Neither Cross Nor Crown

literally GAME OF THE YEAR

It's crude, obtuse, and barely playtested, but none of that matters because this game succeeds where it's supposed to. It's beautifully made, the environments are expansive and full of things to look for, and the story is simple enough to suspend the disbelief at seeing chest face men and lobsters working together to kill you in the middle of the desert. Learn the mechanics, abuse weapon range, speedrun the mountain level because it sucks, get your ass beat a thousand times.

It’s kinda jank but in a very endearing way; would recommend lol

After bashing my head against this game for a little over half an hour, I think I've finally figured out who this game is for: People who wished they could play a super-early alpha of Gothic where the bloodflies were even more annoying. What I really can't tell is whether the jank on contact with everything(third-person controls but no strafing, only turning, and core controls cannot be rebound for ???? reasons), and the combat that really is just like a worse version of Gothic's, is an intentional statement or just bad design. Clearly you can't be intended to actually fight everything that can be fought, because the combat is... bad, and you'd probably waste way more healing resources than you'd ever gain that way, especially because enemies generally do not drop anything. The actual workable way to play seems to be just running full tilt away from 90% of the game while grabbing stuff as you go, and reloading when you hit a dead end, a mean trap or get yourself cornered(by enemies or geometry, many bits of decorative design actually have hitboxes 80% larger than their apparent size). If this is auteur art, it is most definitely Not For Me. If this is just bad design…

An absolutely awesome little journey, and not that short either, with phenomenal enviroments, cool weapons, tough enemies offering butt-clenching combat and the soundtrack absolutely slaps. Only complaint is that an acutal inventory would be nice, as currently you only replace items, except for the body armor for some reason. But other than that way better than expected, really oozing passion and more memorable than most Triple A games.

It's amateurish and unpolished, but in an earnest sort of way. There is something magical about a complete game made by a solo dev with a "damn the torpedoes" attitude. While most of it is quite simplistic, some parts of NCNC look lovely, and early parts of the game have a bunch of fun NPC dialogue. It's also pretty cool how zones have multiple paths through them, allowing to complete objectives in different ways, or to skip them altogether. Controls are terribly awkward though, and the default keyboard mapping is tailored for someone with 3 hands. Do yourself a favor and remap it to gamepad with Steam Input. The difficulty kind of goes off the deep end in the final couple of zones, where you have to face foes while balancing on narrow walkways, on awkward slopes or among tall grass that completely obscures your view.