Crumbling World by developer Dani Marti and publisher Dume Arts—PC (Steam) preview written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher / download.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Right before the end of last year, I got to spend some time with the Alpha version of Dani Marti and Dume Arts’ Crumbling World which I covered in a Sunday Bite’s article. With the recent news that this Action RPG will be launching on May 21 of next month, we had the chance to take the latest Beta version out for a spin and it’s looking even better than it did before the holidays.
To recap, Crumbling World is an Action Adventure RPG that quite believes in killing you off at what is basically the end of the world. Equipped with a sword, shield and physical prowess, you’ll have your work cut out for you as you fight your way through groups of enemies and try not to fall off the map. This for the most part remains the same but there’s a lot more now under the hood and even more incoming later once they add in the other characters.
Taking things from the top, once you’ve gone through the cutscenes you’ll be treated to a quick tutorial on how to play. You can run around, jump, block and attack your enemies. Thankfully compared to the Alpha even if you get swarmed by enemies it’s possible to block and attack back as an enemy hitting your shield will momentarily halt them allowing you to counter. You’ll probably still take a few hits as each enemy is not attacking at the same time, but, it’s easier to manage than it once was.
Running around though, you’ll see that pathways are narrow and connect up to larger areas in almost a block like fashion. Before the holidays, I thought the layouts were cool as while you can fall off and hold onto the ledge to pull yourself back up, you can also kick your enemies off and simply be done with them. NOW THOUGH? Oh you can still kick your enemies off, however, you can now fall into the underworld which leads to some new and interesting adventures as the ground you walk on is now very much relatable to the title. It crumbles once you’ve walked over it so now not only do you need to fight for your life, you have to be quick about it!
With the world above crumbling below your feet and shown on your minimap what state of decay it’s in, you’ll also be visibly seeing this drop as the square will drop either once or twice below the rest before falling away completely. Once it’s gone, it’s gone and if you went the wrong way, you’ll literally have to jump down into the underworld and have to fight your way through a series of Anubis looking soldiers while looking for a portal back to the mortal world. And while things don’t exactly crumble below your feet down here, you can only stay so long through a meter that can be filled that allows you to survive in the underworld. Once it runs out, you’re just as dead as you would be if your health ran out keeping in line with the above ground’s “there’s no time to waste” theme.
With all of the improvement, it’s not to say that things are yet perfect as there were a few issues on my list that had me grumbling at times. Difficulty wise, Normal is a bit too hard and Easy is too easy. There was no real middle ground between the two so even on normal, there was a lot of dying. Thankfully, as of yet, there were no penalties for dying short of having to restart the current stage that you were on however you did get to keep your experience points, your level ups and your stat boosts. So eventually, with enough attack and defense bonuses you could survive, but in the meantime? It felt brutal.
The other major issue is how the collisions are currently handled. It makes sense that you can’t run through enemies or the NPCs following you but sometimes if you run into them, you get stuck. The same can be said with rocks and trees often making you have to wiggle out and almost mash the jump button to get enough distance between the two of you. Lastly, there isn’t enough opacity when running under the forest’s canopy so you have no idea if there’s someone there and you only really find out once your health bar loses a chunk.
Overall though, comparing the Alpha version from December and the Beta version from April, there’s already been a significant amount of work done making me easily believe that it could be ready for launch in May. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next and I’m excited to finally be able to try out different characters!
Score: N/A
