Sundered: Eldritch Edition

On the subject of metroidvanias (hey, I warned you I love these things) the game Sundered: Eldritch Edition is an absolute pearl to the collection. How many games do you own that are fully hand drawn? Probably not that many. The detail here is well done, and only on the "upscaled" enemies will you really notice the pen lines.

Sundered sucks you in and keeps a firm grip. An H.P. Lovecraft inspired metroidvania melee hack and slash with a skill tree that does not quite rival Path of Exile, but is certain to remind you of it.

The voice of the trapezohedron

The first thing you'll notice once the game actually starts is the voice of the "narrator". It speaks a dark language which will remind some of you of German, and will often taunt of tempt you. Bring me the elder shards and I will make you powerful. The choice to give in, or resist will determine the game's ending as well as the skills you have available. Personally, I find the voice to be one of the best selling points of the game.

The game itself plays very fluid, fast and the pacing is perfectly done. It's not often I bother getting ALL the achievements for a game, but this one can be done in about 2-3 playthroughs. It also lets you freely roam most of the world and each of the 3 BIG bosses may be killed in any order to progress to the final boss. Image below for scale. You are small and insignificant.

Death is inevitable

Or so the eldritch terrors and would have you believe. Once you do get killed, you'll respawn (there is no escape) and get access to your skill tree. Spending gems will improve your abilities, health, shield, ammo, armor - you name it. But also special perks which you may find when killing stronger enemies. These will give you a bonus, but also a drawback. For example increased armor, but lower health and shields. Increased crit chance, but lower health. A total of 27 perks are to be found and may be upgraded.

You can play Sundered alone, at night, or locally as a 4 player shared screen game. It's available for Windows and MacOS, and currently 75% off at the Humble Bundle store.

Release date: 28 Jul, 2017

Minimum system requirements: Windows 7+ 64 bit, or mac osx yosemite. 1.8 GHz processor, 4 GB ram, DirectX 10+ compatible graphics card with at least 256 Mb video ram, 3 GB storage space