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22 Sep 2014 - 26 Sep 2014
Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5
Your aged family member has left you an old mine. It might be tapped out, or it might hold untold riches. With nothing better left to do, you've made the trip to the one-horse town near the mine to investigate.
My main problem, I think, is that I played this immediately after I had just done the episodes on Spelunky. So what I had in my head, since this was a 2D platformer, was that it would be similar.
Not really.
You mine, you crush (or otherwise defeat) bad guys, you climb all the way back up to the start to sell all your things and then go back down again. I hesitate to say that it seems dull and uninspired, especially considering the character design and the apparent love that went into the game, but I was just not grabbed by any of it.
The inventory slots are my main criticism of the game. I understand that there needs to be a reason for you to leave the mine and go back up top, to upgrade the shops if nothing else. But having to sell the items by hand rather than them being sold automatically for you upon picking them up - I don't understand. And yes, some of the things can be collected and then crafted into something else later, but I didn't get very far along those lines mainly because it didn't seem important to me.
Maybe it's my fault for not playing further into the game. But I think games have a maximum of two hours to grab you before I think you can fault the game. This game just did not capture my interest. You mine, your inventory gets full, you head up, you sell, you go back down to mine some more, maybe find some portal, and then climb all the way back up again. No portals to minimize the climbing portion (which isn't really the gameplay that should be highlighted, but it's a major factor nonetheless), and the mining is just clicking on it until it goes away. The enemies are neat, but they're too few and far between to really affect much of the game.
Sadly, I'm going to have to suggest giving this one a pass. Supposedly, this is the first entry in a larger "Steamworld" universe, so I look forward to seeing what better things can be done. But it's going to have to be significantly better before I buy.