You wake in a cave on the edge of the kingdom of Veyr with a cold fire, a pack and no clear memory of the road that brought you there. Past the hills lies the village of Dren. Its people are forgetting things: names first, then faces, then why they came. The King of Veyr has not been seen in seven years, and the gate of his city is shut to anyone who cannot answer for what they carry.
Everyone has a different story about what happened. Some of them are even partly right.
Fights are slow, deliberate and close. Enemies wind up before they strike, so you have time to block, step aside or parry and answer with a riposte. Some blows cannot be parried; they glow red while they are wound up, and you had better move. Swinging wildly empties your stamina in seconds.
Every weapon suits a different kind of character. Swords, spears, axes, maces, flails, bows and crossbows each favour their own attributes and have a trait of their own. A spear in the hands of a pure Strength build is a stick.
Magic in Veyr is called a rote: words written down long ago that still do something when said. You learn them from inscriptions, from books and from the few people who still remember them. Saying one costs hold, which comes back slowly on its own and all at once when you sleep.
There are five elements: flame, cold, sound, storm and stone. Every kind of enemy is weak to some and shrugs off others, and nobody will tell you which. You find out by hitting them, and the game writes down what you learn. Staves and rods carry their own attacks, so a Magic build can fight on its focus alone and keep the rotes for when they count.
Your journal keeps what people told you, in their own words, with the names and landmarks they gave. Quest markers are optional: with them on, jewels on the compass and marks on the map point the way for the quest you are following; turn them off when you start a new game and you find your way from the journal alone.
The dungeons are the heart of the game. Each is several floors of rooms, stairs, shafts and water, with puzzles built into the place itself: sluices that raise and lower a flooded garth, a hall of cages on points, scales that weigh you as well as what you put on them, a signal line of glasses to turn, a frame of wheels to set. Every dungeon is bigger than the last, and every boss has its own way of fighting that you will have to learn.
Between them lie villages whose people go about their own rounds through the day, a marsh of fen houses and reed-cutters, a gallows wood, a manor behind a wall, and the capital's outskirts, where the pilgrims who were refused at the gate have made a camp. Storms come in over the hills.
The game renders at 640x360 and presents it the way a CRT would. Scanlines can be turned on or off; the video signal can be clean, S-Video, or NTSC composite, which smears colour the way a television did; brightness and contrast are yours to set. Play with an Xbox or PlayStation controller or with keyboard and mouse. The on-screen prompts follow whichever you touched last.
What's in the game now. Acts I and II of a five-act story, playable from the opening to the gate of Veyr standing open:
- nine main-quest chapters and twenty-three side quests, several with more than one ending
- the Ironroot Hills, Dren Valley, Greyfen Marsh, Gallow Wood, Hunter's Manor and the Veyr Outskirts, with caves, barrows, a tower and a vault off the roads
- seven dungeons: the Old Watchtower, the Abandoned Mine, the Mother's house, the Gallow Court, the Drowned Cloister, the Old Aqueduct and the Cathedral of Continuance
- five bosses, each with its own way of fighting to learn
- more than fifty weapons, pieces of armour, shields and foci across five tiers, shops in each region and a smith who improves what you bring him
- rotes of five elements, caster rings, and the weaknesses of every enemy kind, learned by striking
- save stones, difficulty settings and a quest compass chosen at New Game, and full controller support
