Reviews

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  Rolandem

  Dec 20, 2016

  Fun and interesting game with nice graphics, however you might have quite high mouse delay that i have not found a fix for :/ .
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  Wonderboy in Monsterland

  Feb 27, 2017

  Pros:- Good First person perspective game Parkour!!! Hardcore Parkour!! graphics good enough for what is needed Cons:- Tutorial says "Press and hold space to double jump over multiple jumps presses and hold space...falls to doom because controls are not fully as polished as they should be climb back up again and again because double jump doesnt work as it should gets new keyboard to test... falls to doom again and again because controls not as polished as they should be overall good game ..... needs some tweaking to make sure controls work as stated...
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  Borderline

  Apr 29, 2017

  Great experience! Very nice graphics, gameplay is solid and voice acting is good for an inde. Also I'm in love with the parkour mechanics, can't ask more! + graphics + story + gameplay + voice acting + online leaderboards - sometimes it's hard to undestand where you have to go - online is very hard Also the devs are active with the community, GG devs.
• 

  Spikestrife

  May 8, 2017

  ThePruids video sent me here to check out the game, tried the demo and bought the game for myself and gifted it to my friend as well. I can see why it is recommended by him. Praise the sun untill you hollow!!!!
• 

  mountain goat

  May 8, 2017

  Just can't recommend this. It looks nice, and it moves smoothly, but it's just not engaging for long. Yes, it's a first-person parkour game, but it fails to capture what made Mirror's Edge's best moments so great. There's very little depth to the movement. The character doesn't need to accelerate; he runs at full speed right away - this kills what made doing well in Mirror's Edge so rewarding. There's no sense of momentum or buildup as you move fluidly through a level, which makes doing well less fun and screwing up less meaningful. It's missing mechanics like skill rolls or turning around and jumping out of a wallclimb; I'm not trying to bash this game just for not being Mirror's Edge, but it doesn't introduce anything new to bring back that depth and creativity. You've got your anomalies, but even they don't do a whole lot; by adding skills like super jumps or slingshotting but restricting them to particular locations, you're not really creating more depth. It's a glorified springboard; it's a tool placed in the environment that's clearly meant to be used in one specific way. That's not depth; it hardly qualifies as gameplay. It doesn't make you think; all it really does to "deepen" the game is force you to backtrack once you've unlocked a given anomaly so that you can get all the stuff that you couldn't before. That's not gameplay. That's more walking. It's not just anomalies that suffer from the issue of being very clearly placed for a specific purpose. The whole environment has this problem. If something has wooden beams hanging off of it, you climb it. If it's got that floral pattern (and, frustratingly enough, ONLY if it's got the floral pattern), you can wallclimb/wallrun. The levels are very telegraphed; you can tell at a glance exactly what the dev wants, and this is problematic because the only option is what the dev wants - there is no room for creativity. It makes the game really easy and linear. The devs saw the number one complaint with Mirror's Edge, the lack of player freedom, and attempted to fix it by creating an open world and a skill tree and anomalies. But with little depth to the movement and painfully linear level design, Downward is far more restrictive than Mirror's Edge ever was. Downward is early access, so maybe I'm passing judgment too soon. But seeing as the early access blurb mentions nothing about deepening the mechanics, I'd give this one a pass. It's too shallow to be entertaining for long.
• 

  Xiberius

  Jun 2, 2017

  After a couple of hours with this game i'm really impressed by it. Unlike many Early Access games this feels very polished, from the graphics through to the gameplay. As a lover of parkour from games like Dying Light and Mirrors Edge I was interested to see it used in more of a puzzle setting rather than action, and Downward does this really well. It starts of linear just to guide you through the basics and then lets you play in an open world environment. Its beautiful to look at and explore, although I don't now what I'm supposed to be doing! Like many indie titles the game doesn't hold your hand, so you have to work things out for yourself. Although there is an objective marker you can choose to ignore and just explore. There were many occasions where the character says 'maybe i'll come back later', when you reach a certain point. I'm not sure whether this is due to it being early access or simply I don't have the required gear to progress. One things for sure, if you're looking for a parkour style puzzle/adventure game in an open world then this is for you. Yes, there are some enemies to face but its not an action game, which for me is refreshing. Watching the development on this one closely - this is the most polished early access game i've seen and cheaper than most other early access game too!! The game has been released from ea, and is one of the best indie games i've played!
• 

  Dixiefrieder

  Jun 5, 2017

  I found this game by accident and it was a great surprise. Very original concept and great environment. I don't particulary like parkour games but Downward is someting more, fightings are a good choise to add, they are simple at the beginning but get more challenging later. Also the MARK is very smart and useful (it's a portable checkpoint that makes all the experience more engaging, if you remember to place it). The story works fine (little more than an excuse to jump around), controls (as it should be for a parkour game) are perfect and you need a little practice at the start. Also graphics are very smooth for an indie game (like AAA in my opinion). Money well spent
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  TheGiorghoney

  Jun 13, 2017

  When I started this game the first time, I didn't expect that I could have found a game like that: - fresh and exhaustive gameplay - very good graphic (i love the particle system used here) - good sounds - good dubbing I really like the idea of setting parkour in a fantasy and exploration context.
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  nooboftheforest

  Jun 14, 2017

  It's cheap for an EA game, it looks really good, it's fun. It's like Mirrors Edge but with no urgency, take your time and explore. The voice acting is TRASH so I set voice volume to 0 The save games seem to fuck up with updates tho so maybe hold off until it gets released
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  Baznoc™

  Jun 28, 2017

  I Love the way theve (the Devs) have flushed this Game out SO much that it's the Look that keeps me playing it. It has no issues that I saw of control, and 'Parkour moves' are just hard, you have to practice them. I did. This is a Great game Un-Finished I m,ight add but I cant wait to see what else the Devs come up with. I give this a 7 of 10 Fun game, I just wished I could play More! But what they give you will take Hours of play! Enjoy it! I did!
• 

  Andromeda Lost

  Jul 14, 2017

  can't recommend this game. It's trying to hard to be too many different things and achieving none of them. The gameplay: The mechanics of a parkour game at it's most minimal. You are essentially reduced to using the same 5 moves over and over in slightly different combinations. 4/10. The story: Confusing and without any real sense of satisfaction in the conclusion. You are forced to try and fill in the gaps of what is going on based on a few narrative dialogs which are lack-luster at best (and in some cases, can kill you on beta planet since you can't pick up any lanterns during the slow dialogs yet you continue to take damage over time.) 5/10 The voice acting: Pretty good actually. The protagonist has the voice and demeanor of a pretty average guy with a bit of a goofiness. 7/10 Combat: Well, it's really not. It's just dodging away from attacks. Which makes sense for a parkour game, as parkour is the French martial art of running away. However, this just feels clumsy. The antithesis of this is the final boss fight which is lackluster and yet frustrating. It forces you to use what I can imagine is the exact same strategy that anyone who has defeated her followed. Meaning standing behind pillars for 5 minutes at a time waiting for your stamina to recharge. Underwhelming at best. 3/10 Graphics: Not the worst, but this goes into the repetitive design of the actual gameplay. You will find yourself wondering if you had already been there before since it mostly all looks alike. 6/10 Challenging: No. This is not a challenging game. It is very linear and the Mark basically keeps you from ever dying if you place it well. Additionally, all of the walls are colored with which parkour move you are supposed to use. Red for climb. Blue for wall jump. Orange for wall run. Green for between wall hopping (Which there is almost none of.) The only challenge this game presents is in the "challenges" themselves. 3/10 Bugs: This is still a very early version, so there are still plenty of bugs in play. However, since it's an early release that just launched at v1.0 I won't grade this. I'm not a programmer so I have no idea how difficult it could be to flesh out bugs in a game like this. Honorable mentions: This game does force you to think strategically in how you upgrade. Upgrading your skypiece multiplier early gives you a higher net yield. Upgrading your selling skill before selling anything at all also gives a higher net yield. I did enjoy the first few parts of this game. However, it did lose it's charm very quickly. The Ugly: This is the poor-man's version of Mirror's Edge, only without the parkour... or story... or combat system... or challenge.
• 

  AleXioS

  Jul 14, 2017

  I really enjoyed the demo and was eagerly waiting for the full release. But I'm left with disappointment and annoyance after playing the game. Why? the Devs have implemented a "feature" in the game that makes you lose Skypieces (floating orbs) if you fail the jump and fall from great heights. Now, these skypieces serve as the game's currency to upgrade your character's attributes and that means if you lose enough Skypieces you cannot upgrade your character! You'll have to reload previous checkpoint for the orbs to respawn and try the section one more time, with precise jumps so as not to lose the orbs again. This is utterly frustrating and most importantly NEEDLESSLY punishing the players. This gameplay design also subtly discourages players from taking exploration risks, which is in total contrast with what the game's product page says: "Discover: Freely explore and enjoy breathtaking landscapes, reach secret places to collect useful items and hidden treasures." While some have suggested alternate methods to gain orbs (mainly suitable for experienced players), the important question still remains: WHY to punish players in such a way? What's the gain? Lastly, since this "feature" wasn't there in the demo, makes the demo MISLEADING. So in the current form, I cannot play or recommend this game for its flawed anti-player design. I will wait for the Devs to either remove the said annoyance completely or at least make it optional. Else refunding is my only option. That'd be sad because I really wanted to like the game and support this indie game studio.
• 

  f2ll3nUp

  Sep 29, 2017

  I want to start with YES, I had fun. There was enjoyment to be had. Beautiful looking game that kept my attention. This game has a 'Very Positive' review rating, so you have heard the good. I will jump into the cons: -The map was not easy to follow; I understand wanting a player to explore, but this was completely out of the way parkour nonsense. - Story wise, it seemed to be full of potential, but nothing of substance. Nothing was solved or concluded. Just a lot of questions. DEFINITELY needed more story. - LASTLY....The final boss was stupid. Absolutely horrible. Don't get me wrong, you were warned that this was the final boss. But there were no manual saves. So if you went into this (poorly designed) boss arena, you were stuck. No going back to an old save, no upgrading a little more. It was a cheap, horrible design, that lead to a very poor ending. In conclusion, I had fun with this game. Frustration was felt at times, but it was an alright game.
• 

  goatrace

  Nov 27, 2017

  This is a beautiful game. I'm glad I picked it up, but there's definitely room for improvement. Though I found myself frustrated at times, I can see the potential here and am looking forward to see what Caracal comes out with next. PROS: -there is a nice tie-in between the worlds and enhancements to parkour capabilities. once new abilities are discovered, it's fun to re-explore previously unavailable areas -parkour elements are easy to learn and feel pretty smooth. a good introduction to parkour games for beginners. more advanced players might find them repetitive. -the worlds themselves are gorgeous -small, responsive dev team CONS: -objectives are not easy to follow and I found myself aimlessly searching around more than once -the storyline has a lot of potential, but seems stunted--it's unclear why the hero needed to collect the items he did, how he ended up where he was, and why the other characters introduced are significant. finding "pre-apocalypse items" was a nice addition, but could easily be expanded -similarly, the game finale seemed rushed there is a warning that the finale is coming, I just expected something more in terms of plot once it was finished and left unsatisfied. I also found the mechanics of this final level quite frustrating. it did tie in the major elements of the main story, but whether I was able to successfully interact with key items seemed completely up to chance
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  ダ4ニエル ( ರ_•́)

  Feb 4, 2018

  Recommended! The game has more to offer than I expected at first sight: Looked like a generic platformer made with glamorous Unreal graphics. But in fact, the world is very believable, uses some beautiful color schemes and has amazing and rewarding platforming. Pros: - many stuff to explore and collect - neat story with twists - needed 11,4 hours for my first playthrough - platforming is believably integrated in the environment - environment can be changed through certain actions Cons: - needed some time get into the controls, especially how the wall jump mechanics need to be executed properly - a little too much text/tutorials, which led me to overlook some important info on how to interact with certain objects in the world - but maybe my bad :^) - some minor/major bugs, which occur very rarely: like flickering graphics when i start the game in fullscreen (had to play in windowed, borderless), some clipping stuff here and there, two times (in 11h!) my controls were partially blocked and input with certain buttons had no effect Overall: 9/10 :)
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  VolkmasterBlood

  Jun 24, 2018

  Downward is a thrilling game. It was a bit shorter than expected, but if you love parkour games, open world, and exploratory puzzles, then Downward is the game for you. I hope that they include a bit more content in the future, because this game has so many cool mechanics that can still be used in different ways. EDIT: As someone who completed the game with all the possible endings, I'd like to respond to some common criticisms in the negative reviews. 1) Parkour is clunky. The parkour isn't so much clunky as it is exact. When you jump from a wall run to a distant wall, you need to be exact. In other parkour games, being slightly sloppy can still net you a positive result. This game doesn't allow you to do that. It makes it slightly more difficult, but the learning curve is an easy one. I could easily see people being turned off by the parkour. But I think it works well for people looking for a slight challenge. 2) Too many soul orbs. Yes. This is true. I easily maxed out all abilities by the end of the game and bought many things. I thought they would disappear after a time, but they eventually returned after I took hold of one. I would say the system for losing them isn't as rough. When you die, you lose a percentage of them. But this can be remedied by gaining the ability that allows you to negate losing any entirely. Although I wouldn't say this is a fault. It just seems like there is a lot of them lying around. 3) Bad voice acting. I couldn't disagree more. There are four voice actors in total, and the quality is quite good. On par with a AAA game. The writing on some parts may be a bit forward, but otherwise it's effective. 4) Bad open world. I could see how some people would be turned off by this. The open world is truly open and has very little to serve you in terms of telling you where to go. But I loved that about this. It is open world, but on four fairly small maps. Paths were easy to learn, and exploration was damn fun. You had to parkour to go everywhere, meaning you were constantly using all of our abilities all the time to go places. IMO, open world was done correctly. This game would have suffered without and open world.
• 

  Emblem Parade

  Dec 25, 2018

  There are some very good things about this game, but the bottom line is that I cannot recommend it to anyone. The best thing about [I]Downward[/I], and what made me want to play it in the first place, is the explorable world, which opens up to you more and more as you gain certain abilities (the Metroidvania genre). This promise is essentially fulfilled, with plenty of environmental challenges in many carefully crafted levels. It's wonderful to discover a new area, or to go back to an area you visited a while ago only to find new delights and secrets available to you. But there's quite a lot of bad things about this game. The world is fairly interesting, but the story taking place in it is weak and predictable. The voice acting is horrendously bad, and the dialog not much better. At least there's not much of it! And then: the awful, awful controls. There's the "parkour" angle, a big part of the marketing of this game, but it's really kinda gimmicky: yes, you can sometimes bounce off walls, but [I]Downward[/I] is essentially a 3D platformer with finicky magical powers. Very few 3D platforming games get it right, and here we have yet another example of why. Jumping from surface to surface in first person is awkward and imprecise enough, but here it gets worse because the magical powers require you to focus on one spot so that you have to manually spin your character as you move through the air. There's a "focus" ability that is supposed to help but it often makes the experience even worse at it warps your vision and messes up the timing. For much of the game the bad controls are just annoying, but there are several challenges that are made infuriatingly difficult because of them. Bad controls are a lazy way to make a game challenging. Finally, and possibly worst of all, this game is very buggy. Here are a few examples: I decided to play "out of order" and explore different areas on my own, which ended up being a mistake because it broke several sequences. Luckily I did not have to restart, but just look through the discussions and see many people who were not so lucky. If you play it, make sure to do exactly what the game wants you do. Will that make the game less fun? You betcha. The save mechanism is a complete mess. You will [I]not[/I] be able to come back to exactly the same state you left the game. The "energy" you collect in order to progress will be back for you to collect again, which might sound nice, but turns the game into a repetitive grind and totally shatters immersion as the world just "resets" itself because you, the player, had to go to sleep. This problem even appears during play when you move between areas. Worst issue: sometimes collectible items will be returned to where you found them, despite you having saved the game. Basically, save is so unreliable that I would advise you to keep your computer on until you finish the game. And the terrible controls are made even worse (is that possible?) by bugs. Input lag is random and disastrous. I played it with an Xbox controller, and constantly had issues with a button press not registering. And yes, there is a penalty for dying. The final boss fight made me rage quit a few times: I pressed the right buttons at critical moments but sometimes nothing happened. (My controller works just fine with other challenging games.) And then there are more mundane bugs: getting trapped in nooks and crannies, dying-but-not-really-dying so that you have to manually restart the game, monsters that sometimes randomly wiggle or seem unable to move, etc. All in all, the game suffers from some poor design choices and a severe lack of polish. There are some good ideas at the core, and I did quite enjoy some parts of the game, but I also do not think they are worth the frustrations. This game needed more time at the design phase and a lot more time to develop and test it.
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  Anadian

  Apr 29, 2019

  I had such high hopes for this game after seeing so many positive reviews and enjoying the demo but, alas, I found Downward to ultimately be a staggeringly-incompetent, monotonous dirge of a game. The demo is a misrepresentation of what the game actually is; the demo presents the game as more of a tightly-knit action-adventure game when really, at its heart, Downward has the hollow skeleton of a shallow 3D platformer. Once you pass the prologue/tutorial area you're, quite literally, dropped into a large, aimless, and mostly-empty area, with absolutely no direction or objective, save for a waypoint on your compass. You're free to wander the game's large areas and visit most of the games locations, well before you're intended to, but there's never anything meaningful to do there until you've advanced the completely-linear main questline to the point where you're actually instructed to go there. As for story, there really isn't one; you play a nameless dude-bro who is incredibly slow to notice anything remarkable about his situation, who just goes along collecting Dry Artifacts (the games stand in for Power Stars, Shines, Jiggies, Bolts, or any other 3D platformer collectible) to open doors to new areas so he can collect more Dry Artifacts, all to gullibly help the villain with their blatantly-evil plan for no reason. That's it; that really is all the story you get; the game doesn't even have an ending: when the villain betrays, no surprise there, you quickly defeat her in a rule-of-three boss fight and then credits roll. There is the occasional small attempt a building up some lore about the game's generic, omniscient, ancient civilisation which destroyed itself with its own hubris (how original!) but, in effect, that's all pushed aside so that the game can shoehorn in as many "ironically" bad puns as possible into its corny, amateur dialogue. Of course, the story and writing really wouldn't matter if the gameplay and design were at least competent but, unfortunately, they're not. The game provides the player with a handful large openworlds, accessible early on, but exploration is completely discouraged; nothing good comes from visiting these worlds before you're supposed to so ultimately free exploration is a complete waste of time. Not to mention how dull the worlds themselves are: specifically, the game gives you four main areas: a desert-ruins world (hub), desert-ruins world 2 (yeah there are two of them for some reason), ice world, and fire world. Even those unimaginative themes are worse than they sound because the differences between the worlds are entirely aesthetic: there are no unique gameplay mechanics to differentiate them making them all play exactly the same. I haven't even gotten to the worse part of the game yet: which is, the game's obsession with backtracking. In addition to the game's worlds being bland, too big, and confusingly wrapping around themselves in nonsensical ways: a gimmick throughout the whole game is that there's four "variations" of each area referred to as planets. I stressed "variations" the way I did because the only immediate difference between the "planets" is a change in lighting; there is also an added platform, or anomaly, somewhere but you have no way of knowing where the changes are until you find them yourself and the game gives you absolutely no indication of what was added or removed for a specific planet or what would be added or removed if you switched to a different planet: essentially, the game forces you to backtrack, re-combing through 99% of the area, every centimetre, just to find that 1% difference of a single added platform allowing access to an area only accessible in that specific planet. To put it simply, even with optimal routing, the game requires you to retread through every area at least four times in order to find minute changes to progress. Worst of all, is how utterly apparent it is that this "mechanic" was only added to the game to pad out the play time of an otherwise extremely short game; it took me about 10 hours to finish the game and get almost every achievement (I'll explain the ones I didn't get in a bit*) and, of that time, only two hours were spent actually exploring or progressing; the rest was all just soul-deadening, mandatory, excessive backtracking! On a technical level, the game doesn't fair much better. For a game all about fluid first-person parkour it is way too easy to softlock yourself, most commonly, by climbing up onto a ledge, inadvertently clipping through the world geometry in the process. Fortunately, the game does allow you to access the console which can, sometimes, save you from the game's own ineptness. Graphically, the game's mostly underwhelming: it has average Unreal Engine 4 graphics with an over reliance on post-processing and circumstantially-imperfect frame pacing; strangely, using the double-jump anomaly always causes a sharp stutter despite the rest of the game running reasonably smoothly. The real graphical problems stems from its, quite frankly, terrible lighting/gamma-correction model: the game loves putting you through scenes that are either pitch black or extremely washed out; there is no brightness setting that offers a nice medium between these two extremes. This is probably the only time I've ever complained that a game was too bright (bright to the point it literally washes out bright colours and light textures making certain areas impossible to navigate if the brightness setting is too high; like with the pale-blue texture used to indicate that a surface is wall-run-able which is often place on a solid-white slate of rock, effectively becoming impossible to discern on higher brightness levels.) and it's definitely the only game to have that problem while also being guilty of having many large maze-like interiors that aren't lit at all, requiring an amped brightness level just to make out even a slight silhouette of the walls and floors. It's absurd. On the audio side, the game is fine: the music is nothing impressive and the sound design relies on a few too little sound effects for the whole game but it's really not that big of an issues; the voice acting isn't great but I'm willing to chalk that up to mostly the horrible writing. *Regarding the achievements: I got every one except for a four achievements which are all just variations of "Use

  5000 times." Even with liberal backtracking over the course of a normal playthrough, you'll get nowhere near the 5000 number required for this meaning you'll effectively just have to find a place you can use the move and grind it out for three hours each! Well, that's certainly one way to add an additional 12 hours of playtime to the game.... Pros: - Core movement mechanics are reasonably fun. - Controls are responsive if, always, a little unintuitive. - Okay UE4 graphics Cons: - Expansive but horribly-bland, unimaginatively-themed, and thoughtlessly-designed worlds. - A disgusting amount of forced backtracking which comprises +80% of the game's playtime. - Lack of any story or motivation. - Terrible lighting with every scene either being pitch black or completely washed out, without any compromise inbetween. Seriously, it's worse than you can imagine. - Shallow, simplistic 3D platformer design. - Terrible dialogue. - Frequent softlocking. - Extremely short main quest padded out by excessive backtracking. - Falls short of its high ambitions in most every area. - A ubiquitous lack of direction from when you end the prologue through to the end of the game. - Have I mentioned the backtracking 'cause like, seriously, it's insane; they make you retread every step of every area at least four times if you're interested in any sort of completion! Conclusion: Downward has the scaffolding of a potentially good game but, once past the prologue, the game's tedious design, many poor choices, and often-frustrating implementation make it an absolute slog!

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  PublicNuisance

  Sep 14, 2020

  Downward is for the most part a parkour platformer with some puzzles and light combat. The parkour it does very well but there is enough that I found wrong with the game to make my time less enjoyable with it than I would have liked. There is a story to it but it is very poorly explained. Some apocalypse happened to the earth involving three planets suddenly appearing and you are tasked by some disembodied voice to find three relics to help restore the Earth. Your main character doesn’t seem to know much about how he got here or the back story and it is never properly explained by any of the other characters. There are little bits added here and there but by the end I still had very little idea what was going on. The voice acting of the main character was kinda weak, I felt like it lacked emotion and felt cringy when he did try to be angry or anything other than wooden. The voice acting by the disembodied voice was well done by the actress who played her. The old man was alright but not great as was this giant talking tortoise you encounter. The graphics range from good to poor. The shadows and lighting are well done. The plants; bodies; clothes; and water are all decent but not fantastic. The pillars and the giant tortoise were poorly done. The level design was also pretty poor and it’s difficult to figure out where to go sometimes. There is a compass that should show you which direction to go for your next objective but it can be pretty deceiving at times. For instance the compass showed me which direction this temple place was but if you just head in that direction you’ll never get there as you need to take this sewer passage to get there as a shortcut. There are these passages all over the palace and you never know which one you need to take or where it goes until you try it out. The parkour design was simple and effective. You can bounce off of blue walls and can climb red walls. You can use abilities you learn to use anomalies to slingshot your way up higher or across divides which brings a reason to backtrack places you’ve been to access places you couldn’t go previously. There are crystals you use to switch which planet is aligned with Earth right now and each one gives off a different type of energy that changes where certain platforms are as well as allows you to use certain abilities such as being able to create platforms in certain places. This gives some good logic puzzles as you have to figure out which planet to align to in order to complete a task or reach a place or to have no planet aligned at all. I also didn’t like that drones you destroyed are magically back where they were next time you return to any area they’re in. Re-spawning enemies are another pet peeve of mine. The final battle was a little annoying as the main “boss” is able to shoot stuff at you but you have no range attack of your own and can just do your best to dodge it and deal with drones they send your way until you can reach them. There are also no save points during the final battle and the nearest save point to it requires some platforming and fighting two golems before you can attempt the final fight again if you exit the game during it. I played Downward on Linux. It never crashed on me. I did notice several bugs and glitches though. One time when trying to climb a red wall my character would always fall down about half way up. Over and over always in the same spot until one time they didn’t for some unexplained reason. One time I died due to the drones exploding at me but the game didn’t restart or reload. I was just kind of there as a disembodied corpse who could kind of move but only slowly and I had to basically roll myself off a cliff to truly die. I got stuck in a specific ladder more than once when climbing up if I hit it from the wrong angle. There was also one point where the background music stopped for about 30 seconds for no reason and then kicked back on. The game uses a save station system where you can save at these bells that are scattered throughout the game. I played version 1.02 of the game. It uses the Unreal 4 engine. The game was poorly optimized. On an RX 580 the game would dip down into the 40’s at times. On my RX 5700 XT it never dipped below 63 FPS and was usually at 100 or above but the game doesn’t look good enough to bring an RX 580 to it’s knees like that. A RX 570 should have been more than enough given the game’s mediocre graphics in many areas. I blame this on the game using OpenGL on Linux instead of opting for Vulkan. The game is capped at 62 FPS by default but if you disable Vsync and set the frame limiter to 120 then you can get up to 120. There is an FOV slider; a Vsync toggle; two AA settings; a screen resolution adjuster that allows you to set the resolution to 200% of your screen’s resolution and four other graphics options. Disk Space Used: 10.92 GB FOV Slider: 80-110 Screen Resolution Scaler: 70-200 % API: OpenGL Save System: Manual Saves at Specific Points Only Settings Used in Game: Screen resolution scaler at 100%; all settings at ultra; FOV at 100 and motion blur off GPU Usage: 5-99 % VRAM Usage: 1946-3106 MB CPU Usage: 16-25 % RAM Usage: 3.3-4.3 GB Frame Rate: 63-120 FPS I enjoyed the parkour parts but with the glitches; poor story; poor save system; poor level design; and poor performance I can’t say I had a great time. The Free Ones or A Story About My Uncle would be much better choices for a first person platformer if you enjoy the genre. I finished the game in 6 hours 6 minutes. I paid $10.99 CAD for the game. I feel the length of the content is fine for the price but the quality not so much. My Score: 6/10 My System: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 5700 XT Gaming X 8GB | Mesa 20.1.7 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 20.1 | Mate 1.24.1 | Kernel 5.8.6-1-MANJARO | AOC G2460P @1920*1080 144hz
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  Narukoopa

  Jul 23, 2021

  [h1]The Short Version:[/h1] Considering the team behind it consists only of three people, Downward is worth its praise. It has some of the best parkour mechanics I have ever seen in a game, packed with some unusually captivating levels to run, jump, and slide through. Sadly, other areas didn’t receive this same level of attention. A weak story that feels unfinished, along with dull characters, doesn't provide this game any favours. If it’s the parkour you’re after, you’ll likely enjoy this. However, if you’re also looking for a good story, you’re going to be disappointed. [table] [tr] [th][h1]Pros:[/h1][/th] [th][h1]Cons:[/h1][/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]-Entertaining parkour mechanics -Remarkable visual design -Densely packed and detailed maps -Decent amount of side content[/td] [td]-Tedious combat that feels bare-bones -Forgettable story with a lacklustre conclusion -Underdeveloped characters -Can be difficult to navigate[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][h1]My Rating:[/h1][/td] [td][h1]6.5/10 - Average[/h1][/td] [/tr] [/table] [h1]Saving the World is Pretty Forgettable...[/h1] Downward is a first-person, semi-open-world parkour game, complete with both sci-fi and fantasy themes. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, you explore through the hostile ruins of a forgotten civilisation in search of answers while using your athletic prowess to survive. Earth has changed, both in its appearance and hospitality. Confrontational creatures are only some of the remnants of this fallen society and will not hesitate to cause you harm should you get too close. As for the landscape, it is virtually unrecognisable to the planet we live on today. Floating rocks and foundations combined with steep and jagged mountainscapes result in a world that looks surreal and unique. This is made even more bizarre by the three orbiting planets that have a direct influence on how the land is formed. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2554874583 That last part is what the base of the story revolves around, as you slowly learn about the impacts these worlds impose. The game starts with you waking up in the middle of nowhere to a voice in your head. You, as the player, have no idea why and how you’re there, so you just do what the voice tells you. Your character doesn’t have a name, but what he does have is a sense of humour. Trying to desperately stay alive after being thrown into a confusing survival situation seems quite amusing to him. Why he’s there in the first place is never explained. What you do know is that those planets have something to do with why everything is the way it is. With this in mind, your goal is to… fix the world? Here is where I have criticisms. The narrative is poorly communicated and underdeveloped. I was confused as to what I was doing. It felt like I was ticking off a checklist rather than partaking in any meaningful actions. The characters aren’t believable or fleshed out, as they don’t seem to have any obvious motivations for what they’re doing, and the dialogue is too drawn out in some scenes. To make things worse, the story lacks a proper conclusion. After a relatively quick boss fight, you do a thing, and it ends without any real explanation of what said thing entailed. I was left puzzled and unsatisfied as the credits rolled. [h1]Now this is Parkour![/h1] If there is one area that excels in Downward, it’s the parkour mechanics. The system is intuitive and smooth while also being able to pose a challenge to those willing to take the next step. The pace you go at is up to you, but in my experience, the faster I went, the more entertainment I got out of it. To spice things up as you progress, you will unlock new abilities. One of these is known as “The Mark”, which serves as a portable checkpoint. While it does have limited uses, it can’t be understated how valuable this feature is. Make it to the top of a high vantage point, but fall on the final jump? Just use The Mark. No need to smash your keyboard. Other abilities include a double jump, wall running, a magical grappling hook and a platform creator. All of these add a broad amount of variation to the gameplay that makes it continuously feel refreshing. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2554876441 To top it off, there's a skill system that allows you to purchase upgrades ranging from personal bonuses such as increased health, to parkour-related perks to improve your effectiveness at traversing the maps. These skills can be purchased using skypieces, an in-game currency that’s scattered throughout each environment. The only area that lets the gameplay down is the combat. While far from being an action game, it does contain foes that have to be dealt with using unorthodox means. What this amounts to is dashing from side to side, running around in circles right until the point where the enemy is vulnerable. While in this state, you click on them a few times, and boom, they’re dead. That’s it. Needless to say, this becomes very repetitive and tiresome the more you do it. [h1]Lands to Explore, History to Uncover...[/h1] Although the game is short, there is a lot to see and discover, and not just for the purposes of sightseeing. There are benefits for players who are willing to explore all four of Downward’s distinct and unusually attractive locations. Whether it’s a frozen wasteland dotted with floating islands that are connected by chains or a tropical, desert oasis filled with ruins, there are secrets to be found all over. These levels are made even more alluring when you take the “planet switching” mechanic into consideration. Each map contains a device that allows you to control the orbit of the three planets. Depending on which planet you select, different paths will be open to you that would otherwise be hidden. But what is there to find? Quite a lot. The further you delve, the more you will come across various historical artifacts which provide a minimal but decent amount of worldbuilding. You can also sell these at the shop for skypieces to unlock more skills. Any other kind of relic you find will be connected to one of two side quests. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2554878552 Some locations however, can be a pain to navigate. Paths can be way too obscure or downright tedious to follow. The challenge is understandable, but when you have to put in so much effort just to arrive at a small cluster of skypieces, it doesn’t make the process of getting there feel worthwhile. Having a mini-map showing points of interest would’ve been a welcome feature, but instead you are given a compass that's too vague. Aside from that, I enjoyed the levels considerably. Should you complete the game before finding everything, you are given the option to load an autosave that’s placed just before the final mission, giving you an opportunity to experience everything else it has to offer. Since it’s very likely that you’ll not have found everything or completed the side missions before finishing the last mission, this can be considered as post-game content. It may be basic as you are just collecting things, but if you’re enjoying the parkour and the exploration, then these activities will keep you invested for at least a few hours afterwards. This level of depth, combined with some remarkable graphics and a high level of attention to detail, make traversing through Downward feel more like a journey, as opposed to a chore. If the story held up, I would call this a gem, but as it stands, I’ll just say that it’s an average game that’s fun to play. [table] [tr] [th][h1]Technical Details:[/h1][/th] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]My PC Specs:[/b] Operating System: Windows 10 Processor (CPU): Intel Core i7-6700k Graphics Card (GPU): Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Memory (RAM): 16GB [b]Performance:[/b] Consistent 60FPS from start to finish, with no noticeable stutters. Brilliant optimization here! [/td] [/tr] [/table]