Of Blades & Tails

Very solid foundation of mystery dungeon esque. The stat distribution is my dream game of single player RPG, we can mix-match stat and skills as we want. Though in early access the stat doesn't matter that much, I can see how good it will later in the game. Only one note I have is in early level (under 5) is too rough, enemies rather strong, no skill yet, expensive and rare healing item (in early level) so either player dies or back to camp a lot. Afterward is pretty balanced difficulty spike.

And just like people wanted, a character customization is nice. Though if no plan for it, I hope Reik can be more active character, so we can have more feeling of the story. The world building and environment are already good. Looking forward for more content later!

The game is tedious. Fights are mostly boring, the world is mostly empty. The main village is really small.
You only get 2 quets which both require you to be at least level 4. So you have to start a tedious grind of exp.
It gets boring very fast. The fact that the combat is also shit doesnt help either. Even the ranged classes like elementalist and archer only have a measily range of 4, meaning you always have to also put skill points into melee skills and your second loadout HAS TO BE melee, otherwise you lose over half your hp in one fight.

One theme fits the game very good: NOT very thought out.

Unless I'm missing something major, this game does not really feel balanced.

I am playing on the intended difficulty, and I can not fight more than 4-5 monsters consecutively without getting to low HP. Even with proper strategy, most monsters move 2 or 3 times for every one space I walk. This makes it nearly impossible to get out of any fight unscathed. Consumables are expensive, loot is sparse, and gold feels as rare as, well, gold.

I can not gt 3 maps away from the spawn town without being destroyed, unless I somehow saved up enough gold for 15 healing items somehow.

Balance needs some work.

If you enjoy furry aesthetic and hack-and-slash RPG elements, just buy this game now, *pleeeeease.* The more support this game gets, the sooner it'll become completed, and I NEED to see this thing get fleshed out to its full potential!

Man, I've been desperately in search of a Diablo-like game but with furries for more than 15 years now... While this doesn't have the multiple character classes to choose from, the grid-based inventory or the 3D graphics of a Diablo-like, everything else about the game definitely scratched that itch that I've had. Until someone actually makes my dream of Furry Diablo, this is pretty much going to be my favorite hack and slash RPG furry game out there.

Graphics are simplistic but cute, easily conveying a variety of bandits, bugs and botanical baddies to sling arrows and spells at, or to rush up to in order to slash or bash.

If I had any real complaint, it's that the experience is far too short... But it is in early access, so that's eventually going to be resolved, so PLEASE BUY THE GAME!

This game has a lot of promise but a lot of ways to go until it's ready. The developer is currently active and responds to people on the forums and listens to our suggestions. I'm confident the game will get finished and be a worthy product.

The game was both fun and brutal since the risk in some places became dire so you had to find solutions. that being said here are the Pro's and Con's of the game.

Pro's:
1. The game has a good balance between fun and challenging and what rewards you can get for taking huge risks in certain places.
2. The game has a nice mix of weapons and builds you can spec in to with the skill tree.
3. Gear upgrade is a nice way to become more powerful with orbs while limiting makes your choices have more impact on the game.
4. Treasure hunting is a nice optional content to get epic gears along with incentive to do them for the necklace, which will also help find better loot.
5. The quests add another reason to go out there and explore and see what you can find in terms of events, caves, npc's or random quests.

Con's

1. upgrading is very limited due to limited number of orbs you can find which means if you used them and then want to re-spec you have no way to upgrade new gear and weapons.
2. Gear and weapons after a while become junk you vendor since it may not have the full stat combo you want or it is properties not related to your class and or build. re-rolling stats on gear and weapons as an option would help with this situation.
3. Lack of crafting may or may not impact the game on full release it all depends on what other methods to upgrade gears and weapons or how you can get stronger as options if done right you may not need crafting.
4. Bosses and elites randomly spawning in the world as events or spawns which have a chance for orbs or legendary gear would be a nice touch since legend gear is limited.
5. Quests that offer any gear or weapons as reward need to give multiple options and let you pick one would be a way to let players decide based on their class and build. rather than fixed legendary gear and weapon rewards.

Game version: 0.13.0
Careful but wholehearted yes.

A really nice, smol'n'chill tb-ARPG, everything works as it should and it's quite fun to play already. Pixelart is nice, music is pleasant (never change Immerfurt theme, it fits perfectly), worldbuilding is basic as of now.

Character systems and itemization are on the lighter side, but builds are already diverse and, while still require quite a bit of balancing, already enjoyable. There is enough content for at least two playthroughs and dev is balancing development with 'bigger world+new content for old areas'. Quests and encounters are somewhat light too, but there are some fun ones already.

Biggest pro is that dev knows what he wants, and that's good for a solo project. If you want a chill, slightly goofy tb-ARPG wilth easy to grasp systems and willing to wait for more content, unquirking of quirks and balancing of unbalances, or just want to support a good project, i can safely recommend it.

p.s. 14 hours are for two playthroughs, as a pure sword'n'board and as a pure mage. There are unarmed, ranged and 2h staff skilltrees too. And support trees like athletics, survival, dirty tricks and stealth. I do not feel like i've wasted my time with this game.

This game has all that's needed to make a simple, yet really interesting game. It would be cool if there was some sort of character customization, even if we'd need to keep the character as a fox. It would also be cool to see more skills or a bit less linear skill trees (even if they were to stay pretty simple).

Can't wait to see more quests, areas, and probably some more characters we could meet, talk to, befriend, or bond with. Perhaps a tavern with some of them, a chance to have a drink or something to eat with them... and then again set off to find some gold and items!

It will great to see how this game grows. And thanks for working on this!

A work in progress and could use more world building/ things to give life and history to characters both main and NPC. Give me stories in-game I can find, unmarked/random encounters (if workable), NPC's that maybe have something to say about other NPC's previously encountered, I want to know more!
Combat difficulty can be easy until you get over confident and swarmed with multiple baddies, not a problem though. Using knock-back abilities can be very fun when there are exploding barrels/mobs around, Here's and idea, maybe have an entire skill line dedicated to tossing around enemies or dangerous objects like barrels and exploding plants?

Anyway, game is still in Alpha and has a long way to go but I like what I see so far.

Really nice start to the game.

Dev seems to be working hard. Game has a really nice roadmap for EA.

Not much happening yet with the main story quest. You get to the second part, and you already get the message: "not doable in this version". This made me mad for a few mins. But then I just played, ran around, and there was actually a lot of stuff to do. And it is fun.

This is an enjoyable game that will run easily on most hardware. The turn-based combat allows plenty of time to study each enemy's pattern, and plan out each fight. The fights quickly become very tactical once you have a few skills unlocked, especially when fighting more than one enemy at once, and each new enemy presents a new challenge. The game is being very actively updated, with a major update every month it seems, so I look forward to seeing where it goes in future.

This is a rather enjoyable game. It's definitely very difficult but once you get into it and start properly combining the effects of your skills it becomes really rewarding to outmaneuver your foes.

The art is really good, it's not anything fancy but it's crisp and well done. Even the title screen parallax is just really appealing. Sound is also well done, the soundtrack is dynamic and interesting.

I also love that this is a Godot game and it's cool to be playing something I've seen some making of videos on.

It is a quite addicting game, though the movement is kind of hard to get used to. I would love to see revealed squares remain revealed so I don't have to remember where in a square a place was, even if it shows the general area on the main map. But it's fun gameplay and good tactics. Can't wait for Levendell to be opened!

I'm really enjoying the game so far! as of this review I have 5 hours and I've only explored the starting valley area. I haven't experienced the grind that everyone is talking about, I think its because I generally explore as much of the map as a can before trying to progress quests. getting good gear is pretty easy I've gotten multiple epic drops and some legendary stuff from treasure hunting. i will say the game runs very slowly in some areas like the crawler dens. I've even experienced some crashes. it seems to be because of the particle effects and when there's a bunch of enemies moving at once. I'm running it off of my laptop but I'm capable of playing most games like this without noticing frame drops. as of this review there isn't a way to lower graphical settings like particle effects and colored lighting toggles and such. I can almost guarantee it would fix the crashes if this was implemented.

Of Blade & Tails is a tactical RPG where you control a fox adventurer. Fight against bugs, meet people, collect itens and equipment, do quests and those type of stuff.
It`s currently EA, but the dev is making progress. I will update this review when the game is finished. So far I enjoyed what's available.

Nice little game just short and its the type of content that takes a while to make but 5 seconds to beat it yaknow...

I had fun clearing areas and discovering things. It was fun building my character but the skills could use more meshing. The achievements and some of the enemies were challenging at times. This was what made it a 8/10 for me. Dont get me wrong these types are games are awesome but the dev has a lot of work to do to make this game what it deserves. I would gladly dish more money out.

If this game blows up, it would maybe worth going online...

and then after that maybe workshop mods.

Could be a banger.

Cons
I had a treasure map for 5,3 specifically. After searching for 30 minutes..nothing even close like it. Later I got a map for a different coordinate but the same drawing. This one was actually correct.

Its quite a fast game, however I love 2d dungeon crawlers with fun loot but there needs to be more replayability and more use of current content. Perhaps create an end game activity that uses random gen with all previous world events. Thus creating a challenge arena or something. When done with one you get graded and there's exclusive rewards. This will use all content and allow vast replayability.

This is Stoneshard... but not as good.

It takes a lot of inspiration from the game which should be obvious for anyone that played Stoneshard already. But it falls short in most areas.

The worst being the grind. Stoneshard has its fair share of grinding but it never really feels that way. You just do normal dungeon runs and get enough xp to progress the game. In Blades and Tails you are best off going to the traveling merchant in the upper right and killing the level 4 wasp nests over and over by reloading the game. Because this game lacks the tactical depth of stoneshard but isnt easier to compensate.

And then there are the current skills. Shields have the worst starting ability possible: 50% dmg reduction for 1 turn. Which is useless since it still is a free turn for the enemy where you don't do damage. And this game is not predictable like Stoneshard where you know that next turn will be a huge damage spike. You have no idea what abilites enemies have or what cooldowns they have. Also the enemies constantly crit and do randomly more damage then last attack.
Also: wasted levelups. If you want to progress the skill tree there are levels where you just don't get a new abilty. Which means the dev couldn't come up with enough abilties and felt the need to strech the game out.

The game relies heavily on consumables since neither health, mana or stamina regenerate. Yet if you save the game at bonefires you restore everything. Which again makes farming next to one where there are enemies the best and easiest tactic. Because every consumable costs so much money that you would go broke playing the game "normally".

I just did the first mini boss that's in the first dungeon. I was level 6 with admittably bad gear and the boss was level 3 with (hard) in flaming red letters. Burning through 10 healing items I did manage to beat it. Except for 1 level up book the reward was not worth it.
So even though the game is about grinding, you can't even rely on the lvl indication because there was no way in hell that I would have been able to beat that thing at level 3.

I have now 600 hours in Stoneshard. I was hoping to spread that time to other games. But yet no other one has rise to stoneshards level (which is still an Early Acess nightmare... but this game is als EA so it doesn't even have that over it).

I am about almost 14 hours in. I absolutely love this game. It's a nice mix of exploration, grinding and Quests. (there is a total of like 12 Quets right now).

The combat system is well thoguht out you can allways switch your game style by resetting your skill tree and points and rebuilding to a mage or hunter or thief or worrior etc. You have traps, dummy to distract mobs, webs to stop them from moving for few turns, you can use your surrounding to inflict damages like throwing mobs and enemies to traps, bombs etc.
you can disarm traps by using a toollkit or without it (if your perception his high enough). Upgrade your gear (you need to find orbs of magnifica which you can find by exploring).
There are many mobs and enemies too but I just hope that there will be more soon.

This games rewards you for exploring stuff you can even find hidden places which are not marked as Questionmarks on the map. The questline is nice and has a nice variety of quests.

So far even if there is only a handfull stuff you can do it's still really enjoyable and for even for that handfull of stuff you get your moneysworth.
I just hope that soon there will be even more stuff to do because I already have all the achivements in the game so far.

Great game. Similar to Tales of Maj'Eyal.

This game lacks content for being early release but the foundation of the game is leagues ahead of ToME.

Can't wait for new content and a full release. Thanks for the great game Felix.

Not a bad game. Definitely similar to games like Stoneshard, and while it is easier than the aforementioned title you will find some challenge here. I would recommend this to people who want to play a more accessible version of this genre. For being early access there is a lot of content here, and more to come in the future. I picked up the game day one, and for the price I think it's worth it. Lots of loot, dungeons to explore, and enemy types. I just wish the character look and appearance was customizable outside of whatever armor you are wearing.

I'm closing in on 50 hours, yep imagine that? It's a turn-based RPG that is action-oriented but rewards a thoughtful approach complimented by a cute art style. Very simple but charming animations all at once. You get to explore a fantastic land populated by different animal tribes, monsters, dungeons, villages, towns, and the world isn't even fully available as of right now. So you're wondering what I've be doing with 0 alt characters and just 1 main ? Well I followed the main story or I would pause during questing to hunt for treasures in ancient ruins and mysterious dungeons mostly! Between all that I try to fine tune my build with a little patience and luck buying gear from vendors too. Ultimately I'm quite looking forward to the next big content update and maybe you could be too if you give it a chance ;) Happy Hunting friends.

This game takes classic turn-based dungeoncrawling back to its purest form. The charming art style makes for a beautiful environment to explore, with sound design that really helps bring the world to life around you whether you're taking a relaxing stroll through the woods or cautiously checking around every corner of a cave. The mechanics are simple and easy to pick up, but the tools which you're given to manipulate those mechanics to your advantage adds a level of tactics to combat which heavily rewards players for understanding both their own skills and the enemy's.

With the market saturated with new roguelikes, roguelites, and mobile games that can barely even be called rpgs anymore, while playing this game I felt like I'd gone back to an older age of games: to a time when your knowledge of ASCII characters could be a matter of life and death, and success wasn't just determined by the loot you found but by how you used it. Overall, I'd recommend this game to anyone who wants a refreshingly classic take on this popular genre, it is a relaxing few hours of questing and dungeon crawling that is guaranteed to leave you satisfied, but eager for the next adventure.

There is a lot of potential in this turn based RPG. You can choose from several builds and exploration is rewarding. You will need to think your actions because if you just want to rush it you'll realize your HP has dropped rather too fast. I haven't encountered any bugs yet, except the enemy bugs the game has. Looking forward to see where this goes.

Join the Discord server, the developers are great people and take notes of feedback and chat with the community.

Been playing the demo before the release. Quite a fun game, if possibly a little challenging at the beginning. Love the turn based gameplay where you can calmly decide whether to jump into the fray with melee attacks or pelt enemies with arrows and magic.

The initial challenge comes from enemies being stronger than you'd expect. Especially if you don't either have any equipment or many talents/skills or get ambushed by enemies at a higher lever than you. However, you'll get enough talent points after a few levels to manage yourself quite well. There's nothing to lose from dying in the game. You just get "teleported" back to the latest campfire you rested at.

The ability to pick and choose between different talents as you desire is also quite nice. You can get some magical skills while also focusing on sword and shield. It should be mentioned, however, that the level progression isn't the fastest and that you might benefit more from focusing on one or two talents at the beginning. It should also be mentioned the "combat talents" are dependant on the weapon you're currently holding, meaning you must have a sword or axe in hand to use one-handed talents and a wand (of the appropriate type) to use spell talents. You can always respec your talents later on if you feel like you've made a poor choice. Or just wish to try out a new build. Granted, this isn't for free (costing gold), but at least it's available more or less straight away.

The art style is nice, with some extra details for the portraits. The design of the world feels nice as well.

All in all, if you're a fan of turn based RPG games without feeling like you'll "lose everything when you die," then this will certainly be an enjoyable experience.

Reminds me of the good RPG games you would find on various websites like armor games or Kongragate you would find 10-15 years ago. Very pleasant music. Too little game time for me to comment much else right now.

I'm about 4 hours into this game play so far, and I wanted to summarize some of my early thoughts on this intriguing game.

I think the developer has done a good job of on-boarding new players into the game with a healthy mix of opt-in tutorials.

The balance of the game, is challenging, but rewards persistence and planning moving through the turn based combat system. My build out initially is elemental wand and stave, which is proving to be challenging so far.

The story is very early, but has enough content so far to keep me going. I'm excited to see how this plays out, i have about 3 active quests so far.

The art design is really impressive in my mind. I like the balance of detailed pixel-art overlay, but with the 'almost' paper doll character interactions... I particularly like how the main character changes its look based on equipment build out, that's not easy to do.

The exploration is a key pillar of the game it seems, and is very engaging... as I've already found some hidden gems (legendary equipment) that was cleverly hidden. It makes you want to explore every inch of the maps.

I've submitted some items for quality of life improvements, like re-centering camera feature on the mouse, optimizations in the path-finding algorithm, and some suggestions for advance difficulty mechanics.

All in all, very pleased with this purchase, even as early release. I have already recommended this title to MANY of my discord peers... worth getting for sure!

Early player of the game here and from the start don't expect to play Baldur's Gate here. You control only one character and you won't have a whole group with you. What's nice however is that even if simple at first, it can still challenge you in some way.
The visual is quite retro and let your imagination do the work. And when served with the right gameplay, the imagination is the best tool for a game. I've had a lot of fun playing this one. I hope it will grow to be filled with adventures. Not the ones with a lot of heavy consequences, but the ones that are making you want to explore more the world, discover unique artifacts, find new places, and so on.
May revisit this review once I've played more!

Cute game with fast exploration/combat that has a consistent difficulty curve throughout the experience. The game respects your time with the ability to fast travel to many different places you have visited before on the map, and allows for reallocating your attribute and skill points (at the cost of an in-game resource). Only complaint I have so far, is that the skill bar is limited at the moment. When you get too many skills, you have no place to place anymore on the bar (to my knowledge).

Overall, I give this a thumbs up and am interested in this games progress.

This review consists of 8 hours of demo play (demo save migrated to EA, and 1 hour of EA), I will update as I continue playing.

Pros
- Unique items with interesting effects.
- No annoying mechanics like crazy injuries, hunger, thirst, and stuff.
- Decent difficulty on adventure mode
- Nice pixel art
- long term traditional rogue gameplay rather than short runs

Cons
- The maps feel a bit generic and could use some more recognizable terrain. (dev said they are working on this).
- I kind of wish that talent lines were not straight lines even if you can spec into multiple talent lines. I guess I feel I just want more choice.
- I wish there were more armor stats (EA did add more which is nice)

Pretty solid for $12. You get a few different build options, the gameplay is clean, and you start off with basically all the weapon types unlocked so you can test them as you work on your build(s). Give it a go if you like games like this, I think it's a neat idea and worth the time! :D

What an amazing game! I played the Demo version 3x times with different builds ranging from Melee to Ranged and it was so good. Now I am enjoying EA so much as it has the same great style content and lots more compared to the Demo

The music and the graphics in this game are so good. Hearing the music and watching the Main Screen landscape already absorbs you into the game’s atmosphere. And when you enter the game you find a unique RPG with a lovely setting and a positive atmosphere. I love that the game is not filled with gore, horror, blood and all the BS that is plaguing a lot of modern games. I really like how the Dev compensated that and changed it to mystery, wonder, suspense when you go in darker places like the caves (created by sounds, music and glowing lights). Cleverly done! It is so good how the atmosphere is similar to an adventure that you would want to take even in real life rather than a gory mess

You have different biomes to explore, different vendors, different cities, points of interest, night and day cycles, plant gathering that heal and regenerate your character, level ups, different unique builds/paths that change your character play style (but don’t worry if you want to change them you can do that anytime by using an in game resource), gear with rarity system, weapon upgrades (using resources) and lots of other good quality content in this amazing game made by 1 person from what I can see. And this is just the beginning, a lot more will come till the 1.0 version release. I am also hyped for the upcoming summoning tree!

There is just 1 time payment with a very decent price compared to the included quality content, no microtransactions, no pay to win, no NFTs and all the other BS

I highly recommend this game!

-wake up next to fire
-equip my axe that makes me believe that i'm stronger than i actually am
-wander into the forest
-forage for snacks
-find cool bug
-get attacked by said bug
-run away
-go get cozy next to fire
-rinse and repeat

Overall I'd say I'm enjoying Of Blades & Tails. The game is at its core a turn based RPG with an intriguing plot and fun NPCs. The combat is easy to learn, and the talent abilities for each weapon style are fun and unique. As the enemies gain more abilities and you familiarise yourself with the mechanics, combat begins to feel like puzzles that you can use precise movements and your abilities to solve in the easiest way, making it so when you take damage or die, you know its your fault and not the game's. The "tutorial" and first mission introduce you to the mechanics of the game in a simple and smooth way, while also showing off the rich world and possibilities for exploration within the game.

The ambient sounds and music for the game are great and set the mood very nicely, and the side quests and NPC dialog pushes you to explore the world and make the game feel more alive and active outside the zone you're currently in. In the demo we only got to explore the forests around the starting town, but with this early access release showing off the swamps and a whole new town, it's really put into perspective the care for detail and time that has gone into and continues to go into this game, developing it into a true masterpiece.

I'm invested in the story and loving what I've seen so far, can't wait to see where the game goes from here!

quite a good game having a lot of fun with it. might need to tone down how good melee is to encourage other playstyles.

Fun game so far. Works on 4K just fine. I'm still looking around a bit, but I think I finished everything available in-game so far. Was able to get through it just fine with a bow/sniping build.

Deciding to drop my review a bit early, due to surprising lack of reviews for this game.

I've completed approximately half of the current game, exploring and completing most of the top-half of the current map (v0.10) and it's relative quests and bosses. I can say that it's definitely worth picking up even in its current state, although it might be worth holding off for a few months if you want achievements and bug/balance fixes.

Game has good exploration, challenging combat (albeit, there are some cheese tactics), engaging gameplay (being a fusion of a ARPG and TRPG) and a nice retro-adjacent art style and soundtrack.

Very fun game with a lot of good things going on. The skill floor is low but the ceiling is high, there are a lot of tactics to be learned. You can't quick save but the save system is very forgiving and lots of save points are scattered through the map.

Rewards exploration of each area, they do need more enemy skins to show that you've moved to a different region with higher level enemies but I expect that's in the works.

Developer is responsive to feedback and adding requested features to the game, really looking forward to this one as it grows and expands.

I was walking back to reach a bonfire to save and was holding down on the keyboard. I ran into a bomb that was behind a tree and auto-attacked it, blowing me up. My shield is very poggers. 10/10

I don't ever write reviews but I feel like this indie game deserves all the praise one could give
The balancing of enemies to the sense of reward when you get through a dungeon or cave are almost perfect and the different strategies you can come up with to get through situations on this little gem are vast I'd give this game a solid 9/10 for what you can do so far for an early access
Can't wait for more updates and more content
I just want more.
If your not sure if you wanna get this I hope I can persuade you to take the plunge as it's a great game

A fun turn-based RPG. It's very much in early access (not done), but there's a very solid foundation here, and I enjoyed my time with it.