Karnage Chronicles -- Through the Eye of the Dwarves

Well team, I finished up the final dungeon of Karnage Chronicles, and it was pretty challenging. I was playing normal mode, but I can't even think of what this would be like on impossible difficulty. I might make an impossible difficulty game, but all this gets easier once you know the basic tricks of the game. Anyway, let me see if I can break this dungeon down for you, and how it played out for me.

The entry room for The Eye of the Dwarves is all about setting the mood. There aren't any enemies here, just nodes to mine, a howling wind, waterfalls, giant statues of dwarves, and a giant seal between you and an army of undead.

Laser Beams, Chains, Waterfalls, Giant Dwarf Statues -- this club has everything!

Once you beak that seal, you enter into a town, and it's immediate combat with enemies that are tougher than anything you've gone against. Of course, it's the same flair as before, but with a tougher, more intimidating skin. You have skeletal warriors, skeletal archers, skeletal crossbowmen, and skeletal brutes. Possibly the most annoying enemy however are the half skeletons missing their legs. You'd think missing your legs would slow you down, but not these guys. They speed up and crawl across the ground almost like a skeletal spider and reach up to claw your eyes out. It's terrifying.

Not your typical slow, half-bodied skeletons at all

The worst part of Karnage Chronicles continues to be the enemies that pop behind you and the jump scares outta nowhere. I hate taking two steps forward and pausing just waiting to get jumped, but I'm always prepared when it does. You just flee back 50 steps and kite. easy. 

The shop in the Eye of the Dwarves is actually up a flight of stairs in the town area. Don't think that just because it's a shopping area that it'll be safe. Nope. It's full of gosh darn skeletons. The best of which is the shopkeep! He's the only skeleton that actually doesn't attack you. He just smiles and waves as he watches over his shop. Once you buy some equipment from here, things get a lot more manageable with the OP skeletons.

An undead shop keep hoping I buy some of his cheese

Down further is an interesting fork in the road, and they've done something here kind of unique with their save points. During the past two dungeons everything has really only been linear in nature. Sure, there might be a fork in the road, but these typically led to dead ends, and you'd have to backtrack to the main path.  In this dungeon, it feels LESS like a ride path and MORE like an actual town . . . well, for at least the first half of the dungeon.

You see, this whole section of the game really revolves around collecting three items so you can craft a magic wand that . . . opens doors.  Disappointing, I know.  You were hoping to hurl fireballs, weren't you?  Well, I was.  Anyway, to get each of the components, you have to travel to the different parts of the town.  The magic potion is hidden in the tavern.  The metal ore is down by the docs.  The crystal gem is around the back of the farmer's house. Return to the Alchemist's hut, combine all three, and voila . . . you have a crazy magic wand that opens doors.

A wand from a cauldron, who woulda thunk it?

It's kind of a cool trick actually, you hold the wand inside the spider egg looking thing and it busts open for you to proceed. Of course, once you do that, you're instantly jumped by some hell hounds.  OH, did I forget to mention those?  Yeah, it's not all skeletons down here.  You'll also be fighting some super fast, fire breathing hell hounds. Have fun with that.

Another cool thing that I got along the way was a pipe that heals you when you smoke it. Yeah, so . . . again, this game has its rating . . . and if you're anti-smoking, feel free to ditch the pipe here as you don't really need it, but man, what a cool effect!  You hold the pipe up to your face and smoke comes out of your mouth. It also somehow seemed to match my actual breathing. I don't know if it accessed the built in mic on my VR headset (I doubt it), but it was possibly my favorite item in the game.

Smoke break before the bridge of a billion enemies

Once you're past the town, the winding passageway begins again. I'm so disappointed in something this game did here by the way.  At one point early on in the dungeon you pick up a magic flower.  Later, around the base of a coffin 3/4ths of the way in, you finally find a place to put this magic flower and release the trapped spirit inside.  The spirit hops out and begins to SING. So he's singing about "necromantic lore" that was a gift to elven kind, and I'm like THIS IS AWESOME!  He continues on about a king getting stripped of his throne when bam . . . enemies around the corner start attacking, so I do my running away kiting thing, and . . . accidentally get out of range of the song. WHYYYY?!?!?! CURSES!!! Well, at least the coffin gave me a cool magic necklace for my troubles.

Just beyond the coffin here you have another long passageway and eventually end up on what I have termed, "The bridge of a billion enemies." This was quite the battle my friends. I ended up clearing a ton of the bridge and facing off with one of the caster mushroom men people. Right as I was about to enjoy my victory, I spun too far in a circle . . . and promptly disconnected myself from my tethered VR connection to my computer . . . and died. MOTHER FREAKING MMPHER!! As I talked about in the last post, when you die in an area, it all respawns again, so I had to kill the billion enemies all over again. Sigh.  No worries. Where'd I put my virtual pipe?

Maybe it's not a billion per se, but it feels like it

After lowering the bridge by shooting out a couple weights on the sides, you finally enter the end boss room, which is a big circular arena. Basically you fight a giant ogre magi.  Every few seconds, the portal nearby spits out a goblin add, so you have to keep taking them out while hitting the boss.  When you take him down to zero health, he wanders back into the center of the arena and a light from above heals him.  

The Ogre Magi and his goblin buddy in a footrace, starring me as the finish line

Now, I actually didn't figure out that I needed to hit the gem at the top of the arena until after he fully regenerated 5 times, but it was getting frustrating and stupid.  Eventually I figured out that I needed to bust that gem above him, and then he only healed to half life . . . but when he did, he gained the power of shooting slime balls at you as well.

After taking him down to nothing once again, I hit the heart above him one last time, killed the adds, and the treasure trove was mine!  Two big fat chests in the back alongside his club for loot. It felt pretty great.

Just past the treasure you once again find your old buddy the collector, and he tells you all about who you are and what you're doing here along with some info about his position in life as well. It involves a council of 12 magicians and you being a kind of servant to them? I think? Anyway, after this chat, you hop on a boat, click the exit button, and watch a giant thanks for playing message rise with the moon as your ship sets sail over the ocean. The crowd goes wild.

You're welcome.

I really enjoyed my time in Karnage Chronicles. I'd like to go back to Vanishing Realms and play it again after playing this to see how much they are similar and different.  This game seemed to be a much higher quality experience. I'd buy a sequel game if they made one.

Happy Dueling!

Karnage Chronicles -- Past the Caverns of Decay

I've been playing Karnage Chronicles on and off for almost three weeks now, and I've just today finished the awfully intimidating Caverns of Decay on normal difficulty. The Caverns of Decay is the second of three dungeons in this VR RPG. It was a wild rollercoaster of feelings for me, so I thought I'd take some time to think about how it went.

A typical view of the mushroom caverns in Karnage Chronicles

First of all, the setting is pretty great. Basically you're crawling through an endless winding tunnel system full of glowing mushrooms. Being in VR, there's a lot to like with being in this environment. I just have to continually hail back to how awesome it looks in this game. It FEELS like riding through a magical journey through a Disney ride if Disney happened to make a high fantasy exhibit that wanted to kill you. Of course, you're not riding, you're "bamfing" and nudging with locomotion controls in VR. That said, sometimes after clearing an area, it's pretty cool just to look around it and be in that environment.

Since the Caverns of Decay are all about the mushrooms, take a guess what the monsters are that you fight in it?  

Time to put an arrow in his cap!

Not to worry, you also get to fight poison barb spitting plants, infected goblin zombies, and harpies . . . and in typical Karnage Chronicles fashion, you get to fight them every two footsteps forward and sometimes every one footstep forward. It really does get a little aggravating how often this game uses this "spawn in" method as you cross certain thresholds while crawling through the dungeon.

The most annoying of the bunch are these little speedy mushroom men who rush you and explode upon impact.  They come in groups of three, and I'd say 4 out of 5 times they jump scared me and blew up in my face, causing me to eat some food to regain health. The other 1 out of 5 times, I was actually able to shoot them and blow them up before they got to me . . . or at least one of the three dive bombing mushrooms, which is why it was absolutely critical to keep your health up.

A scene from the one time I killed all three speedy mushrooms before they exploded on me

Oh sure, it's easy enough to resurrect at a waypoint, but here's one of the most annoying features of this level. If you die in a section of this dungeon and leave just one monster behind, the entire section of the dungeon repops and you have to do it all over again. It got to be absolutely infuriating when I would clear this large courtyard area of 9 harpies, 4 poison plants, 3 mushroom men, 4 zombie goblin archers, and then die to something only to have to have them all repop again. To make matters worse, for some reason the game was thinking I was bound all the way back at the beginning of the dungeon and made me bamf all the way back.  This happened three times, and I was ready to rage.

After letting the game sit for a week I was ready to try again though . . . the allure of the harpies was too great.  By the way, I gotta say this . . . those harpies . . . LOL. I couldn't even concentrate on their horrible faces and vicious talons. All I could look at were their perfectly nakey, perfectly boob job boobs. It was so distracting! As I sunk an arrow deep into the areola of a harpy, I couldn't think how I should get bonus points for that bullseye. I mean, the game has a rating, but I think they could have accomplished what they were going for without it. I digress.

This dungeon was good training for how this game was most likely meant to be played:

Step 1: you bamf forward a couple steps.

Step 2: You bamf backward several steps quickly.

Step 3: You shoot to kill. 

Step 4: You drink potions from your quick belt slots, sometimes during the heat of battle.

Step 5: Gather the loot.

Step 6: Go to step 1.

I guess the other option is to pull out your melee weapons and actually stab things when they get close, but melee just doesn't feel as good as bow shooting, so I'm not going to do that.

There were a few really great trap moments in the Caverns of Decay including the old classic from Indiana Jones. Yes indeed . . . the rolling stone trap.  It was an awesome moment.  I'd play through this dungeon again just for that moment! The other trap that was fun in this dungeon involved the old giant blades swinging across a hanging bridge and a puzzle room where if you got the answer wrong, you got stuck with a billion needles.

Speaking of that puzzle room. Wow!  This room is amazing with its magical universe machine.

It was a cool puzzle . . . picture doesn't look like much, but it was cool . . . trust me

The puzzle itself was a bit infuriating. Basically there were two ways to get the clues you needed to solve it. 1) Find all the pages with the symbol clues. 2) Find the symbol clues in 3 random locations around the dungeon. It took a lot of wandering around, but eventually I found them all.  The reward? A piece to a separate, different puzzle.  For that puzzle you have to find 3 broken tiles and put them together to open up a sarcophagus with a weapon upgrade inside.  The infuriating part of this puzzle was that one of the broken tile pieces was actually sold at the vendor all the way at the beginning of the dungeon. 

Being in VR also naturally means that once in a blue moon you really have to search for a button to press around the world in a spot you wouldn't normally look. (Let's call it the VR-Button-Paradox.) This happened in that big harpy court area of this dungeon.  You have to push a button to reveal stepping stones out to a skeleton to give him an arm.  It took me forever to find that button . . . especially because I didn't know I was looking for it.  If they would have just put the button a little closer to the water's edge, it would have been easier to find. Just sayin'.

Past the harpy courtyard is the final boss, and it was a perfectly acceptable fight. Just make sure you're stocked with health potions on your quick belt and use 'em as you need 'em. Mostly you'll need them for when the boss is hitting you while a mushroom wizard is throwing things down on you from above.  Focus on the boss, then kill that pesky mushroom wizard!  Worked great for me.

Happy Dueling!

Chronicling the Karnage!

I picked up Karnage Chronicles the other day as a part of a VR Bundle sale (Incidentally it's also 60% off in the Steam store at the moment), and it's really good! It feels a lot like Vanishing Realms (which I've talked about in passing before), but with what feels like a bigger budget of a game studio behind it instead of a solo dev company. In fact after a quick peep at their LinkedIn Page, Nordic Trolls, seems to be a small 2-10 person team located out of Beijing.

Immediately what grabs you in Karnage Chronicles is the art style and the embodied choices for game selection. To choose one of the two classes, Warrior or Archer, you simply walk through a doorway.  To choose a difficulty (easy, normal, hard, or impossible), you, again, simply walk through a doorway. That's great. Nobody wants clunky, ugly UI elements in a VR space . . . unless you're in Roblox. I jest. Even in Roblox it sucks.

Goblin Archers . . . the worst!

Being in this world feels like being inside a fantasy amusement park ride. Everywhere you look at a rock wall, there's also some kind of bioluminescence that gives the world a fanciful Underdark kind of charm. Just like in an amusement ride, there's pockets of decoration off to the side for you to look at. The puddles on the ground reflect this bioluminescent glowing as well. Around every corner is some kind of urn or bottle to break with a bow or even pick up to throw. It's just a fun world to be in. They've done really well making the cave system wind and turn and open up into natural rooms.  

Timing my run through a trapped corridor

The inventory system feels like a complete rip off of Vanishing Realms, but they've made some improvements to it. You can stack similar items! It's easy to drop and sell!  But at the end of the day, it's exactly like the inventory in Vanishing Realms, which is good!  I'd love to see someone innovate beyond this system, but as far as VR RPGs go, this is as good as it gets.

To be honest, live action melee combat is really hard to pull off in VR. It's super easy to get inside the middle of an enemy and slice around in a strange haphazard fashion that doesn't necessarily feel cool. Karnage Chronicles suffers from this. Archery in VR, on the other hand, always feels cool. In Death Unchained is still one of my favorite games in VR. I've raved about it before. Likewise, I love shooting arrows at things in Karnage Chronicles.

Sticking the End Boss of Wyvernscale with several of my deadly arrows

So far I've been exploring Wyvernscale, which appears to be the first of three areas. In fact, as of writing this blog post, I believe I've just entered the second area Caves of Decay. Little hint if you play this game, there is nothing more valuable than the scroll of Town Portal. Every time you go to town, be sure to buy a new one because you won't stumble on a replacement while out adventuring. I can't tell you how many times I've been bogged down with a full inventory. Meh, inventory, the bane of all RPGs. Am I right?

At the beginning of the Caves of Decay, you run into an orcish innkeeper, a full size NPC, that is absolutely amazing. They really handled him well as a character. All in all, I'm really impressed with the art and sound in this game. It's just done extremely well. The way the sound echoes around the tunnels is amazing in a 3D space and completely unnerving in a good way. Immersion is the name of the game, and they pulled it off extremely well in this game.

Love this guy . . . feels like an Australian Orc

Best part of this game of course, is that you can play it with friends. I'm pretty sure a group of us at work is going to jump into this game and play it together over lunch breaks. It seems to integrate really well with your Steam friend list. Because of that, I'm sure I'll have plenty more to write about Karnage Chronicles in the future.  It's one of the great ones! 

Happy Dueling!