Nine Parchments (2017)

Played this in a team of three and had quite a bit of fun with the spell variety and friendly-fire combat. Gameplay is basically a magic-themed twin-stick shooter. You're playing as one of nine wizards looking for spell parchments and to that end move through fairly short levels that are made up of a series of combat encounters without a lot of exposition or story besides a few non-essential lines of character dialogue. The game can get pretty chaotic on-screen, especially with multiple players and some of the area spells, but with some training it's actually manageable and you'll learn to stay out of each other's way for the most part.

Positives:

1. Gameplay: The basic gameplay loop is solid because of the various combinations of enemy types, the elements system (all spells and enemies are elemental and have corresponding immunities/weaknesses) and the different spells you can unlock. It's fun to try out new spells, and most of them will have tangible effects on the way you engage with enemies.
2. Boss battles are unique challenges and mostly fair
3. Graphics and Music are sparkly and pretty in the best Frozenbyte tradition

Neutral:

1. Multiplayer: is almost necessary to have the best experience but there are some network shenanigans and a janky save system, although I came across nothing game-breaking. Unfortunately it's hard to find a online game nowadays if you don't have anyone to play with.
2. RPG System: You can level up your character and get them passive upgrades like better cooldown times, more damage etc. There are also alternative skill trees for each character that can be unlocked. This is nice but the skill trees are pretty simple and there aren't a ton of choices to be made, especially in your first run.

Negatives:

1. Unlock System: Ok, so this is my major problem with the game. It forces you to actually restart your entire run (!) if you unlock a new character and want to try them out. In a game like this that has a ton of unlockables and where the actual main draw is trying out different character and spell combinations for fun, this is honestly an insane decision and I can't wrap my head around it. Even worse, there's only two characters unlocked from the start, so if you're playing with more than one friend you're gonna start with at least two people playing the same character. You might unlock another character about halfway through the game, but you'll actually have to restart the game to try them out - the game is not overly long but you still have to commit 8-10 hours per run. You also can't replay specific levels to unlock new characters. This is a massive own goal and substantially lowered my motivation to unlock all the characters and experiment with different character and spell combinations.
2. Repetition: While the combat is interesting mechanically, there aren't a lot of reasons to re-play the game unless you want to try out higher difficulties, new characters or spells.
3. Story and Lore: skin-deep and non-existent respectively, I think there were some descriptions for the characters and enemy types, but it's basically a few paragraphs of flavour text. The world is filled with interesting visuals (statues, ruins, plants) but there's not much behind it, which isn't a huge minus but it feels like a missed opportunity.

All in all, while it's a fun ride and definitely worth a playthrough or two, the unlock system marred my experience with this game and in the end made me stop playing after one complete run. Maybe I'll revisit it in the future, but for now it couldn't hold my interest for more than one playthrough.

Playing with friend's made the repetitive nature of this much more manageable and the friendly fire adds a spice of humour to the mix. That's not to say the combat wasn't fun and the many spells you can unlock kept it relatively fresh. Boss fights were a highlight for me, each unique in design and strategy. I haven't tried a solo run but I would imagine it won't be anywhere near as enjoyable.

I love a good demo and there have been many occasions when getting to play a free sample has me sold on a game that otherwise didn't catch my attention (e.g. Doom, Puyo Puyo Tetris, Mercenaries Saga, etc). Nine Parchments' demo reeled my wife and me in and the full game managed to keep my family of gamers (ages 28 to 60) entertained for much of Christmas vacation; that's no small feat.

Nine Parchments is a co-op twin-stick shoot'em-up set in the same universe as the Trine series. Players travel through the game's fantasy worlds blasting enemies with magic spells on a quest to recover the titular set of mystical documents. Each character starts with three spells of different elements and gets to add more to their arsenal each time another parchment is collected. Since the choice of spells that are unlocked with each parchment are randomly generated from over 50 possible spells, no two playthroughs of the campaign are exactly alike. Killing enemies and finding treasure provides XP that allows characters to be further customized with special perks and buffs.

While co-op shoot'em-ups are certainly nothing new, Nine Parchments' spell system is what sets it apart. Working with your teammates to select the right spells for a given situation is the name of the game since each enemy has its own weaknesses and each spell has different side effects (freezing, shock, poison, splash damage, etc). The spells also vary in terms of how rapidly they consume mana and how long it takes for them to recharge. Thus, rotating through the arsenal of spells efficiently is key. Making matters even more complicated is the fact that friendly fire is always on, so players have to coordinate in order to avoid setting each other on fire with heat beams or getting caught in an ice grenade blast.

My family found that Nine Parchments' combination of mechanics made for some really fun, frantic, and brutally tough co-op sessions for two or three players. Increasing the team size to four players proved to be a bit too much as the on-screen chaos made it difficult to keep track of the action and seemed to throw off the game balance since the game scales the number of enemies spawned to the number of players. Some of the game's boss fights, in particular, provided a challenging but rewarding scenario in which to coordinate and maintain situational awareness. However, in a few cases, the game's camera struggled to keep all players on the screen which made some of these battles more difficult than they needed to be. There were a few other minor technical issues in the game's later levels that we had to work around (that are supposedly going to be patched out soon) but for the most part, none of these were significant enough to sour the overall experience.

From an artistic standpoint, I didn't expect much from a co-op shoot'em-up, but it was foolish of me to underestimate the studio that brought us the Trine series. Nine Parchments looks absolutely gorgeous. Each stage is colorful and highly detailed even though it's viewed from an overhead perspective and will often be obscured by waves of enemies and explosions. The game also features a quality orchestral score that helps give the campaign an appropriate magical adventure vibe. The game's story of wizards-in-training trying to recover lost magic scrolls comes off as a sort of Harry Potter-lite but is by no means the focus of the game. Even though the story takes back seat, the voice acting for the narrator and one-liners for the player characters are pretty good.

Overall, we found that Nine Parchment's combination of chaotic action, teamwork, spell mechanics, and character customization to be fun and highly addictive. These factors coupled with the strong visual and audio presentation easily outweighed some of the game's technical issues. If you have a group of friends or family members that are up for a challenge and work well together, I highly recommend checking out Nine Parchments.

For more content like this, check out my blog: Tales from the Backlog