I remember wandering around the expo hall floor at PAX, bewildered and amazed. Looking around at the endless sea of games and people playing them, French developer Amplitude Studio‘s booth caught my eye. As a fan of all of their previous games, I was beyond excited when the trailer for their next game, Endless Legend hit my inbox sometime prior to PAX. And now, here I was at PAX, and right infront of me was the playable demo. I sat with one of the game’s designers Benoit as he showed me the basics of what playing Endless Legend would be like. I was glued to the screen, and once the demo was over, he told me that I would soon be able to play the game on Steam. That was a promise that he certainly kept, as only weeks later, the game hit Early Access. I’ve been playing it, and yes, it is a lot of fun.
Now that I have had the opportunity to play the game in the comfort of my own chair, I feel even more confident that this will be an excellent game. Considering how early it is in development, the game is very much playable in its current state. I got into my first game knowing that I was likely to get stomped out by the AI, but I wanted to learn the ropes and get a feel for the game. Missing are tutorials which would definitely help a new player, but thankfully the game features tooltips and notifications that help keep you clued into what is going on. Strategy games like this can get very complex over time as you build more cities and capture more territory, so its important that the interface is accessible. The interface looks great, but still lacks some usability. For instance, I had trouble keeping track of my construction queue at individual cities. Further, for some reason, I had trouble selecting cities if I had a hero stationed there, so I had to hop through menus in order to access the construction queue. These aren’t game-breaking issues, and also bear in mind that I’ve only spend a few hours with this early build. There very well could be some ‘user fail’ going on here, but again, without the tutorials its a bit of a trial-by-fire scenario.
As someone who really appreciates art in games, Endless Legend is simply gorgeous. Bearing in mind that the game is very much still an alpha, it looks and feels absolutely wonderful. The animations are fluid, the art style is unique, and the world feels alive. The battle system is really neat, and has the potential to be a very unique element to the game. I had trouble determining the difficulty of battles, as some enemies would just decimate me while the game predicted that the battle would have been more even than it actually was. Perhaps it was bad strategy on my part, or again, the fact that I don’t really know what I’m doing yet. I think its likely to be a bit of both, but hey, that’s what being in open alpha is all about! The developers are keen on taking user feedback and putting it to great use as development continues on the game. Amplitude intends on using early access for its intended purpose; to release an incredible game based on the needs and desires of their fanbase. The game isn’t perfect yet, but trust me, they’re listening.
You’ll definitely be seeing us streaming Endless Legend as it continues to develop. This is a game that has the potential to be something great, so you’d best keep an eye on it!