Heroes of Umbra

Heroes of Umbra is a sidescrolling action rpg that's incredibly reminiscent of Maple Story. If you've played Maple Story before and were put off by it, don't worry; Heroes of Umbra feels like a game made by someone who played Maple Story and kept thinking about ways to improve the formula, and in a lot of ways, the developer was successful.

Combat
If you're familiar with Maple Story, the first thing you'll note about this game is despite the similar attack animations, Heroes of Umbra has a faster-paced game feel. Attacking enemies produces a small amount of knockback, meaning you can slash an enemy a couple of times before they'll run into you, so you can actually be mobile during combat, which allows for a small amount of dodging--something you're not really able to do in Maple Story.

Most enemies still follow the Maple Story formula of running back and forth on the map and kamikazeing into you, and a few others have projectiles. There's enough enemy variety in each level to keep you interested, but at the end of the day, you're mostly going to be doing the same Maple Story schtick of running face first into the enemy and whacking them until they're dead.

Bosses have slightly more complex behaviors, which was nice to see, but they also tend to beat you down pretty quickly. Luckily, their health doesn't recover upon player death, so you can keep flinging your corpse at them until they're dead.

There's also online multiplayer, which I unfortunately wasn't able to get working. The different skill sets (more on that later) weren't really designed around teamwork, though, so I'm not sure multiple players would have added much to the experience beyond being able to take out monsters faster and getting to chat with your buds, which would be fun, but I don't think it would have affected my overall experience that much--cool feature, though.

Platforming
The most nerve-wracking portions of this game were the platforming segments. The segments themselves weren't overly difficult, but since enemy mobs spawn randomly, it's very easy for an enemy to spawn on a ledge, making it impossible for you to jump onto it without getting knocked back to the ground. This gets really aggravating in the third level, where you can fall off the map for a substantial amount of damage. This issue could be mitigated by removing spawn points from difficult platforming sections.

Precious, Precious Loot
Enemies seemed to drop a nice variety of loot, and weapons filled different niches, so there were nice dynamics to the equipment that made me think about my equipment choices. There was also an upgrade system similar to the scrolls in Maple Story. In Heroes of Umbra, your equipment has gem sockets, and if you fail in putting a gem into the socket, that socket becomes unavailable. The better gems have lower success rates, so there's a risk/reward system that benefits players who ruin multiple sets of gear in order to get an edge on others.

Character Progression
Stats and skills can be allocated each level. Stats are broken down into power, stamina, and wisdom. There's no class system, so you can choose any skill from any of the three class categories, which was a fun improvement over Maple Story's rigid class distinctions. This allowed for a lot of potential ways to build your character. This, along with the loot, were the most successful aspects of the game for me.

It also bears mentioning that the level curve was very smooth. I had to grind for a bit because I hadn't dumped any points into stamina by the end of the second level, but I only had to grind for a few minutes before I was beefy enough to take out the second boss. You can also reset your character build with a potion from the shop, so I could have done that, too, if I weren't so damned stubborn.

Everything Else
The story isn't really worth mentioning--your character has to get some sacred macguffins for some reason that hasn't been explained yet. This is fine, though, because gameplay's really what's being pushed here. The music and aesthetics have that indie retro feel that you'd think I'd be tired of by now, but, nope: everything looks and sounds great. The levels have multiple parallax backgrounds that add a nice sense of depth to the world, and although none of the tracks stuck with me and ended up blending into the staticky smog of all the chiptunes in my brain that I'd half-forgotten long ago, they were always pleasant to listen to.

But Does It Work?
So, all the components I've mentioned were more or less successful, but I have some reservations about this game. A lot of the mechanics are more appropriate for MMO's--the combat isn't that dynamic, the loot system encourages lots of grinding, there are a couple of straight-up grinding quests, etc. However, the game's current build only has about a three, three-and-a-half hour length, and I'm not sure what the scope of the end product is going to be. Judging from where I was at in the barebones storyline, I can't imagine it's going to be that much longer, so the gameplay doesn't really make sense to me.

That said, if this were an MMO with the scope and depth of Maple Story, I'd totally play it. It feels like an improvement in just about every field, so if there were just more things to do and more places to go, then I could see this game functioning very well. But, as it stands, it's a game built around repetitive gameplay that has no real challenges to overcome.

Of course, this is just the alpha, so I have no idea how this game will end up. The core gameplay mechanics are great, though, and I'm interested to see where this one goes. I think it's disingenuous to give a score to an unfinished game, but, if I were to judge this based on its current state, I'd give it a solid 4/5.