Obligatory screenshots:
Pictured: My hobbit-hole cave that I set up shop in on the first night, with the unfinished tower I'm building outside of it (which is rocking the 'ruined' look, because that's hot). Accidentally flooded the bridgething. Aboveground, oil slimes and a speep; below, me in my glorious BARRELKNIGHT armor, which, sadly, is terrible.
A house I grabbed offa Steam's community thing. Much less terrible than my thing!
So a friend showed me this thing, and it's not bad. It's a game in the vein of Terraeraraireara and Starbound. It's purported to be extremely mod-friendly, though it seems to be so low key there isn't a very big base (which I may or may not be trying to change by posting about it).
Its got a fantasy setting, and occasionally items you find have a little fluffy flavor text in it, which most often seems to name the deity-types of the world, so that's cool.
It has an xp and levelling system, in a few different areas. There's crafting, gathering, and then physical combat, and then 'arcane' and 'divine' spells, and you get xp in each category as you use them - so you level up gathering by mining and whatnot. Arcane magic is your usual wizzardy stuff - at low levels you have elemental projectile attacks in the usual 'earth fire wind water' varieties (no heart), and as you increase in level you'll get different attack types - pillars, protective ring-types, and weapon enchants are all that's in currently. Divine is your similarly usual array of buffs and heals. I play the support character between me and my friend, so I dig it - there's more variety there, though the buffs have a little issue with targeting while on the move. Physical combat includes a few special abilities, but the earliest ones are bonuses to damage for melee and ranged attacks, defense, and melee speed.
Ah, right, it has multiplayer. That's probably important.
Building is a little different - though the game still handles things with tiles, like in Starbound, it lets you put stuff down free-form, not as according to the grid. Possibly good, or possibly bad, if you're OCD about stuff like that. It's a bit sketchy in that the dig times are a little lengthier than the ones in Terraria, but don't hit multiple blocks like Starbound. I found myself really missing Terrariaraeifra's smart dig thing, also... Arguably a plus, though, is that there's only one 'tool' - no managing a pick and a hammer and an axe and whatnot, everything like that is done with a 'mattock'. There's a few specialist gubbins, also - shears, for wool, is the only one I can think of, and possibly the only one, currently.
Holding a torch in your hand while caving is also a thing, incidentally. I...
think I mentioned that it has the left-and-right click system Starbound has? That's for every hotbar slot, though - you can set a combo in each place on the slot. So, pick-and-torch in slot 1, sword-and-heal-spell in 2, etc.
Monsters aren't randomized, and don't hurt you on contact like in Tereara. They're all fairly interesting - the slimes are pretty nifty - and usually have at least two attacks. Said slimes can chomp you, or spray little slimeballs into the surrounding area, as an example. Combat is probably the least terrible of the two things I keep comparing it to, in my opinion (well, barring the shenanigans you can get into in Terrraaa hard mode, and such); there're a variety of different methods of attack - sword, spear, bow, or spells - and the different weapons all have different little lines with different properties - the bows, for instance, split into, among others, the siege bow, which stops you from moving while you're charging up the shot, but sends the arrow moving faster; the winged bow, which shoots a spread of 3; and then the magic bow (which is called something in-universey that I forget currently), which does magic damage (and also levels up your magic skill instead of combat skill, incidentally). The spears have a decent reach, and have directional poking - with an appropriate sprite animation for each, even. The only interesting spear I've tried so far has been the ranseur, which has lifedrain and stops you from moving while poking with it. Swords work as is expected, though the animation is a little less silly, and I don't think it autoswings. Spells move a little slow - most projectiles do, and enemy attacks are fairly well readable/telegraphed/whatever, and
can hurt pretty bad which makes it feel a bit more controlled and deliberate. At least until you start plowing into groups, I guess. Err, though, most of my play was with said friend, who was higher level than me, and who was hosting the world we were playing in, so.
Also notable is the research system - you don't know recipes be default, and need to research them at a research bench (one of your first craftable items) first. At said bench, pick an item to be researched, and it shows you which categories you can SCIENCE it for recipes. It also tracks your completion on the various materials, and greys them out when there's nothing there to research. So, for example, you chop down a tree - that's further processable into 'lumber' straight away, but not much else. You can then research the lumber (and the raw wood as well, IIRC) and learn how to make various things, such as storage, or barrel armor, or wooden walls for building - all that.
Inventory space and storage is kinda limited, which I think's kinda neat.
Random Let's Play off youtube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqYANZj_syQSteam store page!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/280520/Official site!
http://siegegames.com/crea/It's a bit pricey, but a solid little game, I think - a bit bare as early access things tend to be, but not egregiously so, and it works fairly well. My friend that introduced me to it had a lot less problems with it running than I (and my comparably awful laptop) did, though.
Author
Topic: Crea - 2d Sandbox. Levelling, neat monsters. Early access. (Read 2837 times)