Into the Emberlands Review

 

Into the Emberlands is a Point and click Rogue lite focused on exploration and adventure; however, it may be just a tad slow paced for me. Lets dive in to see why!

(Disclaimer: The game was provided to us for free by the developer.)

Story

The Emberlands used to be a calm and beautiful land where the people known as the Knacks lived in harmony. But then the Miasma appeared out of nowhere and devoured everything in its wake, leaving the world in pure darkness. Well, almost everything, as your small village still has a fire going that seems to be the only thing that can withstand the miasma.  

 

You become the Lightbearer by taking a small piece of the big fire into a lantern, and then start to explore the world to find your fellow Knacks that are lost in the miasma. Using the lantern you guide them back to the safety of your village, and uncover the secrets of where this darkness came from.That is pretty much the intro, and the game doesn't focus that much on the story itself. It's mainly there as a contextual reasoning to everything that is happening in the game. 

 

That being said, I do think it is a charming intro, and gives you enough good reasoning to why you're exploring plus enough mystique to the miasma.

Gameplay

Into the Emberlands is a Rogue lite point and click game in its core, and what that means is quite literal; you point and click at everything, you move by clicking, and you manage your small inventory by clicking. In fact, the only time you don't click is when you press escape to pause the game, or quit and save. At first I was surprised by the simplicity of the controls for the game, but Emberlands is more of a "think and make decisions" kind of game, rather than action packed one. It is a game that wants you take your time to figure out what you want to do.

The whole point of the game is to explore the randomly generated world covered in miasma, where you can find resources, and your fellow knacks, to then bring them all back to the village to keep on upgrading it. While you're in the miasma your lantern will slowly drain on each step you take, and if it goes fully to zero you become lost. This is a game over, and you have to restart without any of the upgrades or items you found along the way; however, the only thing that doesn't reset is your village, and the more you upgrade it, the more benefits and help you get on each subsequent run. For example, you can unlock a chicken that gives you starting resources, and later a starting upgrade. You can also unlock a spot that gives you tools like an axe to cut trees, and a pickaxe to smash boulders in the way. Then as the village upgrades you can also get better version of said tools.

As you explore you will find random creatures, or events scattered everywhere, but if you are lucky you can even find tools you need! In the events you stumble across, most of the time you help out different people, and are then usually rewarded with Ember Crystals. These Ember Crystals can then be given to different chickens (no idea why chickens in particular but I find it quite amusing haha) to upgrade either your lantern, inventory or coin bag. As the village keeps on growing, the demands of the knacks and resources required will grow as well, so you will want to upgrade your stuff to have room for everything you need to do as the game goes on.

Thankfully to make sure you don't get lost you have a nifty compass on the upper right that always points towards the village, and mysteriously the village appears sooner than you think when you start to walk back towards it. In my experience it felt like the miasma was making me question where I had traveled before, and where all the resources were.  I can say the effect of the miasma feels fairly real to the player themselves, and not just the characters in the game. 

When you have familiarized yourself enough with your tools, you will start to explore further away from the village, and find new biomes with their own rules and sometimes own set of tools and resources to obtain. (Some of them are only relevant once your village is high enough level.) Thankfully there are fast travel check points that costs coins to use, and allow you to have quick access to the different biomes in later runs. 

 

While exploring you also start to unlock new knacks you can use as a lightbearer, and they each have their own quirks and benefits. Some start with resources, some start with a bit more ember, and so on. I also found out that if you leave resources on the ground in the village they do in fact stay there for the next run, so you can keep on stockpiling them; given that there is enough room left in the village that is.

And this is pretty much the whole loop of the entire game.

Pros and Cons

Lets start with the positives; the game looks very charming, it has cute characters, nice aesthetics, cozy music, and fairly simple to understand controls (I mean its literally just clicking with one button). I stated earlier that the effect of miasma affects the player themselves, and honestly I am still thinking about it. At some points I could have sworn the map looked different, and at other points there were resources or other events where they weren't before. I am not sure if the world keeps on randomly generating as you explore, or if I am just that easily confused by it haha. However, it gave such a nice atmosphere to it all, and makes you understand why everyone is getting lost in the miasma. I tried looking up if it was randomly generated while on a run, but couldn't find anything! So if anyone knows, or maybe a developers wants to chime in, I would love to know!

As much as I praised the game, there are a few things that kind of ruin the experience for me personally. 

 

First: Your character is VERY SLOW when they walk around. I would even go as far as to call it a snail pace. I understand the idea was that the game is a slower paced experience in general, and if the character the player controlled was too fast, there is a chance you could easily miss click during crucial fire management situations, and prematurely end the run. However, I wish there was a speedup option in general. It honestly started to feel very frustrating with how long it takes you to simply get from point A to point B after you click where to go.

Second: I may sound a bit too brutal when I say this, but I want to be honest about it... The whole core game loop is a bit of a glorified fetch quest in its entirety. Every single village upgrade requires you to go and get more knacks, then upgrades for your character requires more resources, and then you need to get even more resources, which also requires more money, and then you need to get more tools. Then after all of that, you need to bring it all back to the village just to finish one quest... One quest of many that are all rinse and repeat. This is combined with the fact that on a game over you loose all of those character upgrades that you might have spent a hour (or even several hours) getting, and then you have to go out and do it all over again at a snails pace... Like I said, it becomes frustrating... To say the least.

I don't want to sound like I hate the game, because I really don't. I can see the passion the developers had for Into the Emberlands, and what kind of idea they had in its core. I just think personally the game needed a bit more added to the game loop itself. Having the option to speed up would put a small band aid to the whole thing, but honestly there should have been more permanent upgrades to the character themselves earlier in the game. Maybe dive further into the whole "miasma effect" mechanic, and give the players more decisions to make during the standard moment to moment gameplay.

Closing thoughts 

I do understand that the developers wanted to make this into a cozy game with a slow pace, and I can see that being a pro more than a con for other kinds of gamers out there. As harsh as I have been with the game, I do think it is worth taking a look at it at least, but that depends heavily on what kind of gamer you are. It is possible you might enjoy a more relaxed and slower paced experience, so don't let my critique stop you from trying it out! With its very simple control scheme, I could see this game doing well on mobile devices, and it could be a nice experience to have while being out and about during every day life. Great for when you just need a small moment to do some cozy adventuring.

Hopefully the developers keep on either developing this game, or learning from it for a new game in the future. There is a promising idea here, and again, even if I got frustrated with the game, I did find quite a few moments where I genuinely enjoyed it.  

 

So do I recommend it? I would say yes and a no, as it depends too much on what kind of experience you're looking for. Into the Emberlands might be the game that gives you just that experience you are looking for, though it wasn't the kind of experience I fully enjoyed personally. However, if the game does sound like your cup of tea then, you can check it out here!

 

VERDICT: Maybe