14 DAY TRIAL // The catacombs beneath a very sturdy swamp town are filled with dead people, some of which are heaped in piles, some of which have re-awakened and are hunting me. I knock two back with a strike from my staff, retreat another few steps up the stairs, and then strike them again. This time they stay dead. I know where the explosive barrels are and where I need to move them to complete my quest.
The big problem is that my health is relatively low, and I see a big band of enemies roaming the area I need to traverse. So, I pop one health potion and get to cracking open some non-explosive barrels and pottery, hoping for some more vials. Once I get to health up to 100, I will set a few opponents on fire and then wade in with my trusty staff.
Graven is developed by Slipgate Ironworks and published by 3D Realms and Fulqrum Publishing. It is currently in Early Access on Steam. It will also be coming to the Xbox Series X and S, the PlayStation 5, the Nintendo Switch, and older platforms from Sony and Microsoft. The title delivers a classic first-person combat experience, with a focus on the occult.
Players will inhabit the body of a priest of the Orthogonal order. The experience starts with him on a boat, moving towards a city in a swamp, and rumors of plague and supernatural assaults soon make an appearance. The game’s universe is very much influenced by classic FPS titles from the ‘90s, with decent writing but no clear innovation.
The gameplay of Graven is also very familiar, with a first-person perspective, plenty of enemies, and big levels to explore. Players start off with a staff and need to carefully calibrate their movement to avoid enemy attacks and then strike back. A fire spell soon makes an appearance but it’s more useful to interact with the world than to destroy most enemies. Combat is tense and it’s easy to make a bad move and get quickly killed.
I suspect that one’s feelings for Graven might be predicted by the answers to one question: do you want to smash tons of barrels and pots to hunt for extra health vials? Cause, on the recommended difficulty, you kind of have to do that to stay competitive with the monster hordes.
I personally don’t mind breaking barrels and checking almost every wall for secrets because I loved the games that pioneered these actions. But others might be less interested in doing it.
The game has good mechanical foundations but it seems to lack something. Its inspirations are clear and well used but some innovation is a requirement in the modern FPS space.
Graven adopts the retro look that defines the shooter looter genre and contributes to its success. The game’s world is bleak, dark, filled with gray and sickly green, with more detail for important characters and locations. This is how Hexen looks in our collective imagination, with modern tech used to re-create the style of the ‘90s. The sound design complements the rest of the presentation well, especially the squishy, weird sounds that accompany staff hits on dead bodies.
Conclusion
Graven’s Early Access version gives players access to 4 big areas, which can be tackled using six weapons and two spells. The plan is to keep getting feedback from the community until the core ideas are polished, before moving to a 1.0 version.
I like the throwback presentation and the classic mechanics. But the launch version of Graven needs to deliver a decent narrative to keep players engaged, especially given the many titles in the boomer shooter genre that are fighting for gamers’ attention.
A review code was provided by the publisher.
