Inexistence – PC Review – by K3W3L

Inexistence – PC Review – by K3W3L
Genre: Indie Action Adventure RPG
Developer: Jonathan BRASSAUD
Publisher: Jonathan BRASSAUD
Release Date: Apr 29, 2016

With the advent of Unity3D, more and more game developers have been turning to the game engine to craft their games in. Even the 2D ones (Enter the Gungeon comes to mind). You’d almost be forgiven for thinking that other game engines don’t exist, or have fallen by the wayside.

Then games like Inexistence come along and remind you that people can make semi-decent games, from Clickteam Fusion.

Inexistence is a metroidvania game developed by French developer Jonathan Brassaud. The game is almost solely a one-man effort (with the exception being the soundtrack by Fawzi Allouache, and the sound effects).

The story has an interesting premise – you play as Hald, a “Keeper” whose presence, along with his sister’s, keeps the world balanced. But then along comes the bad guy Claos who puts the sister into a coma, so evil emerges…yeah, all that fantasy fairy tale story stuff. It does not really stand out, and it isn’t really expanded upon all that much throughout the game, save for a dialogue between Hald and Claos at the final level.

Never mind – in a metroidvania I don’t usually look at the story as the main feature of the game, but rather the gameplay itself. Hald can do a short-ranged physical attack, or a long-ranged magic attack (though it must be unlocked in a shop that appears not too long after the start). The magic attack requires energy to cast, and your energy will deplete after a certain amount of casts. In general, combat felt decent. Slowly whittling down enemies with repeated furious sword thrusts, or staying afar and whittling them down with magic casts felt satisfying, especially on the tankier enemies.

All of this combat is wrapped up in visually impressive pixel art. I’m a HUGE sucker for pixel art and, while the pixels in this game are larger than most others, there’s still enough detail in the characters, enemies, etc. It looks aesthetically appealing. The soundtrack’s instrumentation is top notch and complements the fantasy setting of the game.

There’s a decent amount of freedom with which to spec Hald – whether as a HP and defense-heavy warrior, a brute who deals heavily-damaging melee attacks, or a powerful ranged spellcaster – these are a few possible examples. Whenever you kill enemies, you gain EXP – when you level up, you gain 2 points to put towards any stat you desire – HP, Strength, Defense or Magic. Also, throughout the game you’ll be either buying equipment from the shop, or finding them in chests, equipping them in order to boost Hald’s stats.

The state of the Steam market has grown to a point where it is imperative that a game should have integration with Steam features in order to hopefully draw more sales, and I’m pleased to report that this game is integrated with almost all of the important ones – achievements, trading cards and leaderboards. I have to single out the achievement design for particular praise because they encourage replayability and exploring the nooks and crannies of the world in order to find secrets and items – perfect for completionists.

One glaring omission from the integrated Steam features list would be cloud saving, but in all honesty there’s no need for that, which neatly brings me to my largest beef with this game – it’s way too short. Even with my inferior character spec (a more well-rounded spec instead of, say, multiple points spent in Strength or Magic), I was still able to finish the game by beating the final boss in just over 2 hours. There were only 5 levels total, the last being the largest and taking up the bulk of the playtime. Even still, 2 hours is not a length of time which I’d expect to finish a metroidvania in; I’ve squeezed more hours out of Cave Story.

I read text rather quickly, so the fact that I was unable to speed up dialogue felt to me like it unnecessarily dragged on the dialogue segments. At least the cutscenes can be skipped.

There are checkpoints placed throughout the game that save your progress, as well as refill your energy and health. They’re welcomed, but I reckon that they should have been placed better. Take Scylla, the underwater boss, for instance. Getting to the boss requires you to spam the jump key so Hald does not sink into the depths at the screen prior. A checkpoint should have been placed directly before the Scylla boss fight, because as soon as I killed Scylla for the first time, I promptly forgot I had to swim up and ended up falling off into the depths and killing Hald, which left me pissed off that I had to repeat the Scylla boss fight again.

Then, the shop. It sells some equipment, as well as potions and antidotes. But get this – I got through the whole game WITHOUT ever spending money on a single potion or antidote. It makes me question why they are even there. Maybe it caters to the person that cannot really get good at this game, but with the checkpoints throughout it does feel unnecessary.

And last, but not least – why is the B button on the controller marked as the Z button in the game?

Pros:

• Pixel graphics are well done
• Complementing fantasy soundtrack
• Combat is, for the most part, solid
• Integrated with most Steam features
• Achievements encourage replayability

Cons:

• Cannot speed up dialogue
• Some checkpoint placements questionable
• Short length
• Shop almost useless

K3W3L gives Inexistence a Drastik Measure 7.7 out of 10 (77).

Ultimately, whether you want to pick it up is dependent on however much you like to chase achievements, and your definition of how much you play a game in relation to its cost. So, say, if you feel you’ve gotten your money’s worth out of a game if you can get an hour per dollar – this might not cut it ($6 divided by 2 hours = $3 per hour), unless you are a completionist and chase down every last achievement in the game.

In all fairness, though, I did say that this was mostly the effort of one person, so kudos to him for making a decent first game!

I shall leave you with this rather hilarious screenshot of a visual glitch that happened after I made Hald use the teleport skill – his proportions got stretched out.