Recent reviews by qrilin

I played the demo when it came out and have been counting the days until the full release since.

If you told me that WARCANA is game from decades ago I'd believe you. It's dripping with nostalgia from head to toe, and seems to have an ironclad dedication to feel like a long lost gem that someone found on a dusty CD-ROM clutched by a mummified four-armed god king who once ruled over the land of METAL.

The art direction is pristine and I tip my hat to anyone who was involved in making it happen. The whole thing oozes style and I find myself spending time zooming into to adore the little details of the land, units, and buildings that are barely visible from the bird's eye view that one usually plays the game from.

Those details aren't there because they are needed, they are there because someone just thought it'd be awesome. And it is. And this is how games should be made.

I only wish one of those DLCs was an artbook.

FAIR WARNING: the single player campaign, which is essentially a tutorial for each faction, gives the wrong first impression of the game. You go into it expecting a wargame with deckbuilding, yet for many missions you play something more akin to a puzzle game. Some of the early levels are way harder than they ought to be, and you'll be frustrated because you need to figure out what the level is trying to teach you on your own.

While I assume this was another nod to how games were designed in the old days, I think this might have been a bad call as it might turn off players who would prefer to learn by experimentation. The first mission of every faction should be a power trip, showing me how the faction mows down opposition when built right. Instead, the first missions feel like exams I need to clear to be allowed to play with them.

However, keep at it and power through the early tutorials, because once you get how it works, the game is awesome. It conjures memories of old classics like Master of Magic or Dark Legions and gives you the same vibes but in 20 minutes bouts, which is a huge plus for me these days.

I have purchased Fugl as soon as I got wind of it's early access release. Sadly, my 3 years old laptop sporting an AMD card had firmly refused to run it. I've sent an email to the dev and got response the next day. Within 3 weeks, they managed to get the game to work on my card, and I've been flapping my boxy wings happily ever since.

Now that's what I call customer support.

Fugl's main draw is pretty clear at first glance. When GPUs became mainstream, this kind of voxel aesthetic has fallen out of favor. Which is a shame, because voxel graphics has much the same charm as pixel art do. A lot is left to the imagination with enough to stimulate your brain to make it work.

For more than a decade I longed to walk the pixelated deserts of Outcast, and now Fugl's world is about the only place where you can get a piece of that experience. In my opinion that alone is worth the asking price.

One thing to keep in mind though: Fugl is not a game. There are no goals, no fail-states, no good old shootin' and killin'. So if you are looking for gameplay and mechanical challenge, this is not it. As of now, Fugl is solely about the power fantasy of being able to fly.

But if you are willing to spend some quality time with your own imagination, you are going love this birdie very much.

As for me, I can't wait to see how it's will grow and expand during it's tenure in early access.