Kryopolis

Kropolis was made for the 2018 IGMC. This review covers the contest version, meaning that any bugs, issues and the like may be changed in the future versions. That said, the game is marked as complete so I'll still give it a score.

Visually, Kryopolis is very nice. It has an old school aesthetic based around darker, edgier graphics. There's a lot of greys used in the game, which gives it a bit of a washed out, dreary feeling, however that works well for the game due to the setting. The lighting effects are, for the most part, animated and there's a lot of care that has gone in to creating stark, stunning visuals. What menus were there were very slick and simplistic and fit the rest of the atmosphere well.

The sound was very well done, too, and the lack of background music gives the game a very tense feeling. Honestly, the sound, lighting and visuals were woven together to give a really cool feeling, making the player tense and uptight about exploring the setting.

The gameplay was simple but interesting. You have a limited inventory and an axe. To use the axe you had to set it into a useable position. This was a bit annoying as it added extra wait time to attacking but it wasn't too detrimental besides making combat feel less slick. There were also items you could find that were of use like bear traps that could hold enemies and medkits that would heal you. I did wish that keys didn't count as inventory slots since they'd be small enough to just shove in your hand or mouth or where-ever, and they took up precious space.

The battles in the game were simple affairs, and what puzzles existed were also rather simplistic in style. It worked, though, as trying to think deeply whilst immersed in the atmosphere would be a bit annoying. I did find the control scheme annoying and the lack of rebinding options for keys added to that annoyance.

Overall, Kryopolis did a great job of showing a small chunk of what could be a much larger game. I would have liked a bit of a bigger inventory and I wasn't a fan of how clunky the attacking was but otherwise the game was really nice.