Downward Hands On - GameRome

During the GameRome we had the opportunity to try various games from independent developers, thus meeting old friends and making new acquaintances; among the latter we got to know the very nice guys of Caracal Games, three young companions who, guided by passion and the desire to do, in just over a year Downward, game that is about to arrive on Steam in Early Access towards the end of the year. That said, let's not waste any more time and let's take a closer look at the beta of this game.

One thing immediately struck me as soon as I saw the game in the distance: the graphics. I immediately thought "it is not possible that an indie game has such an accurate graphics", but I quickly changed my mind: one of the strengths of the proven title is certainly the aesthetics, well-kept in every detail and really pleasing to the eye. The view is in first person, with a style halfway between Mirror's Edge and Far Cry, ideal for a game that is spread over various floors of height and in an open world environment. But what is Downward really? As soon as I asked one of the developers this question, I was told that it is a game of parkour with a post-apocalyptic medieval setting and sci-fi elements (I had it repeated at least a couple of times before I understood) in which our aim will be to move within the game environments looking for artifacts able to give us special powers that will help us in our enterprise and that will allow us to influence the game ending since the developers confessed to us the absence of a single ending.

Just started the game we will find ourselves in the shoes of a survivor in a setting that is very reminiscent of Jak & Dexter's; we will keep in contact disoriented and disoriented, and that's exactly what the developers wanted to convey. Continuing, between a jump and a run on a wall, we will begin to hear a voice that will speak to us and will begin to give us small pills of information about where we are and what happened; advancing in the game areas we will meet other survivors and we will find objects, from the description of which you can get some small glimpses of the lore of the game, very intricate and hidden in the world around us. Great attention has been given to the details of the game, for example each wall will be used for a specific action, but how to recognize which action is related to each one? Developers have therefore differentiated the walls with different mosaics for each action, starting from blue for the wall jump, red for climbing, orange for running on the wall and so on, simplifying the life of the players and adding a really pleasant aesthetic trait.

I feel compelled to break a lance in favor of the guys at Caracal Games, as they were able to take various functional elements from different games and re-propose them in one, well blended and that fans try a sense of nostalgia, but they do not give us the impression of copying. We can find some mechanics already seen, such as the possibility of being able to place a waypoint where to return via a teleportation option for any reason, especially useful for avoiding dying, or being able to use floating essences to make a double jump and reach higher areas, and all this there it will make us rethink the games of a decade ago, making us return to children for a moment, also helped by the suggestive atmosphere of the game. We look forward to the release of Downward and are confident in the development team, which for now has let us try two of the four areas present in the game and that has guaranteed us great surprises; that this is the beginning of a period of limelight by independent developers of the Bel Paese? We hope so!