Eyes Of The ElderWood

I like the game - some really cool atmosphere, interesting ideas, great art direction, and a cat companion is always a bonus - especially when they happen to be a demon. I do hope the magic system is improved somewhat. It's awesome, but needs some tweaking. Drawing the runes was fine but I found they required a lot of long dragging lines, which had me dragging my mouse off the mouse pad trying to do them properly. Possibly a sensitivity issue on my end, but it felt a little off and very clunky. Hoping the boss fights get tightend up a bit as well. The first one was wildly easy and the second made it feel like avoiding damage was literally impossible, there were even health pickups everywhere to compensate for this, which makes me feel the dev knows its a problem. The biggest draw is also probably the story - in its current state its cool but disjointed. You seem to start halfway through the game and there seems to be at least one level skip. Early access I know, so no real points against the game for it, but I'm looking forward to the whole experience! Keep up the good work!

I am absolutely delighted by this game, I loved level design, the pacing seems slow at first, but when it comes to the fields level it ramps up really well. Shooting feels really satisfying mainly because a bullet trail. Ritual drawing system is kinda tricky to figure out at first but after 3-5 times it is really responsive and it feels really satisfying when you manage to complete a ritual correctly after you get surprised or in the middle of action.

A fantastic atmosphere wasted on a cheap and boring puzzle game. Eyes of the ElderWood presents itself as a Slavic folklore-inspired survival horror adventure: unsettling forests, supernatural creatures, sanity, magic and a revolver. Everything suggests an exploration and survival experience with an early-2000s horror aesthetic. Unfortunately, beneath that presentation lies little more than a linear corridor filled with tedious puzzles. Most of the game consists of lighting torches, activating mechanisms and platforms, finding the next switch, and repeating timed sequences. These obstacles feel artificially inserted merely to stretch out extremely linear levels. The platforming is clumsy, the puzzles are uninteresting and, mechanically, none of it fits the atmosphere the game is trying to create. The magic system could have been used to investigate rituals, uncover secrets or learn how to confront creatures from folklore. Instead, it mostly functions as a glorified coloured key: draw the symbol, light the torch, activate the platform and continue down the corridor. Combat and survival elements are so scarce that presenting them as the core of the experience feels misleading. This is not survival horror with a few puzzles. It is a linear puzzle-platforming adventure with occasional bursts of action, disguised by a survival-horror aesthetic far more interesting than the actual game underneath. Visually and atmospherically, it offers exactly the kind of world I wanted to explore. That only makes the disappointment worse. I expected to survive, investigate and confront strange creatures—not spend most of my time lighting little torches to activate platforms. Attractive art direction cannot carry a game whose core mechanics are this boring, rudimentary and disconnected from the experience it appears to promise. I cannot recommend it.