GwenBlade

Review

Your name is Jane, and you have been training to become a psychiatrist for the past two and a half years. Another six months of training, and you’ll graduate. Your employer, the GwenBlade Clinic, has recently taken on more clients than they can handle, and they are prepared to wave your last six months of training by allowing you to treat a few of your own patients. Welcome to the GwenBlade Clinic.

GwenBlade is a third-person action platformer game with roguelite elements developed and self-published by ArcWillow on the 29^th of April, 2023, on the Steam Platform.

The game consists of a main campaign with three patients to help and a Roguelite/Endless mode until you die. This game is the effort of a solo developer, and I would like to congratulate him for his effort. The game he has produced is really interesting and uses a fair number of mechanisms.  It also has some issues. The first is the English translation, which is passable as you can understand what the sentences mean, but it’s needs to be improved. The other critical thing is that the camera angles are not the best, especially with the levels where you have to move from the inside of the structure to the outside, as most of the time a wall blocks your view. Sure, you can move around the camera angles with your mouse or gamepad stick, but if you are moving your character at the same time as moving the camera, you’ll probably die as all the levels are floorless (except for the buildings and platforms that construct the levels).  

I do like how the levels are designed; it’s like a parkour that follows the journey of the therapy. Within the levels, you have to jump and dash onto platforms, run on walls, and use a hook to climb higher or activate a platform. Apart from reaching battle areas, you’ll spend most of your time collecting yellow balls, which represent happiness and are a form of credit that you can use when you reach a platform and want to take advantage of perks or upgrades. The pale purple balls represent misery, which is another currency you can use to purchase upgrades at the giant fluffy fox at Jane’s place when she dreams. The parkour is pretty easy as you just have to follow the lanterns along the way, and every time you reach one, the game will autosave. But make sure you look around as there are other goodies to find, such as extra health, upgrades to your melee and distance attacks.

There are three or four combat areas within each level, some larger than others. When you reach one, the exits will close and you’ll be contained within the combat area. And you’ll have to defeat waves of enemies. The action is super-fast and fun, but not challenging at all. I used my long-distance weapon to stun the enemies, and my superweapon, the magical music notes, to inflict a massive blow on several enemies at the same time. Yes, you have harder enemies coming at you, but it will take you two hits and a musical note to dispose of them. Even if you have 2 musical notes at the start of the game, every time you kill a foe it drops a note, so it is far too easy. And that’s without using a perk, which you are able to do; these need to be reduced. After the battle, you will receive a chest that will contain new or upgraded perks or weapons. As you progress, you’ll acquire more clefs, perks and upgrades. It’s too much!

Other issues I encountered were freezes at the end of the level. The game glitches here and there and it loads the wrong level. I wanted to finish Deborah’s therapy, but I found myself playing one of Julia’s levels. Even if I like the aesthetics while moving the camera, there are colour reflections that I was not a fan of.

I am going to recommend this game, but it will not have a high score. If the developer can remedy some of the issues, it has real potential.

Made by a solo developer, Gwenblade needs some polishing and fine-tuning but has real potential.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

GlwenBlade Steam Store Page