Skabma - Snowfall

Skamba Snowfall is a lot of fun. It's beautifully made and introduces players to some very unique culture, dialogue, and traditions. It's made with a lot of love and I hope the planned sequel gets funded. Skamba is not entirely coherent however. It's really three different games, and each one only last 2-3 hours. The first game is an exploration mystery, traveling around the locale activating dialogue boxes and petting reindeer. The second game is lite metroidvania, gaining new abilities that open up previously inaccessible areas of the map. The third game is a long, very long, series of platforming maneauvers culminating in a boss battle. As a fan of Xen, it reminded me of the otherwordly platforming in Half-Life. All three types of games were fun, but I didn't toally feel like the game as a whole made sense together, and the third act felt quite overly long as you go up, up, up the mountain and then down, down, down into the caves. Still, it's a fun 9-10 hours, full of surprises, loads of collectibles, and a really nice interconnected set of maps. Just don't finish Chpt 7 before you find everything!

Play as Ailu, a young Sami reindeer herder who discovers an ancient drum that allows him to tame elemental animal spirits and combat the strange corruption that is threatening the land. The game is beautiful 3D platformer-collectathon. Combat isn't really a thing, though you can delay enemies to escape by applying your elemental powers. There are some non-linear elements, but the game isn't a true metroidvania, b/c as you progress through the story, areas get blocked off permanently, so with the exception of the starting area, you don't really get to revisit spots to collect things you've missed. Game controls well, with some clipping bugs (the game has 2 autosave slots to avoid this breaking the game), but some platforming elements could be a bit tricky due to how the controls are set up. There's no built-in remapping, so you'd need outside software to do so. Also, no cloud saves, so watch out if you want to hop between PCs. Despite this, I enjoyed the game. It's got some cool ideas and stunning visuals, and the story was all right. Do hope the sequel gets made.

The atmosphere is good, the story is nice, and the music is excellent. It's nice to get immersed in Sámi culture. Gameplay is fun enough for the most part, although platforming has its issues, level design is somewhat confusing at times, and enemies aren't all that fun or interesting in general. Getting new abilities and being able to use them to further explore already familiar areas is also fun, although it's also hurt by confusing level design. Overall, I'd highly recommend this game, but do know that it has its flaws as well.

Ah, so frustating and tedious at some points. I get the cuteness, but somehow it didn't beat the negative stuff. By the end of the game, I was sick of several things including attunement nodes (or whatever they are called).