ASHGARD: Infinity Mask

Sometimes I struggle to understand the dynamics of the indie game market. From what I've played, everything about this game is at least solid, partially decent and even great. It has all the accessibility stuff a game needs, like key rebinding, camera options like smoothing, axis invert, toggles for things like motion blur, DOF, holding keys for sprinting and crouching and so on. Plenty of options for sounds and graphics, too. Even some AAA games at a much higher price point fail to deliver those really important things! It looks good, plays smooth and has a nice tutorial with already fun little exploration detours. Level design seems to be a strength here, which would be half the battle for an exploration based game in my books. Everything feels really polished for an early access souls-lite game. And it only is a souls-lite, I guess, because it even has four difficulty options from story mode to nightmare. Which is great! I can feel and see the dedication and the passion for the craft of the developers everywhere here. Obviously, I've played Ashgard only for a short time, so this cannot be a "real" review. I havn't played enough to say anything about things like story or prog…

Even tough ASHGUARD: Infinity Mask is still a bit rough around the edges in its current (EA) state, I can see the potential of a really fun Action-Adventure Platformer. The setting reminds me a lot of Biomutant with the rusty architecture being taken back by nature and the soundtrack captures this really well (especially the main theme is really catchy!). I also like the characters a lot: Embla looks cool and all the important NPCs all have unqiue designs as well. The gameplay and exploration is already good, altough some places probably still lack correct loot as I only got like 200 XP for doing a 2-story maze and a single enemy gives more than that. Also some of the movements that are shown in the trailer like the wallrunning and gliding where not possible yet (or at least I did not know how that is done). Having in mind that this is a small team and that it just released (in EA), I can forgive the bugs I encountered during the 1st part and look forward to what comes next!

This game probably has a wealth of potential hidden behind it, but I didn't enjoy my short time in it. To help explain I'll try to provide some criticisms here. The tutorial sequence in the junkyard is very long. It was long enough that when I finished the first boss (no deaths or wasting time) it was about 30 minutes into my playthrough. I feel like that's far longer than what I actually learned which was to swing a sword, shoot a crossbow, block, and dodge roll. The platforming puzzles were nice, if not a bit straightforward. Removing the buttons to shoot from some sections could make this go by faster, and the side path chests felt rewarding. Even the one with 2500 currency (vita?) even though I have no idea what that was for. The shield felt extremely clunky, slow to draw, and the tutorial mentioned being able to parry but I could not get that to happen. Likely a skill issue on my part, or due to how slow the shield draws the timing is very disjointed. The combat is pretty standard, nothing really stood out to me. The camera angle feels way to low when locked on, and the camera is pretty jarring when moving from one enemy to another while locked on. I think the movement spe…

I refunded it because it's not running well in terms of performance. Still wanted to use the opportunity to leave a review because there's barely any reviews fir this game and I see potential. Nice visuals, good soundtrack and averagely decent combat that borrows from souls-likes but feels more arcady and action-rpg-like. Ashgard needs more polishing for sure but as it's early access, i'll revisit in a few months. Would suggest to try the demo first, or of you want to be supportive, try the game and write a review. Helps with visibility, which can attract more players. That in return should help the dev with getting more feedback to polish the game.

I can finaly recomend this game. The developers respond quick to kriticks and they also fix things pretty fast. The Game is currently in Early Access so you should be prepared for bugs. The game itself is finaly also playable for cassuals, the difficulty is now nicely customizable.