I am honored to receive an invitation from Candle Dragon Studios to play demo of its new work "HeartLand Dream" some time ago.
Heartland Is a 2D Galaxy Castlevania game that has been released on Steam, containing a detailed story background and feature notes [Portal]. I will not list them here, this article mainly shares the personal demo version of the play experience, to provide a little reference for everyone.
PS: The content of the trial is only the version under development, and the quality of the product please refer to the official online version.
The demo version takes about an hour and contains four different scenarios, using three attacks: sword, scythe, and fire magic, and can fight two bosses.
The one-hour trial is not long, although the plot content is vague, but it can be seen that the basic framework of the game has been built very completely, and it is a fairly standard galaxy-like castlevania game.
Hidden rooms/chests, shortcuts, etc. there should be something to explore. There's also a side quest in the demo version - returning the spores that have been taken away to NPCs will open the fast track.
In addition, some hidden treasure chests may even be treasure chest monsters, which makes people sigh that "people's hearts are sinister".
People's hearts are sinister
Hidden monsters, sinister hearts*2
Specific to the abilities of the white-haired girl protagonist "Renee", the demo version has unlocked two regular skills of sprinting and sliding shovel. Most of these galactic castlevania games will design a series of maps based on the various abilities of the protagonists, and play the maps out of flowers.
However, this demo version of "Heart Abyss Dream" did not reflect this feature too much, and the sprint was mainly used for dodging in rush and battle, and the presence of the sliding shovel was not high. Considering that these two are only relatively basic abilities, and the demo version can clearly see a lot of places that need to be jumped in two stages to reach, I hope that the official version can see a richer map design.
Renee can be equipped with two weapons and one magic at the same time, which means that all three of the attacks mentioned above can be used at the same time. The difference between a sword and a scythe is not very different in terms of flat slash (the attack range of the scythe is slightly larger), and more differences are reflected in the exclusive skills of the weapon.
Use talent points to learn weapon skills. The skills opened in this beta version include the three-stage slash with the sword, the retreat step chop, and the sprint chop and the scythe slash.
Honestly, because you need to rub and cast these skills, there are still certain requirements for skill familiarity. This is a bit unfriendly to me as a handicapped player, resulting in me still choosing to slash most of the time.
You can also find more powerful weapons during exploration, with better attributes. There are more kinds and numbers of weapons in the official version, and I'm looking forward to seeing a variety of builds between different weapons and magic.
Needs to rub moves to unleash skills
The two bosses are Mushroom man and Birdman. The Mushroom Man is somewhat similar to the false knight in "Hollow Knight", the moves are wide open, the position is more straight, and it is easy to defeat it at first sight; the Birdman is slightly tested, needing to be flexible to dodge and dodge the feather attack, but after familiarizing yourself with the move, you can easily defeat it the second time.
For example, the scythe's scythe slash mentioned earlier can bounce off the throwing object attack, just ejecting the birdman boss's feather attack.
Big ass sitting
Finally, let's talk about the art style of the game. For now, the hand-drawn art style should be the most prominent and easiest feature for players to recognize.
The demo version opens up four maps, each with its own characteristics while maintaining the overall style. The production team said that there will be more than 15 different scenes in the game, and I also saw scenes such as ruined towns and churches on the store page, and the scene span seemed to be rich.
Given that this demo is only a demo version, you can see a lot of locked content during the game, and there is no shortage of bugs to be fixed (laughs), I will not share more here.
Heartbreak is expected to be released in the second half of 2022, landing on platforms such as PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC. Eat this set of hand-drawn art style, or like galaxy-like Castlevania games, may wish to pay attention to it.