Veritus Review - A Nostalgic 2D Zelda-Like Adventure with a Dark Twist
Veritus the new indie game by Colorgrave is a 2D Top Down Dungeon Crawling Zelda-Like that is fresh in styles and nostalgic in it’s look and feel.
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Veritus the new indie title by Colorgrave is a 2D Top Down Dungeon Crawling Zelda-Like that is fresh in styles and nostalgic in it’s look and feel.
The King Is Dead
Veritus is a 2-D top-down dungeon-crawling Zelda-like and the latest title from indie studio Colorgrave. From what I understand, it is a continuation of a growing world that started with a previous title, Prodigal.
The story of castle Veritus is that the protagonist Oran, and a group of old friends band together for the common goal of destroying the God of Shadows. The king has died, and it's up to you, a miner, to seek vengeance. Your entourage has set up camp in the castle, and you venture through dungeons fighting new enemies, solving puzzles, collecting hidden items, and finishing with a boss battle.
Once you defeat each boss, you rest and are sent into a dream world that progresses the story. When you wake, you are back at the camp, ready to explore another dungeon and repeat the process.
Dungeoun Crawling Nostalgia Trip
Veritus has all the makings of a Game Boy Color game. It gives me all the nostalgic feelings I assume they were trying to evoke. The pixel art style and gameplay bring me back to the memories of road trips from my childhood, packed in a car playing Link's Awakening. Aside from a wider screen where most remakes have a pixel-art-filled border to fill up the space, this is where your inventory, health bar, and items are displayed.
You encounter bats, wizards, zombies, skeletons with axes and bows, and many more enemies through your dungeon crawling. When fighting enemies, it can sometimes either be very smooth or an absolute pain. You can only hit in four directions—up, down, left, and right—but most enemies come at you from diagonal angles. Most of the time, if it's a one-on-one fight, it's not a problem, but when the screen is littered with enemies and some even throw projectiles at you, you spend more time running around the enemies. My only complaint was the final boss of the game; I felt like I was playing a FromSoft game. To be honest, it was annoying and difficult.
But I don’t want that to come off as discouraging because boss fights are a lot of fun and follow many of the attack patterns of Zelda games, and at times I wish they were even a bit longer. A boss mode for the game would be great!
The A-Team
Everyone is set up in your camp or at the entry of each new dungeon. Saving is one of my favorite parts of the game. You walk right into a painting where Scroon is waiting for you, not only archiving your adventure and saving the game but also quipping about washing your sullied clothing, as if to say not only are you healed and your story saved, but you are fresh, no longer covered in the blood of your enemies.
Sonny is the chef who crafts meals you use to heal yourself in battles. You can find him in dungeon areas where you have a mini-battle with enemies until an ingredient for his cooking is dropped to clear the area.
Illy is one of my favorite companions because she roasts you pretty early on and has great banter with the main character. She is also the only other character you play as in the game.
Yorv is the bard of the group who you will find in dungeons. She will sing musical notes you use to break a barrier and then move on to find musical sheets. She is also the one you go to for crafting new pickaxes, boots, or whips.
Uros doesn’t do much in the game for you other than throw you across a cliff early in the game and stands stoic in his presence.
If you are missing an item, you can always speak to Zaegul, and for a bit of gold, he will give you a random item you might need to complete any of your crafting. Zaegul was there the night the king was murdered.
Whenever you are speaking to an NPC (non-playable character), they come up on your screen with a nice portrait that animates as they talk. There are no voice lines, but you get audible cues from each character that are unique and tie to the tone of what they are saying to you. It’s a great touch that ads more depth to the characters.
Arts and Craft
The crafting is not ideal and doesn’t feel complete. It feels like the items found in the dungeons, which at times can be difficult to clear rooms for, are completely fleshed out, but when it comes to crafting the items, it's lost on me. You need three items for cooking or crafting weapons, which are great, but they don't explain why you need them, what they are needed for, or what they do. It’s a lot of trial and error, and even then, you can't revert your results to a pickaxe you had previously in the moment. It’s the weakest point of the game for me personally. You can get the pickaxes or clothing you have found by going to the main camp area, but I didn’t even know this until my second playthrough. I encourage exploring every single area, door, and room you can find.
Tools of The Trade
You use a bracer to pick up items like small enemies you can throw at other enemies, large balls to activate switches on the ground, and solve puzzles.
You have a whip you can use to pull enemies or items towards you. You can even use it to grab poles sticking out of the ground and easily move between different levels of an area that are hard to reach. Sometimes they even solve puzzles.
Your pickaxe is used to fight, and in Zelda fashion, by holding down A, you charge up, and when you let it go, you do a 360-degree spinning attack.
Pixelated World
The graphics are pure bliss.
This looks like a Game Boy Color game through and through. The pixel artwork and colors are more muted to give a darker presence of a dungeon-crawling evil castle, but the accents are loud enough to give it a lively feeling.
One of my favorites was Glouse, who is an arrogant, tricky character who blocks your way in the dungeons and is purely there to be spoiled by your gold and items.
Cutscenes are rare, but when they appear, it's a delight to behold. It’s all in the pixel art style you see in the intro sequence, making your miniature main character display in their true height and adding depth to the world.
Symphony of The Night
The sound and audio of the game have a typical Game Boy feel to them. The sound effects, such as hitting enemies, are very similar to those in Link's Awakening. I have not mentioned that game as a reference many times and it’s because its the closest thing in look and sound I can compare it to. Nothing new is being explored here, but the soundtrack is another thing entirely.
The soundtrack was released around the time of the game on YouTube, and it is a enthralling. Imagine if Castlevania for the Nintendo Entertainment System was able to push the quality up to 11. Organs lead into melodic symphonies, with haunting vocal arrangements peaking in and out to give a sense of darkness and tragedy. One of your companions waits for you in the first dungeon you explore and ridicules you for not knowing how to swim. Swimming in these games always resulted in some form of tool to allow it, which was always so odd, but the way they do this in Veritus is that you just never learned to swim, so they have to do it for you. It’s the only time you control someone other than Oran in the game.
The reason why I am even bringing this up is that my favorite song plays when you do this. It’s an underwater-styled melody that is reminiscent of Daft Punk's "Within." When the soundtrack came out, it was missing, and I was so upset, but rest assured, it was released a few days later, and I saw the plays on YouTube Music skyrocket by the following day, which I can only attribute to me playing it over and over to no end. The song is even called “I Forgot You Can’t Swim.” Here is a taste:
Veritus: A Role-Puzzling Adventure
Like a typical dungeon crawler, you collect different items. Sometimes those items are in rooms where you have to clear out enemies or solve a unique puzzle.
You are introduced to puzzles right from the start, which is a great way to understand where the game is heading. I had a lot of fun solving the puzzles, aside from one that took me too long—not because it was difficult, but because of user error. I loved the puzzles in Veritus. You can hit stones that move one tile and stay in place, roll barrels to a switch on the floor, or even use large metal balls you can throw to a destination. With most of the puzzles being solved with yourself being the last switch to turn on.
A few have switches on the flow in grey and they will become blue as you walk on them and then turn red when you walk back onto them. This puzzle is unique in that you must walk the path in one go with fear of overstepping and having to repeat it again.
I honestly wanted to create my own puzzles using the tiles of the game when I was done.
The Good The Bad, and Glouse
The game was fairly easy to play until it wasn’t. An occasional boss battle had a clear ending or would just be difficult to get around their attacks because of the sheer speed they have compared to this axe-wielding miner. The final boss was so annoying it took me multiple tries to finish them off. Aside from that, fighting enemies and moving around are smooth, and having the ability to run makes the movement so much fun.
The story was a bit hard to follow with so many characters and names to remember across the 4 ½-hour session that I played—even note-taking didn’t help me figure things out much. Each new dungeon will have areas with books you read to understand the plot, but with more and more names being introduced, it was tough to follow. When you are in the dream state, you follow along a story that was also lost on me. I am not sure if this is user error, which I don’t doubt, but I would prefer more of a scrolling, longer-form recap to read at once than to follow many books scattered throughout the dungeon.
The ending battle went right into a story that describes what has happened, but because I had a tough time following the game, it didn’t resonate with me as I think they intended. Where the story cohesiveness lacked, the character designs and dialogue did the complete opposite. Each character had an identity that was clear and defined. The best way to describe it was that I felt like each person could easily be compared to the way characters spoke and interacted in the Netflix Castlevania show. In fact, the way the lore and story played out, I wouldn't be surprised if this was fleshed out into a show with more story beats. I just want a pixel art TV show and the characters were engaging in a way I want to see them as the spotlight.
Familiar Look and New Feel
I am interested in diving into Prodigal, a game that was released before Veritus by Colorgrave that looks like it ties to the story. From what I have seen in gameplay clips, you have the same abilities and your main weapon is an axe. It looks similar in-game graphics, with the border of the game displaying your inventory and health.
It feels as if Colorgrave is building out a retro-inspired world with dark tones and fantasy filled with dreamlike connections and overworld god-ruled menaces that I am here for. I wouldn’t be surprised if after a few of these titles, they move onto a 3D version using the same gameplay elements.
Veritus is a nostalgic game I enjoyed and will play through again to find all the hidden items. The soundtrack is haunting and addictive, with the sound effects hitting perfectly with each new puzzle or swing of your axe. With the story having some complexity to follow, I hope to better understand it on my second playthrough.
So, what do you think? Have you tried out this game or any other Colorgrave titles? Let me know in the comments below.
Veritus is now available on Steam.
🔗Veritus | Steam | Website | Twitter
This review copy was provided by the team at Colorgrave.