will go towards bettering the enemy’s AI and general polishing of mechanics.
Kologeon is currently in development for PC, Mac, and Linux, and schedulled to be finished around November 2017. At the time of this writing, it still has 25 days and 32k$ before it Kickstarter’s success.