![]() You see, some cards you pick up in the dungeon provide unknown perks, and need to be identified first. The Sage is someone you’ll want to visit in order to unlock other card slots, and also someone who can identify cards for you. Like in Diablo and its ilk, mana is used to power the special abilities granted by some cards. For starters, there’s the barmaid, from whom you can purchase the contents of a magical cauldron which gets filled as you play the game, granting extra mana points amongst other things. Here, you can talk to the healer in order to refill your health and mana bars (these are orb-shaped like in the Diablo games).Īside from the healer, three other characters can deliver aid as well as gossip in town. Of course, you can also die at the hands of any of these creatures, thereby you’ll resurrect in town. Ultimately though, I was able to appreciate the variety of enemies available for slaying here – gargoyles, skeletons, zombies, ghosts (which make slightly funny noises when attacking), scorpions and the Archdemon, the game’s final boss, are ready to be cut down by your sword, bow and arrow or magic missiles. Plus, the way characters move in the game makes sense taking into account that Book of Demons is set in a “paper world” and that these are meant to be “paper dungeons”, justifying the two-dimensional movement somewhat.Ī consequence of the 2D quality of the graphics is that sometimes it’s hard to distinguish different enemy types – they all looked like some variant of skeleton or zombie to me at first. This feels slightly awkward at first, but once I got used to Book of Demon’s movement limitations it did not bug me so much during my playthrough. To compensate for the “on-rails” movement, moving the gamepad’s right stick brings up a cursor that lets you grab gold, items and point at monsters to attack which may be sitting on a spot in the current room you might not be able to physically walk to. ![]() Heck, even games like 1985’s classic Gauntlet offered more freedom of movement than Book of Demons does. This does feel slightly restrictive in this day and age truth be told. That is, your character’s movement in the dungeon is restricted to a track, and you use the gamepad’s left stick to move through it. Unlike other dungeon crawlers, this game features “on-rails” movement. And although this doesn’t take too long (about 20 minutes) you might find the unavailability of the other two classes at the start an unnecessary hindrance.Īfter choosing a class and naming my character, I was in the dungeons proper, and truth be told I was disappointed at first. You might not like the fact, though, that the other two classes (rogue and mage) have to be unlocked first. You’ll have to fight your way through more and bigger dungeons in the latter case, but doesn’t make as much difference as you might expect to the overall experience.Īlso, and like in the Diablo games, dungeons are randomly generated here – definitely a plus if you want to play through the game more than once, something you might be inclined to do in order to try the other two characters classes aside from the warrior featured in the game. This is an innovative feature, and comes in handy if you want to make your game shorter or longer. This is a feature of the game which lets you set the size of the next section of the game (from small to large). ![]() And give that you can swap cards at any time there are many gameplay possibilities here, letting you fine tune your playstyle throughout the game.Īside from card-based abilities, Book of Demon’s also features the “Flexiscope”. You are able to unlock a further seven slots (up to a total of ten) throughout the game. ![]() You will come across these cards as you explore the dungeons, and initially you can have up to three of these equipped at once. One difference between Book of Demons and games like Diablo is that special abilities and attacks are gained by equipping cards. In between, you’ll have to clear dungeons of enemies and pick up loot, levelling up and gaining new abilities as your go along. And Book of Demons by developer Thing Trunk is the latest example of the genre, a fun Diablo clone which brings a few ideas of its own to the table, but one which isn’t without its share of quirks as we’ll see later in this review.īook of Demons story will be familiar to anyone who has played the Diablo games: evil has set up shop beneath the town’s cathedral, and its up to an intrepid hero to reach the bottom level and deal with the nefarious Archdemon which is corrupting the land. Hack and slash, dungeon crawling games have been in vogue since Blizzard’s Diablo entered the scene back in 1996.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |