14 DAY TRIAL // I realized I was doing something wrong when I slipped down from a ledge for the second time while trying to aim my boulders in levitation mode, so I made sure that I was on solid ground before flinging projectiles at my reptile enemies.
I was a tool of destruction, able to command the actual world around me, and yet gravity was proving more of an adversary than anything else, which seems wrong no matter how you look at the situation.
Son of Nor, a game from StillAlive Studios that is at the moment in Early Access on Steam, has a very cool idea at its core, but so far, the development team seems to have some problems finding the best way to use it.
The player character is a telekinetic mage who can control the ground around him, can levitate and throw rocks and other projectiles at his enemies, and he needs to use these impressive powers to help a number of human survivors who are hiding from an empire of reptiles, the Sarahul, which has won a major war some time before.
It’s easy to control the cool powers and fling rocks around, or simply use sand to reach ledges and secret areas, but the game makes it hard to battle the enemy forces.
Basically, players who get into Son of Nor need to carefully position themselves in order to force the reptiles to move to a place where they can be attacked safely, without sliding down ledges towards death.
The game does offer puzzle solving and exploration to complement combat, but it does feel like the core idea needs to be refined a little bit more.
At the moment, the weakest element of Son of Nor is the graphics, which are functional and manage to suggest an interesting universe, but do not manage to make the title look attractive and interesting, and some of the textures are low quality.
The developers need to decide whether they can invest the resources required in order to make the game look good or whether they are better off abstracting some elements in order to keep the player’s focus on the gameplay rather than the presentation.
Son or Nor is representative of the way an indie developer can take an interesting idea, like control over nature, and then explore its potential ramifications, and the fact that the game is in Early Access does mean that quality can easily improve before a full version is launched.
Take a look at Son of Nor in action in the video attached to this article.
