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Aragami (ex Path of Shadows)


lowenz

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I thought it was pretty good considering it was a student project. Sure, it's not exempt from criticism, but it's a bit unfair to measure it by the same standards as a commercial game.

 

The main thing though it that it's too easy. The player is overpowered, and winning the game is simple. It has potential though. They even have their own version of Blink (Dishonored), 3rd person takedowns, and Focus (New Thief). I guess that might be a bad thing though. In any case, the game is free, it's definitely worth trying out if you like stealth games.

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What an awesome prototype! I'm hoping they find funding to develop the game.

 

The only thing fair to criticize in a prototype is the actual game design, and I have one. I love the aesthetics but sometimes the pitch black shadows simply swallow everything, I can't tell what's a wall, what's floor etc.

 

The basic gameplay mechanics are great, very original, very creative. The demo is easy but that's just a matter of designing harder levels.

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Was it a team or just one student? For ten months work it's exceptionally well done.

 

According to the webpage linked in the OP, it's a team of 5 students at IDEC - Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Download seems to be hosted at Mega.

 

Like the visual style, don't like the way hitting escape closes the game instead of putting you on any kind of menu, and there's no readily apparent way to invert the mouse.. still, could be promising.

Edited by Xarg

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Sure, it's not exempt from criticism, but it's a bit unfair to measure it by the same standards as a commercial game.

 

I don't mean to impugn their work, it is well done considering the time and manpower, but personally I'm not interested in judging how well the developers balanced their resources. The game would have been just as unenjoyable had it been created in 10 days. The art direction is not for me personally (though I get what they're going for so I won't fault them for it as such) and the gameplay mechanics just aren't solid. An example is the fact that your shadow power or whatever doesn't regenerate in the player-created shadows. This makes it impossible to actually create a "path of shadows" as they claim, and it's quite easy to get stuck in a place where if you move out of the shadows you are dead but you don't have enough power to teleport, so you will be detected no matter what. The teleportation power itself is a bit finicky on its own - it seems to be very picky about what constitutes a shadow and which of those you can teleport into. That and the fact that the AI poses no threat whatsoever just make this game no pleasure to play at all for me. But I don't deny there is a lot of potential here, I just think the mechanics need to be reconsidered.

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Just played it.

 

I must say that I really like it. Beside the glitches here and there it is really entertaining. And I'm a big fan of this comic-style graphics. Would be cool if they were able to turn this into a full game.

 

The difficulty is indeed not very high. But as I consider this a demonstration, and in regard to a full game as the first levels, this is ok. The bugs are not that nice, though, but as said, it appears to be a demo, so that's fine.

 

What bothers me a bit is that the ai does not seem to be very noise sensitive. While they react to that decoy thingy immediately, they don't here you if you run by them only a few meters away. They also don't react very harsh to seeing you. Could be increased both.

 

Let's see how it turns out.

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Any idea if this is being updated even semi-regularly? Would love to play around with it more, but with ESC killing the game, being unable to invert mouse off the unfortunately barebones option menu, and having teleported myself inside a house last time I played, would really prefer to wait for some updates to this.

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Downloading it right now.

Judging from the site alone, it looks impressive in terms of scale. Honestly, I'm pretty excited to play it.

 

Um... all I'm seeing is the background, a night sky, and nothing else, when the game starts. Is anyone else having this issue?

Edited by Nacht7
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After a while the logo should appear and you should be asked to press enter. If this does not happen, restart the game. It is a bit buggy.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

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  • 3 months later...
Sure, but that doesn't make it exempt from criticism.

I think it may still be too soon to criticize things that are likely to be on the todo and tofix lists. Besides, cel shading isn't a bad thing. At most it's your subjective taste. I personally like it. I prefer Dishonored's, Brink's and TF2's art styles, but cel shaded looks nice too.

Edited by Skaruts

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 years later...

Here it is (with a brand new name :D )

 

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/280160/

 

It's good but it needs a PATCH (of shadows :P) to add some necessary elements, such as keybinding remap !

Dishonored + Mark of the Ninja in 3D with Torchlight series graphics in a Japan set (as Dishonored was).

Edited by lowenz

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Bought it and started playing. It's quiet interesting thus far gameplay-wise. The only nitpick is that the xbox360 controller gets used pretty imprecise, hence I fall back playing with mouse and keyboard. Maybe they improve that in an upcoming patch.

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Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

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