See what Ysbryd Games showed at PAX East this year!
One of my traditional stops when I get to attend PAX East is with the fine folks at Ysbryd games. For those who aren’t aware, Ysbryd does a great job in their narrative/story driven games. What I mean by that is they do a great job driving the story home to the player as well as character development. There was one piece of information that I got while waiting for my hands on time with No Place For Bravery. I asked when is Cyberpunk Bartender Action N1Rv Ann-A coming out and I received a “We don’t know” answer. That was a game I played at PAX East a few years ago and loved it so I needed some closure on that but that’s for another time.
In this “what have you done for me lately” era of gaming everyone is trying to strike it rich with their own version of an exploration game. A lot of places try to find that next Dark Souls type game and Ysbryd is no different. However, with No Place For Bravery, they have decided to try an old-school look/feel to the process in terms of using 8 bit styled graphics to give it that retro feel. I will say for someone who doesn’t play souls-like games very often, the retro feel really works.
Anyway, everyone who attended PAX East wanted to play No Place For Bravery, as some of the general public wait times were 3-4 hours. That being said, during my hands on time, I could see why everyone wanted to play it and am really looking forward to it when it releases. The game requires you to be on guard at all times as you never know when that new monster is going to attack. You also never know how the enemies are going to attack. What I mean by that is what weapons are the enemies going to use and how are you going to dodge them. I had to jump around quite a bit to dodge arrows coming from the archers that were hidden until I found them and killed them.
You’ll have to master your weapons and parry abilities quickly as the game is not forgiving. If you mess up an attack/parry, it could be the thing that kills you in the long run. You play the role of Thorn, on a quest to discover what happened to his daughter. You’ll have the ability to level up your skills during gameplay as well as use items to help you progress but be warned, as like in most souls-like, pausing the game doesn’t pause the action around you. You can still get attacked by enemies in the area so stay on guard.
During the adventure, you’ll have to solve puzzles to traverse the land. One moment, you might have to kill all the enemies in the area. Another time, you might have to get to a certain location to hit a switch or defeat a boss to get a stronger weapon for progression. You’ll be able to pick and choose what weapons work for you during gameplay so tinker around and find what works for you. Graphically the game looks great and helps paint the picture of exploration and despair. All the blood and gore from enemy kills does a good job of that too.
