I ignore almost all of the press releases sent my way for various quality and genre-related reasons, but Crumbling World is an aRPG with an interesting, moody art style, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to spend a little time with its alpha demo (which is available now). Controller support isn’t available yet, the keyboard controls are kind of awkward, and I found myself unable to progress past an early area after hitting the same bug twice in a row, but it’s nevertheless possible to see how Crumbling World could end up being an enjoyable game.

First things first: I don’t know why the game is in a 4:3 resolution or how to fix that. I’m choosing to chalk it up to Crumbling World being an alpha. Outside of that, the gameplay is very easy to wrap your head around; you have an attack, a block (which can be used to roll if you press a movement direction while holding it), and a jump, and you’re dropped in a procedurally generated world filled with enemies. After a little experimentation, it became clear that the best way of fighting enemies is to aggro them one by one and avoid becoming surrounded and taking unnecessary damage, especially since you’re constantly managing a stamina bar that depletes as you attack. It’s not immediately apparent how everything works, but you can find items lying around that appear to have a negative effect on one stat and a positive effect on another (10:35).

Both of these embedded videos end with an NPC following me, only for my character to become lodged above him after an area transition. The only thing that can be done at that point is spin around helplessly. When I saved the game and started over again, though, my character was suddenly an invincible god with nary a care for the impotent stabs of his foes. If he didn’t keep getting stuck above what appears to be a mandatory NPC, I could have used that invincibility to push through all of Crumbling World‘s current content. Unfortunately, even gods can’t change their midair momentum, and so my character’s tale of invincibility ended in tragedy as he was forevermore attached to a guy’s head.

Outside of the bugs and lack of clarity, I found myself enjoying Crumbling World quite a bit. It remains to be seen how compelling its pacing and storytelling will be once it’s finished, but right now it feels a little like a mix between the Dreamcast version of Silver and a hack-and-slash.

Crumbling World has a pretty rough alpha demo out now first appeared on Killa Penguin