Reviews - Kitanode

This game can be surprisingly addictive as it is so easy to play and progress can be quickly made.

It's a turn based RPG dungeon crawler and uses a 2D top-down view.
The floor is made up of tiles and it takes one turn to move from one tile to the next, this means you can zip about fast by holding down the movement key and then take your time and move one tile at a time when you spot an enemy. It reminds me of maybe Nethack or Brogue without the Ascii graphics.

Players can concentrate on the looting and killing as there is little need to spend ages customizing your character. When you find a new weapon or armour your character immediately picks it up and will swap it for whatever you are currently using if it is better. If it's worse then it gets sold for some coins.
You can still go into your inventory to swap different types of weapons if you want to have more attack instead of speed for example but this won't need to happen often as your character usually has the best setup already.
Usually i prefer to spend ages looking at stats and choosing the best setup in my RPG games but in this particular game i think the developer made the right choice by keeping the need to leave the main screen to a minimum.

The game's three playable classes are the standard Fighter, Mage and Thief classes and it soon becomes apparant that each one requires a different playstyle to use them to their full potential.
The thief's style is particularily memorable and employs a 'hit and run' method made possible by his high speed stat.

Graphically the game is not going to win any prizes and each level's look and layout follows a similar simple template.

This however, in my opinion works in the games favour!
I have it installed on my little netbook and it runs great. It's perfect for playing in little spells of 30 mins or so when you need a break from whatever else you're doing and more often than not you will find yourself playing for longer

As far as retro style platformers go this is definately one of the best and i would definately recommend it to anyone looking for a platformer that challeges just how good a gamer you think you are.

Immediatly after starting the game i was impressed by the music which seemed to drive me through the levels with a sense of danger and urgency.
Although i still havn't completed the game yet the sound is one of the best things about the game and really suits the graphical style.

The graphics have obviously had some time and effort spent on them and they could easily of been mistaken for a true NES era game. (except for maybe the main character which i thought was probably a little bigger than the NES sprites i remember!)

Platformers arn't my favourite genre but at one point in my early gaming life they were. Titles such as Contra and Metroid were my offerings to that particular gaming god back then and this could easily take it's place among them.

I could be jumping the gun a little here, as like i said i still havn't completed the game and i'm only about half way through but if the rest of it is at least as good as the first half then it definatly deserves to be better known and considered as a title for others to be compared against.

It's hard to review this game as it's still being developed at the moment and i don't want to leave any spoilers.

One can only speculate at how much more content will be added before it is finished but there is no shortage of updates and fixes for it on a weekly basis.

Right, so what we have here is a turn based adventure set in a near-future USA with survival foremost on your characters mind.
The land and it's inhabitants seem to have been subject to some pretty messed-up chaos since the game's protagonist last remembers it and now he has awoken from cryo-sleep in some strange lab somewhere and hasn't a clue what has happened, where he is or where his clothes are!

The map seems to be randomaly generated for each playthrough and is made up of hexagonal tiles covering a large area of wilderness with lots of ruined villages, swamps, forests etc to explore.

The player starts out with nothing and must fight, loot and scavenge for essential items such as food, weapons and clothes.

Of course there are other inhabitants who have similar needs and when confrontations occur then combat usually takes place and sometimes the npc's will actually gang up on you or even fight among themselves maybe leaving behind some much needed loot which can be made use of.

When combat does happen between the player and an npc, it is split into turns and you chose one action from a wide selection of different moves. These will differ from actions in other fights depending on the situation and what skills your character possesses.

The skills are chosen at the start of the game and the player can use these to chose a particular playstyle like a stealthy indirect approach or a tough brawler with a fetish for making peoples lungs bleed.
Some skills seem to have no use in the game though, and are maybe a sign of ideas yet to be implemented, likewise the graphics and audio suit the game but are a bit sparse at the moment. Even so, at this stage the gameplay still manages to shine