As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
I first saw Flame Keeper while scrolling through Facebook, and it being rogue-like caught my attention immediately. About a week after it was released on Steam and the Switch, I snatched up up. After playing for over an hour, I can see places where the game needs help. This is an early access game, so improvements will eventually come, but I’d like to personally highlight what I’ve found.
Repetitive
Say what you will, but not all rogue-like games are actually repetitive. Take Dead Cells for instance. As you play, you’ll have the chance to change out your weapon, and shield. It makes for an interesting time, because you may find crap weapons or you may find your absolute favorite.
P.S. One of favorites is the twin daggers.
Anyway….in Flame Keeper, the levels are generally the same. What I mean by that is, you have to collect 4 lanterns, bring them to the bonfire, sacrifice your energy to fuel it and then after doing so, move on to the next stage and do it all over. You’ll be doing 3 or 4 stages in a row, with the last one more of a defense camp than what I just described, where you’ll be defending instead of fueling.
After completing the levels though, then you’ll have the chance to go back to the village and use your materials to upgrade your skills and shops, but it’s the core gameplay that bugs me here. You’re doing the same job, over and over, with no weapons to looks for, no anything really. Sure, there are abilities that can be found as you defeat monsters, to add an extra kick to your play session, but it isn’t the same.
Level Variety
The areas within Flame Keeper are called Biomes, and there’s three different sections to each area where you go about fueling the fire, as I mentioned above. The issue is that these levels seem to look pretty similar, and that gets boring. It’s all flat land, from what I’ve seen so far, so you’ll be zipping around it, finding the lamps and you all get the point. There are no hills, no cliffs to jump on, nothing of that. It feels bare.
Positives
While this game certainly needs improved upon, there are good bits about it as well. Such as leveling up the buildings using materials. This is where it becomes a tad more fun, since obviously the higher the skills, the easier these levels become. However, if the core game play isn’t changed up a bit, I’m concerned it will get boring too fast.
Conclusion
The game has the potential to be really good, with different biomes promised. and a large amount of skills to level and also runes to collect to further your experience, but we’ll see what becomes of our flaming friend. Either way, there are Flame Keeper improvements to be made.
Leave a Reply