Trials Survivors Demo Review
I've put a good hour into the Trials Survivors demo and I'm on the fence. The demo does not give a great representation of what the game could be, since it doesn't provide any access to meta progression. They have a great spell customization system, but I don't feel compelled to spend more time with it. I'll keep this review on the shorter side.
Trials Survivors is a Survivors-like game running in stages on a 3 minute timer. During each stage, you are given an overall objective to complete which generally isn't too difficult to achieve. Regardless of how long it takes to complete an objective, the 3 minute timer is a hard ceiling. After the timer expires, all enemies are wiped and all the XP on the map is automatically collected. Assuming you've achieved the stage objective, you get a chest which rewards you with more XP.
There's one interesting objective which is to destroy towers around the stage. The other objectives are killing elites, escorting an orb, and not dying. There may be more in the full game, but in the demo we only see those 4 objectives, meaning there'll be at least one repeated objective per run. The escort mission is mildly annoying since it works basically the same as the survive objective, but you need to stand near a floating, moving relic. The relic is never in danger so you just follow it as it plods along randomly; it doesn't feel so much like an escort quest, but a moving King of the Hill objective. As such, I've named the relic "Hank."
In the demo there are 3 "constellations," which is the in-game term for elemental abilities. However, in the current stage of early access, there are 7. The 3 in the demo are pretty typical: fire, ice, and lightning. Fire attacks have a chance to ignite enemies which does damage over time, ice damage can slow enemies, and lightning can proc shock which lowers their resistances. There are also 3 spells for each constellation and they aren't particularly original if you've played other Survivors-like games or even Diablo. That being said, one of the things I really liked was the ability to customize your spells rather than having a set progression path.
Spells can be buffed through leveling, each spell has a set number of times it can be buffed, and the buff's efficacy is determined by RNG and shows the min and max possible rolls. When a spell reaches max level, you get to pick an evolution for the spell and it gets new upgrade slots. As an example, fireball can become chain fireball. It's literally chain lightning with fireballs and it's as powerful as it sounds. I felt pressured to funnel upgrades into my starter spell or whatever spell I unlocked within the first few levels. The game throws enough mobs at you that evolving an ability early feels like a necessity rather than a fun choice. I spent my early-game rerolls trying to make sure I'd get spell-specific upgrades rather than new spells or global modifiers. Also with my history in MMORPGs, I feel like the colors used for rarities are a bit misleading: common upgrades are gray, uncommons are blue, rares are yellow/gold, and the highest rarity is orange.
There are two starting classes in the demo: a fire wizard and a lightning wizard. They buff their respective elemental damage types as well as getting a couple other thematic perks. Currently the early access version has 5 different classes, so with 7 constellations, I'd bet that classes and constellations will continue to go hand in hand. In addition, each class is given a thematic movement skill. The fire wizard's dash leaves a trail of lava and provides iframes, whereas the lightning wizard gets a significantly stronger movement option: a blink that damages on landing and allows you to bypass walls.
Map design feels a bit on the milquetoast side. In the demo there is one biome, and I don't love it. As of time of writing, the early access states that there are 2 biomes. Additionally the first biome's maps are not what I'd call big. I'll admit that it's more visually interesting than Brotato, but I wouldn't call that a particularly high bar. What's more is that the maps have doodads and walls spread across them and getting to the doodads to break them and try to get the goodies within proves to be an irritating challenge without the lightning wizard's blink or an evolved ability.
They've also stated on their Steam page that the game is going to just be an absolute mess visually. They love mob density and you can have tons of projectiles per cast of a skill. Combine those 2 things with the XP laying around on the ground, and you're going to have difficulty seeing anything. I don't think this is an intrinsically bad thing, but for me, it leans towards being a negative.
My final real complaint about the game is that enemies don't seem to have a cooldown between their attacks or a knockback, so you can very quickly go from full health to dead. I think it would be better if there was some sort of more noticeable delay between attacks. The game has lots of healing throughout the map, but it's rendered null by how quickly you can die to one bat mob.
My beef with the game is that the systems at play here aren't really strong enough to carry the game by themselves. The objective system is shallower than a kiddie pool. The round-based system isn't new or different. The only selling point for me is the spell evolution system, and that wasn't strong enough to make me want to try every evolution in the demo, and certainly isn't enough to make me want to buy the full game.
While I really like the ability evolution mechanic, there's not much else that does it for me. They do have a meta-progression system (relics) outlined on the game's early access page, but unfortunately it's not available in the demo so I have zero way to determine what that's like short of buying the game, which I'm just not sold on at the current price point. That said, there is a meta-leveling system that provides small bonuses. If it's as advertised, it might just be an infinitely-scaling version of other meta-progression systems we've already seen. That makes it somewhat unique but I suspect it would require a significant time investment from players. Based on what the demo has to offer, I'm just not convinced there's enough to justify that investment.
The game entered early access a few days ago and you can check it out on Steam. It's 20% off until June 23rd and the demo is still available. I highly encourage you to check out the demo for the spell customization and evolution system, but based on what I've played, I wouldn't buy the full game.
Search posts by tag: