Arboria – Dark-fantasy roguelike Action RPG released in Early Access

The dark-fantasy action role-playing game Arboria is fresh in early access and wants to take you into a dark world of trolls.

In the dark fantasy game Arboria, you play as a kind of mutated troll to save your tribe from extinction. The game offers a handsome 3D world with action fights and 3rd person camera. The game is currently being developed by the Polish Dreamplant Studio in Kraków and is published by AllIn! Games. It combines approaches of dark soul elements with rogue-like and randomly generated dungeons and was released on Steam in Early Access on May 7th, 2020.

German Version:

Arboria Story

We start the game as a real troll. Mushrooms grow on our backs, bark on our elbows and our arms turn into dangerous weapons. So we travel together with a fairy companion to the land of Dunvar to gather offerings to the gods our tribe worships. With each new life we collect a kind of soup called Veri, which roughly corresponds to our experience points, and when we die we donate this essence to our gods and are reborn afterward.

Our tribe originates from the tree Yggr, which is the father of the tribe, so to speak. But monsters that gnaw at its roots are gathering underground, another reason for us to travel down there and heal the roots of Yggr.

Arboria Gameplay

The game offers mutating weapons, respectively partially our limbs become these weapons directly. There are also some magical abilities, where you can combine different elements with each other in order to turn them against the enemies in the best possible way. In battle, we can apply blows, use abilities, dodge, etc. and whenever we die, we keep a small progress and can be recreated in the troll village.

The dungeons in Arboria are generated randomly, or procedurally, as the technical term for it is. So certain components are always rearranged by a generator so that the labyrinths do not always look the same. At least that’s the theory, but Arboria doesn’t have a lot of choices in this respect yet, so the dungeons are often looking similar.

Arboria Early Access – First impressions

Arboria is already available on Steam and currently costs €16,79 (see link below), but there is still a 10% release discount. The game is still in the middle of development and seems a bit unfinished at the moment. Sounds are missing, subtitles can be selected, but they are not always shown, and if so, only in one language, even if the options provide for a choice of several languages.

The tutorial is a bit bumpy, the handling has some rough edges and all in all, Arboria doesn’t play smoothly yet. The graphics itself is really stylish from the details, but on the one hand the troll character is simply not a shining hero, as one is used to, and in addition, the game is a bit stingy with visibility anyway, even with ultra graphic settings. And when you get hurt, which of course happens all the time in this kind of game, there’s also a lot of blurring applied to the image. I think this is a very questionable design decision, here the game somehow holds itself back.

Some sounds are mixed strangely and in other places, they are completely missing. Some explanations of the features in the game are still quite incomplete and so you have to explore a lot by yourself, but that takes some time. Altogether one wanders the first hours quite confused through the game.

In addition, the game has some really nice in-game cutscenes, which also partly make up the trailers. But these scenes repeat themselves all the time, what looks great at first sight quickly turns into an annoying cutscene click away compulsion. And I find it quite difficult to build a trailer for the early access release, which roughly summarizes the story of the game, but doesn’t show a single second out of the game, but was completely animated instead.

The setting is unique and original. The graphics can be very nice to look good in those moments when the game doesn’t prevent itself from looking good through fog or blur effects. The handling and the user interface still need a lot of work in my opinion, and in general, the game is not yet extensive enough in terms of content to be really fun and to justify the price. The classification as an early access title has to be considered in this case, because Arboria still has a long way to go to become a finished game.

All in all, I would recommend the game at the moment only to real hardcore roguelike fans, who can handle unfinished early access titles well. If you are one of them, you might be interested to have a look at the growing game and maybe help to advance it. The developers are certainly interested to get your opinions and feedback in their Discord Server to improve the game.

Otherwise, I would advise to wait a little longer and maybe come back in a few weeks. Because Arboria will probably need some more hours of work before it reaches a state where it is suitable for more types of players. And I hope that the game will reach that state at some point. Because the ideas behind it seem to me to be really creative and actually this game would have deserved the success. If the developers do the necessary work for it.

Arboria Trailer

Arboria Release Trailer:

Arboria Early Access Announcement Teaser – PC

Screenshots

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Links and Sources:

Arboria on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/924070/Arboria/

Arboria Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/arboriathegame

Arboria Discord server:
https://discord.com/invite/CPUcUZc

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