Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Having launched its Alpha state over the summer, The Game Production Company have brought both their Single Player and Coop Adventure In Aellion to Steam’s Early Access. “Open world” and just waiting for you to explore its reaches, you’ll first have to make your way out of the tower that you find yourself in that acts as the tutorial familiarizing yourself with all of the basics.
Still fairly early in its development cycle, Adventure in Aellion is perfectly playable but still a little rough around the edges. This is the perfect example of what I meant in my RPG Maker MZ review with Nick, video game design takes a lot of work and if you know how to code go for it. Whether using your own engine or someone else’s though, it’s going to be a fair amount of work and it’ll take some time to get it right. It’s this aspect that is showing through the cute chibi graphics of your characters as the main actions are present, but the rest that is along for the ride still needs some polish.
Right now, especially in the very beginning, if you don’t follow the dialog chain to the letter, you won’t be able to move forwards and even have to restart. Oftentimes, like me, you’ll think alright I know what to do as I’ve already done it a hundred times before, and in this case over the summer, but then you’re stuck standing around because certain event triggers did not activate. In order to leave the tower, you need to talk to the various bi-ped bulls standing around which give you the direction that you need to grab your sword, throw a switch and defeat some goblins. IF, if, you defeat those goblins before finding out about the gear though, the gear won’t pop up and even talking and asking around, it won’t hit the necessary trigger keeping you there until you restart.
This isn’t the end of the world especially so early in the adventure and that being able to save your progress has now roughly been implemented as it hadn’t over the summer. Unfortunately, in regards to this progress, once you go into a dungeon, like the first one for example and if you accidentally leave it (yes it’s possible) ALL your progress is erased. The unlocked doors? The keys? The Puzzles in between? Reset and you have to do them all over again which leads to something else that needs to be fixed. Right now, if you die, if you fall off of a ledge, you’ll start back at the entrance and depending on how your camera angle was placed? You’ll walk right out instead of forward like you were anticipating. So waiting a few seconds is almost a must if you don’t want to lose your progress in the dungeon.
These sound like really big things, and they are, but otherwise? The rest is smooth enough. Walking, running, jumping, swinging your weapon, blocking, shield bashing, hell, having your shield out for defense while your lantern is out. All of these actions and others like throwing switches or riding horses across the landscape, it feels comfortable so the developers already have that going for them. It is still early, and from what I’ve recently seen even just from this past summer, the progress is clear to see.
Still very much in its early stages and a bit rough around its edges, there’s the premise of something great to come if the necessary polishing and adjustments can be done. Otherwise, if you want to start experiencing Aellion now, there’s enough to do and with more to come you can’t go wrong especially with its current price tag.
As a final note, it is possible to play online with others but for our current preview, we are only covering the single player aspect of Adventure in Aellion. We’ll be back next time with an updated look at the world and how it works in online coop!
Score: N/A
