Sundered

Sundered is a hard topic for me to talk about, as it is one of the bare minimum of what I would recommend for people to play. The concept of the game is one of a great premise that wasn’t fully tested and realized over time. That being said, the game is absolutely gorgeous. Every animation is hand drawn, along with every background, enemy and set piece. It’s by far in my top 5 of most visually impressive games I’ve ever played. The problem, however lies with the rest of the game.

The game follows the premise of a normal roguelike metroidvania style game, performing platforming and completing areas and bosses to unlock new moves and abilities to open up more of the map. The first issue that pops up is what the game touts as one of its features; randomly generated maps and areas. This is fine in function, as it ups replayability. The issue is many areas end up as boring large corridors. Map design is an important part of its appeal, and tinkering with it is a dangerous topic.

The story is confusing, only told through a couple setpieces where you enter this weird techno-zone where a crystal talks to you about eldritch powers and what happened. It’s really confusing and doesn’t really add to it.

Combat is very fast and brutal. Your character has a very fast attack animation that after a couple attacks can fire off a powerful multi-hit attack. Almost every attack is a fast, 1-frame attack that make combat finish quickly. This is needed, as the game’s next issue pops up. The game randomly spawns enemies for you to fight, alerted to you by a siren. This is fine in nature, but the game absolutely swarms you with enemies that will chase you to the ends of the earth. It’s only once you make it to bosses that the game truly flows properly and make the game a cohesive fight.

In the end, the game needed more polish before leaving development, this is most likely due to budget and time constraints as a indie developer, but there is a genuinely good game hiding underneath this.