Somber Echoes (PC) (Demo)

Overview: A Metroidvania.

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20241024:
I was putting the kids to sleep and whiel waiting for them to fall asleep I looked at the demos on my Steam Deck and decided to play Somber Echoes.

Setup: Steam Deck.

Gameplay Log:
Got energy ball jump
Got float down (what's the point of this power?)
Got spear

After a few deaths and not wanting to retrace my steps anymore, I decided to stop playing.

Steam Game Time: 89 minutes

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First Impressions:
Right off the bat, I like the narration. The game has a strong focus on the story. However, deeper into the demo, the game sometimes mentions names from Greek mythology without any context. It makes for a superficial feeling story. In contrast, to how characters are introduced in Hades. Every character in Hades is tangible and I got hooked into learning more about them and their role in the story.

With that being said, the game eventually introduces a mechanic that's fun to use: a launch jump (enter an energy ball and choose a direction to launch the player character). The energy ball state can also be used to enter small tunnels (similar to Samus ball).

Moving from fun to not so fun, I was less excited about the parry and deflecting projectiles from certain enemies. The player character starts out with three health and the basic projectile enemy hits for one health. That means three failures to parry an enemy attack or deflect a projectile means having to start over from the last save point. This feels brutal - at least for someone like myself who is beginning to focus less on the challenge of games and more on the fun of games.

Finally, the element that bugged me visually was the jump animation. It often feels like the character is snapping onto a high ledge, that visually looks out of reach but the game allows a buffer zone to latch on. I think it would feel and look better just to give the player character some extra height in the jump to alleviate this weird uneasiness of feeling as if I'm constantly not going to make a jump.

On the topic of visuals, I sometimes liked the character model and sometimes I thought it looked weird. And I liked some of the attack animations, but I didn't like others. Overall I had mixed feelings on the game's look and feel.

Ending on a high note, I thought the spear was cool. The player character eventually gains a spear which can be thrown, but cannot be thrown again until retrieved (or reset when a new area loads).

Demo Rating: 3.0 out of 5

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Somber Echoes (PC) (Demo)

Relevant Links:
Somber Echoes (Steam Store Page)