Some time ago, in boredom, watching games on Steam, hoping to find at least something that would be interesting to play, I discovered a couple of interesting samples. Of course my eye was drawn to the nice pixel art. Wall World and Necrosmith
let’s look at them in order.
Wall World
The game presents us with an atypical world. It consists of an almost endless wall on which people live, extracting ore from it and fighting off attacks from regular spider beetles. Immediately there is intrigue about what is on top of the wall and what is below? In this way, the game is reminiscent of something created in the abyss, where the role of such intrigue was played by a huge hole in the ground.
What is the gameplay?? Essentially, this is a kind of bagel. We are put into a robotic spider, which we are free to send up or down and from which we have to shoot back at waves of enemies using the built-in machine gun. Between forays, we leave the spider and dig randomly generated mines in the wall, extracting resources and finding random improvements, starting with increasing the speed of mineral mining and ending with new weapons for our spider. We spend the mined minerals on upgrading weapons, spiders and any other things that we can find, like a module that destroys blocks around itself in the mine.
Of course, at some point the waves of enemies will become too large, they will kill us and we will go to the “shop between runs” where we will get a spit in the face of all Twitter feminists in the form of a pixelated saleswoman with comically large breasts and global leveling in the form of the ability to level up various characteristics of the spider for the extracted currency, such as lives or the ability to roar upward.
At first the game seems very difficult and death occurs in the first 10 minutes, but after 7-8 runs, global leveling will allow you to last longer and we begin to find some things that hint at how to complete the game. At the same time, the game is surprisingly sticky, and although at first it seemed that this was entertainment for just a couple of evenings, now I understand that I’m clearly here for longer.
This is the pixel art
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Leveling window during the game
The same shop and saleswoman
I hope no one minds that I took screenshots from the stopgame website, otherwise I forgot to give mine
Necrosmith
The game is also a roguelike, but in a fantasy setting. We play as a necromancer who can create dead people from body parts and release them to run around in the open world. The dead run around on their own, get new body parts for us, look for drawings for improvements, and protect our castle from waves of enemies.
Of course, at some point the waves of enemies will become too large, they will kill us and we will go to the store “between races” where a cat and global leveling are waiting for us
At first the game seems very difficult and death occurs in the first 10 minutes, but after 7-8 runs, global leveling will allow you to last longer and we begin to find some things that hint at how to complete the game. At the same time, the game is surprisingly sticky, and although at first it seemed that this was entertainment for just a couple of evenings, now I understand that I’m clearly here for longer.
A shop with global upgrades
Here is our castle and deadman creation inventory
Yes, I copied pieces of text from reviews of both games
But I didn’t do this by accident, despite the fact that the gameplay in the games is completely different, the main idea in them is the same. Like a roguelike, with global leveling, gradual passage through random events, pixel art, the shops are similar, and even the name of the game is spoken by the same cool low voice at startup. And, I think everyone guessed that the games were developed by our good old Russian studio Alawar, and this is very cool. The last thing we heard about it was the beholder series of games, where the first part was excellent, the second so-so and no one even talked about the third. The golden days of the studio are long gone, in the late 2000s and early 1900s, when a fun farm, a super cow, named after the king, islands, etc., etc. were created. And then the studio seemed to have its own style. Not directly obvious, but still something similar was seen in games. just look at these menus
And now the studio is starting to work actively again, gaining momentum. If I understand correctly, all this is thanks to Stepan Komarov, who is the producer, art director and animator of both games. I had not heard of him before, but as they say in an interview, he has been with Alawar for a decade and a half and for the first time as a producer he acted during the creation of the 2021 game They Always Run. Frankly, I haven’t heard of her before, but her website is commendable. The projects we are talking about today were released after.
What I want to say is that Alawar is again beginning to surprise us with small, enjoyable games, just like 15 years ago, and this is very pleasing, giving hope for the development of the Russian gaming industry. I’m really looking forward to their next project, which will be a Metroidvania, and I wish them luck
