Bright Blades 2021 Demo
I have a very meager Twitter following. Well, recently the indie developer @SamRowettGames asked me if I would take a look at their demo! I was very surprised, so of course I had to!
Bright Blades is a cute and charming turn based strategy game that has a cast of strong female characters and an awesome pupper. You can even pet the dog, which depending on which character pets him he gains stat boosts. I liked that lot.
The story is straight-forward and told well. You are Freya, the daughter of the leader of the Valkyries. A little hot-headed and she acts before she thinks. In the short 8 chapters in the demo, she already gained some solid character development, maturing and realizing the gravity of her situation. You’re introduced to some stable classes here. You have your horse-mounted cavalier, your halberdier, an archer, healer, magician, bard and thief. Each with their own specialties. I found that I gravitated toward the cavalier and the halberdier the most. They got some good strength boosts, had some weapons with good bonuses, and hit like trains. I felt the archer and thief needed some more utility and specialty weapons to make better use of them on the field.
There’s some decent quality of life stuff that I enjoyed, such as clicking the right mouse button to skip battle scenes. Sometimes I accidentally clicked it and skipped a scene and had to reload though, so be careful! In chapter 8, there were some spectators that started throwing rotten food at me! Definitely something unique that gave me a laugh!
Some things I’d like to see implemented though are:
Resolution scaling. I couldn’t find anywhere to up my resolution. It was in a small window my entire playthrough.
Loading a save mid-battle would be nice, so I don’t have to restart the entire game.
Lastly, and I may be wrong, but whenever I stored a healing potion or a shield into my convoy it disappeared forever! Maybe a bug, maybe on purpose. I’m not sure, but I’d like to be able to access them if I stored them.
The demo is 8 chapters, and it took me about 2 hours to complete. I really enjoyed the final chapter of the demo, as it had some challenges you needed to really work through! I think @SamRowettGames has a really nice hidden gem on their hands here with a little polish! I’ll definitely be buying the full game when it comes out to see how it turns out and I think you should to!
