Previews// Dispatches from EGX: Era and Eternal Step

Posted 29 Oct 2015 14:07 by
Chris O'Regan, host of The Sausage Factory (the inside baseball of the videogames world), has been out and about once again, keeping his nose to the ground at EGX to sniff out the best upcoming games you might not have heard about. Here's what he found...


Era
Developer: Terahard Studios
Format(s): Windows PC and Mac

Have you ever watched people playing Street Fighter V on a competitive level? It's scary. They actually count the frames of animation and know the extent of the hit-boxes before they counter with either an attack or a block. All of this happens within a fraction of a second and takes hundreds of hours to master, which is why expert play of beat-'em-ups is the reserve of select group of individuals who have both exceptional hand-to-eye coordination and more than a modicum of talent at executing certain strategies.

But what if everything was slowed down? What if the play mechanic allowed for a more considered approach to combat rather than frenetic and usually ineffectual button mashing? That's a question developers Terahard have asked and their answer is Era.

Era is at its heart a beat-'em-up, only this time it uses a turn-based system for players to execute moves. As they do so they power up abilities that they can trigger as they see fit during the exchange. This forces players to think almost entirely on a strategic level, one that was the sole preserve of experts. As players compete in the arena they level up and become increasingly more potent as they play through Era.

Era actually started out as a turn-based RPG and some aspects of that type of game remain within it. Players side with one particular faction and depending on their performance in the arena the in-game world of Era is changed permanently.

This means that players will be able to change Era's environment depending on what they do in the game. This persistent universe has been tried before, but usually the servers have been reset to default and the whole cycle starts again. Era will not undergo such resets and therefore will evolve over time for as long people continue to play it.

I personally found Era to be an intriguing game and it reminded me a great deal of the card game Yomi, which is also a turn-based beat-'em-up that slows the action down to a manageable level. The art style is sufficiently unique and interesting to draw the player in, with the only concern being the low-polygon models that, while fine in 1995, are somewhat jarring to the eye in 2015.

Era is due to appear on Windows PC and Mac sometime in 2016.


Eternal Step
Developer: Once More with Gusto
Format(s): Windows PC, Mac and Linux

The innocent '@' symbol. It's official name is 'at the position of' and was used in the world's first email and also, far more interestingly, was the character used to represent the player in Rogue. It's been 35 years since Rogue first appeared on Unix-based mainframe computers and yet despite this, many games use its central tenet of 'you only have one life' as its core component. Now known as 'Rogue-likes', these games have become all-pervasive and Eternal Step hopes to join the ranks of the great and good of these initially interminably difficult games.

The player takes on the role of someone who has been punished for doing something that is never actually explained. All you know is, it's very bad. So bad that the player's character is condemned to climb a vast tower and once they reach the top, something amazing happens. At least that's what I've been told. Eternal Step is punishingly difficult and while at EGX 2015 I only managed to get to the first boss before being burnt to a cinder by a rather nasty spell that the boss suddenly conjured from nowhere.

Eternal Step does use a system of cards that enhance the powers of the player. These are collected as the player climbs the tower and are kept even after death. This is how progression is achieved as players gather more cards that provide them with greater protection and enhances their attacks. This does not, however, negate the need for skill on the part of the player to navigate their way through the levels in the tower. Each monster has its own means of attack and the player must learn these in order to dispatch them as efficiently as possible.

There is little to no GUI in Eternal Step. All of the information needed by the player is in the world itself, including the number of health potions they have about their person as they are attached to the player character's belt. This makes for a very clean interface and forces the player to focus on the on-screen action rather than worry about stats and bars that litter the screen while trying to not be pulverised by a nearby monster.

I had a terrific time playing Eternal Step. Its level of difficulty is very high and I will be the first to describe it as being unforgiving at first, but once you get to grips with it Eternal Step rewards the player with some incredibly involved boss encounters and story developments.

Eternal Step is out now on Windows PC, Mac and Linux.

Read More Like This


Comments

Posting of new comments is now locked for this page.