Eldrum: Untold - Text RPG 12+

This gave me fun flashbacks of “choose your own adventure” books when I was a teenager, 35 years ago. I could easily see this developer coming out with a series of these games with different stories, plots, and characters. Even different genres. This game has a medieval setting but in a fictional world. But they could easily do SCIF-Fi, modern-day stories, period pieces, etc. (WW1, WW2, Cold War, European history, etc.). This could be a whole new genre of video games in the App Store. They could create fictional characters which lived during famous historical events, and develop fictional side-plots that were happening alongside the major historical events. One of the best things about this game is it uses your own imagination. You become immersed, but in your own imagination. The artwork is more impressionistic instead of High Definition, so it allows a lot of room for the story to come alive in your own mind, just like reading a book or listening to radio theatre. And the coding is much simpler, so the development time should be much shorter and less expensive moving forward. I think they are onto a great idea here. I hope they make many more. I was left with the feeling like I read a good book. A very nice change from stereotypical video games. Well done guys!

I enjoyed this game immensely, the story is great, the characters as well, but I have two complaints, the combat, in what I’m pretty sure is an intentional move, is very Chance based, which sounds fine, but sort of just leads to a lot of save scumming, and my second complaint is about the ending, I had no qualms with the story until the ending, I thought that when I arrived in the big city, it would be the gateway to the rest of the continent, but (SPOILERS)

After fighting Mantis in the Sleep Temple, I was completely take off guard by the ending, I thought I was about 3/4 through the game, but no. The suddenness of the ending is a small thing though, my main problem with the ending is that it doesn’t give much closure, what happened to Ato, the island druids (I forgot the exact name of the lodge) etc etc. I was just left wanting more, which is good, but a little too much so, to the point where I felt like the story was only partly finished. Great game though, I hope there’s a sequel.

As far as RPGs that are accessible to the blind go, this game is definitely a solid addition to the roster. It is incredibly replayable, with different choices and paths that unlock previously unseen places and interactions. This is One of those games that will make you play over and over again, trying to find all of its hidden secrets. stats really do matter, as there are many places you simply cannot reach without a certain stat being high enough. The problems i’ve had with this game are the combat and the save system. as for the combat, while it is technically accessible, the fact that you have to double tap the attack button at the right time using voiceover while also alternating between special attacks makes it incredibly frustrating and a bit more difficult for visually impaired players to enjoy. The second game in the series, Eldrum: Red Tide, fixed this problem, implementing a fully turn based system That is completely accessible. The game has a tendency to auto save at weird places, which can sometimes cause you to lose a lot of progress if you die at the wrong time.