This is a recent game I started to play:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/462770/Pyre/Pyre is interesting because of many reasons. The number one reason is, it is made of two genres that I really don't like to play but for some reason this game draws me in and I actually like playing it.
Now, what is the game actually about? Pyre is a mix of a visual novel and sports game. because of this I'm pretty sure that Misery would never touch this game ina ny way. The game is about 80% text and 20% actual gameplay, where you actively do something aside from just selecting dialog options. Liek I said above, I despise these genres, especially VNs who are barely even games. And of course they aren't meant to, they are meant to be interactive novels. Problem is, the genre is corrupted. This comes from the fact, that the genre comes from Japan and most of these games are anime-like games with anime-like tropes. If you like this stuff, it's good for you but if you don't like this stuff, you cringe at the dialogs and the over-the-top story. Most of the time they have some obvious erotic or romantic subplot that is actually the main plot while the main plot is just the subplot to carry the romantic relationship of the main protagonist and basically every other character int he game.
Pyre ont he other hand is a visual novel how the genre should be. No overdramatic, romantic plot that is force-fed to you during the entire game whiel dropping the actual main story that was the reason why you would ever buy such a game. Seriously, the amount of forced relationship stories and pairings in these games is the best reason why I don't want to buy this stuff. On the other hand, Pyre was made by Supergiant Games, the developers of Bastion and Transistor, two games that received very positive feedback. Like those games, pyre shows excellent, hand-drawn art style and a great soudntrack while also giving the player an interesting story to follow. But this time the game focuses more ont he story and less ont he gameplay than the predecessors.
In the game you start as an exile, a person who was cast out of their homeland and driven to the Downside, a hostile land with different environments and climates next to each other. Ypu cannot flee by normal means from teh Downside because the river, that leads to it, has a strong torrent that washes everything back in.
The game starts with you being wounded starving and at the brink of death. You are found by three masked individuals who save and nurse you back to health but ask for your help in return. It is revealed that reading in this world is a forbidden knowledge and you, the player, are one of the few who can do this (and was most liekely the reason for your exile). They give you a magic book to read which tells you of a way to return to your homeland, the commonwealth, if you fulfill a series of magic rites. After that, the tutorial on said magic rites start, where the three masked strangers are sucked into the book and you, as reader, lead them in the rite.
The rite is revealed to be soem sort of sports competition in which two teams with three players face against each other. The goal is to throw an orb into the enemy fire (Pyre) which will extinguish a part of it. The goal is to extinguish the enemy pyre completely. Only one player per team can move at once, the others have to stand still until the active role is passed, this means if someone has the ball, he has to pass it first before another player can move. Each character has an aura, an area that marks your damage field. If a player of the opposing team touches your aura, he will be banished, wich means he is removed from the field for a set amount of time. This gives you an open window to throw the ball into the fire. Two characters witht he same radius on their aura will of course banish each other but different characters have different aura ranges. Additionally you can throw said aura in some sort of attack in front of you, which acts as some kind of attack shot. This allows you to hit a person before it can touch you but requires more skill and coordination because a fired aura takes tme to recharge and you are vulnerable until than.
The player who carries the orb always has a zero aura range and cannot fire his aura, but he can fling the orb, either at an opponent (to reduce his aura to zero) or at a corner. In the best case you can fling it directly intot he pyre, dealing damage to it. Each player has mutliple sorts of powers that are dependant on their race. Each one has some sort of sprinting ability that allows them to rush forward, either as long as the button is pressed or perform a quick dash in one direction to avoid incoming attacks. The other ability is to jump or, in some rare cases, even fly above the auras of enemies, that way you can avoid attacks directed at you or jump past an enemy defense line. Both abilities differ from player to player in soem way, humans have the very basic abilities with normal sprint and normal jump while an imp, a bat-like creature, can flap their wings to fly past auras and move in quick, small dashes across the map. The aura ability can also vary from race to race, imps explode instead of shooting the aura in one direction, this explosion hits mutliple targets in a circle but also banishes the imp as well.
reducing the Pyre to zero is the only way to win the game and the game does not end until this is done (unlike other sport games where you might have atime limit), damage to the Pyre can be achieved by either flinging the orb into it or, which is better, carrying it with a player to the Pyre. The last example banishes the palyer who did this from the next round until a new point is achieved (from either side) but this also does much more damage.
The games uses some very basic RPG mechanics to make te game more interesting. There are four stats which affect the performance of the abilities of players, they increase damage to the Pyre, increase the range of your aura, reduce the respawn time of banished players and increase the moevement speed. The different races in the game also affect the abilities (like mentioned above) and the starting stats of a player. Demons for example are slow powerhouses with a huge aura, a huge attack shot that is hard to dodge and deal massive damage to the pyre but move slower than a slug. To make up for this, they have some sort of stomp jump, that pushes enemies back when you land (unless you land directly in their aura).
The stats can be improved through talismans (equipment) or with training, which means you play with them in matches, they level up, they get better stats and abilities. Additionally, reaching certain story events will also improve the stats of players. The player has also the chance to permanetely imrpove a stat for all players by studying the book of rites at certain points in the game, although this has a cap, so you cannot reach massive amounts of points with this.
Of course the main part of the game is the rich story about the Downside, the different characters you meet ad the Scribes, 8 Exiles who wrote the book of rite to give other exiles a chance of escaping the downside. The player travels through the land in order to reach the places where the next rite will start, on the way you can choose the path you want to take which might have positive or negative influences on your players, you can find new items to equip or sell and of course reveal more of the story to you. The other exiles in your party will reveal more of their backstory to you and tell you for an example how they landed in the Downside, what their previous life was and what heir goal is, once they return home. After you fought through 8 rites (one for each of the Scribes) you have the opportunity to free one exile of your party. this means the player is permanetely removed from your team but this is of course the main goal of the game. Ater you freed an exile, you return at the start and do it all over to free the next one, now with one player less.
An important aspect to the game is, that loosing does not end you the game, not even the final match. If you loose a match, you simply don't get the experience for ypur players, which means later matches get harder because you lack the strentgh. On the other hand, if you win a lot of matches, you become a strong powerhouse but in the final match, the liberation rite, you have to choose which to let go and the one with the most exp. is the most likely to get you there. This also pushes you back in term sof power but since you start anew, you don't need that much power anyway. Loosing the final match means that no one is freed (from your party at least) but since you can repeat the cycle again, you don't loose anything, you might even loose on purpose out of mercy for your opponent, who also wants to get freed. But of course, you don't know much about your opponents and soem act really rude towards you and your team, so in the end, let them suffer some more.
If the game repeats over and over, is there an end to it? The game itself states, there is none but there might be more behind it if you win more matches and reach a certain point. While you travel, you fill the book of rites with new pages which reveal the back story of the 8 scribes, finishing a full circle will also add new chapters that also fill with new pages once you beat a new rite. The story behind all this is interesting to read, if you like something like this.
In the end I was positevely surprised how much fun I have with the game, the story alone lets me play this some more, because I want to know more about my fellow travelers and I want to know how the world of the game became what it is now.
The actuall sport minigame is fun enough to keep going and since it makes only a small part of the entire game, it never feels too repetetive and the different abilities of the players and races add to this.
