I find short is actually a feature. There are very few games that can really justify the hours you need to beat them. Things just tend to get repetitive and the game turns into a chore. Keeping the game short means it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

I find it’s such a great example of how less is more. I started playing Alan Wake 2 before it, and ended up giving up because I found the game was just tedious. There was just too much stuff going on like the memory palace, and environments where you just had to amble around without a clear purpose. I feel like there was a good core game idea that they just ended up adding to much stuff on top of. With Still Wakes the Deep you just have a really lean game that stays focused on its core concept. And I think it’s a good example how a smaller studio ends up making a much better game because it has limited resources.

I’m really excited to play it. I’m going through Planet of Lana 2 right now, and this one’s next on my list. Good to hear it’s a lot like DE in a fantasy setting.

Yeah, I just randomly ran across it and was like this looks amazing.

It’s really incredible to see how Quake engine is still alive and actively used. And honestly, it still looks great. Really shows how much you can do with a decades old engine.

Portal Revolution

I thought the game was alright overall, but it certainly did not feel like a Dragon Age game. The overall story was decent, however a lot of the dialogue was hamfisted. The real problem was that the gameplay felt like Jedi Survivor without the refined combat mechanics. As a result, combat quickly became tedious and repetitive. I also found that the NPCs were more or less fungible, and it really didn’t matter who was in your party. This is a stark contrast with previous Dragon Age games where the whole fun was in scripting the behavior of different characters and coming up with clever ways of combine their abilities. Simply having kept the original mechanics, warts and all, would’ve resulted in a far better game in my opinion.