Myth Bearer

Worth the paltry asking price for a competent NES-style adventure game. Don’t expect a lot of depth, obviously. Myth Bearer is probably what Hydlide would have been if Hydlide wasn’t terrible. You roam a top-down open world screen by screen, with paths blocked by (stationary) enemies. There’s a minor puzzle element involved in optimizing where you explore and which enemies you attack first because you’ll be relying on level-ups to refresh your hp most of the time. Combat doesn’t occur until you go up to stab an enemy, at which point you’re shown a preview of the damage you will do to one another simultaneously before you press the button. This helps out immensely with optimizing your path as mentioned above. Has equipment upgrades, magic, secrets, and a decent story for what it is. You’re expected to utilize levels, arrows and potions properly if you don’t want to die, and I will say one item and achievement will be blocked in the late game if you do die. Anywhere fr...

I enjoyed this game a lot! It has some similarities to Desktop Dungeons or DRoD RPG, where you can choose who to fight when, and enemies are also 'resources' to be managed for their XP and other when-killed benefits. This game ended up having a lot more depth and strategy and secrets than I was expecting after a first look. I completed the main campaign, apparently there is a newgame+ mode, and also there were a few secrets I didn't uncover or challenges I didn't do in my first playthrough, which took on the order of seven hours. The game seems designed for save scumming; items with unknown effects kind of demanded a "save, try it out, understand it, then reload" strategy in order to not waste finite resources, but I was fine with that. The game content felt a little back-loaded - the game started kinda slow, but then a ton of stuff started happening and the story and abilities kinda spiral out of control towards the end, which was actually pretty fun. My only minor complaints wer...

Great, fun, short.

A finely crafted game of mathematical strategy. The map is quite intricate, as all of JCBailey's games are (he has quite a few on itch.io). Offers an interesting challenge, navigating the island while picking up equipment and items to allow you to delve further. A pretty cool take on metroidvania style gameplay, you can only get so far without picking up a new item or skill, then more areas naturally open up based on your ability to defeat the enemies standing in your way. It definitely is fun enough to warrant a few playthroughs and I could see this becoming something worth speed running. Game offers a few not so subtle hints from King's Field, a legacy of games I know JCBailey uses as inspiration when authoring his titles. Pick this one up for the really low price and help the dev out, he is likely to produce lots of great games as he develops his skill!

This game is surprisingly compelling and has a lot to explore. It's really fun to figure out the quests and what enemies to fight, and the sense of progression is really strong. Each level up is very impactful. The combat was initially a little strange, but it forces you to make some interesting decisions that simply don't happen in other RPGs. Defeating an enemy truly means something, and often opens up new paths for you to explore. Overall one of the most interesting games I've ever played, and I would love to see more games made in this style.

Good little game. Just the right world size and length. Normally I'd find the backtracking a bit tedious, but in this kind of game, and more importantly a small world like this, it's great. By the time you've beat it after a few hours, you'll feel like you know all the areas pretty well. The difficulty is also spot on. It's forgiving enough to let you not worry about maximizing every little action, so you don't have to feel like you need to reset because you found a new, better sword shortly after you just spent 20g to buy one from the shop. Not too hard to beat the game with a few potions left as long as you're smart about when to level up, bow vs sword, cleaning up easier enemies once you get new gear, etc. My only suggestion is to speed up the movement, or an option for 2x move speed. It's not bad at first, but gets a bit tedious when you're running across the whole map back and forth.

This has been really fun so far. There is zero hand holding even to the point of not being sure what different items do until you perhaps find some way to use them. The game doesn't really point you to any direction pretty much ever, so there's a lot of wandering around wondering what to do next and where to go, but there are some more or less cryptic hints on the walls that you can read. At first the controls took a bit of time to get used to. This can be controlled solely with mouse or with keyboard and mouse. No controller support whatsoever, but you kinda need the mouse cursor to play the game a lot of the game is about hovering the cursor over the enemies to see their stats and sometimes the enemies are too far from the player character. The combat is all about looking at the stats of the player and the enemies and deciding to make your move with that knowledge. The enemies don't move and only stand in one place, often blocking doors, entrances and items, and they don't attack b...

The developer understands what makes RPGs tick and makes fun music! I'll leave more notes once I play it more.

Discovered by accident, Myth Bearer turned out to be a surprisingly good game! It's actually something new to me, never really played anything like that. While it looks like a simplistic rpg from 8-bit era, it is actually a game about exploration and strategy. The mechanics are very simple, which is great, as you can focus on exploration and carefully planned strategy, so you can progress in the game. You're not really punished for dying, as there is no permadeath here, but I personally think the game gets interesting when you're trying to finish it without dying. You need to pick fights, manage the items and spells at your disposal so you can level up and get stronger. Then you can attack stronger foes. It's a bit like in metroidvania games. The game world is complex, interconnected and rich in secret areas to discover. Single save makes things additionaly difficult though, and I'd rather have couple more slots there. All in all, this is very solid, well thought indie game, with nic...

Fun little magic tower like adventure game.