Driven Out

It's a nice and good game. Just not my game. I can't get myself to like it. That doesn't make it bad. The controls are quite simple: move with arrows, attack up/middle/low, block up/middle/low, run, turn and use "THE ARTIFACT". The artifact is a weird object that creates a respawn point, using energy that recharges when you kill a boss. You have 3 hitpoits, no more, and if you get down to 0 AND HAD A RESPAWN, you respawn in that place, and the respawn is used. Enemies can cheese destroy the respawn point, which is annoying, and makes you put your respawn way behind where the battle starts, and even then it's not guaranteed it's not going to be destroyed. THIS IS NOT A GAME ABOUT BATTLE PATTERNS. Enemies mostly don't have patterns, you just have to learn how each of their attacks are and protect accordingly to their movement. Which basically makes it a reaction game. The gameplay is a bit repetitive to me, and I just don't like the design of it. If you like grindy games where you have to learn each enemy by repetitive dying, then you'll probably have a good time.

This is a thought of a game. It really is barebones in terms of everything. UI, mechanics, gameplay, graphics. The shadows of the characters go over the assets, there is no clarification about where to go (there's a cave you can completely miss and there is nothing pointing to it), the enemies can hit you before you finish the recovery animation, the menu is horrible to navigate and very rudimentary, the hitboxes are not well adjusted, challenges do not feel rewarding but instead are frustrating to learn enemy patterns, etc etc. Really not worth the 10-12eur. If you feel like wasting some time playing "3-button guitar hero" then get this game at a really good discount. Otherwise do not bother.

The game seems to have a huge problem with controller support, which is sad cause the game looks pretty fun. To be more precise most controllers seem to not get registered or have som inputs not working correctly. Hopefully the dev gets to fixing this rather huge bug.

It's the successor to [b]A Bastard's Tale[/b], and it's exactly what you can expect if you know that game already: slow-paced battles where you have to learn how an enemy initiates a certain attack, so as to parry it and counter-attack. It's very rewarding but also very punishing. Even a device obtained at the very beginning, which works as a portable checkpoint, must be placed carefully, lest it be destroyed along with any chance of resurrecting from a failure. It's also amazing to look at. Seriously, when mentioning examples of great pixel art from games of the last decade, one would hardly think of [b]Driven Out[/b], and yet it deserves all the praise, even more as there is a notable variety of enemies for such a short game (it seems longer only because it kicks the player's ass all the time), like giant beetles, a goat turned into a monster, monkeys of various sizes, and a few surprises at the end. Not many will be able to enjoy it in full but I can't deny the "craftsmanship" poured into it. So unfortunate they've gone from this to [b]Hammer of Virtue[/b], which looks like the developers were replaced by their evil twins.

Great game, great soundtrack, amazing pixel art.

hypnotic and addictive game play.