Valbrace

One of the more immediately interesting games at first glance, Valbrace draws players in as soon as they see it exists. How could it not? Valbrace is a hardcore dungeon crawler, a classic 80s design that some people are really REALLY into. I’m pretty into them, myself. Grimrock is wicked, and I love a good blobby. As I played more of this though, parts of it started to kinda fade away and I realized I didn’t like it NEARLY as much as I’d hoped from the outset.

Valbrace

The lore is EXTREMELY simplistic. Some high fantasy world, you’re a knight who’s going to an evil castle to stop an evil dude, you’re caught by him, stripped of your equipment, and thrown in the depths of the tower. Climb down, fighting enemies and getting equipment, to proceed. The game is a hardcore first person dungeon crawler, akin to something like Wizardry. You’ve got equipment, stats, magic spells, traps, hidden secrets, switches, all the goodies. The game is the same every time though, like those classic 80s crawlers, it is NOT some modern roguelike-esque crawler. It is hand crafted, which means if you get REALLY lost and stuck, a map will work, though honestly it’s not needed.

Valbrace

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this game is its magic system. See, you don’t learn the spells. YOU learn the spells. That make sense? Of course it doesn’t, I needn’t elaborate, though I will anyway, because I love hearing myself talk. You can cast any spell at any time, as long as you have the MP. But YOU, the player, must first learn the glyph for it. By pressing B and then moving around, you draw out a glyph, a mirrored character, and if you correctly put in a spell, boom, you cast it. As you explore, you find glyphs written in walls, hidden in spots, and it makes for some classic, utterly fantastic excuses to pull out pen and paper and write notes, alongside the notes you’ll be taking for maps and things.

On top of that, you’ve got a few other mechanics, like the chairs you’ll find on each floor, which you can use to increase your stats at the cost of essence, basically EXP. And of course there’s the combat, which is over the shoulder and live, kind of like a punchout almost. You can block, weave, dodge, and hit back. This is maybe my biggest gripe with the game. The combat is fine. But the enemies are numerous, and keep spawning, and it gets to be a MASSIVE slog by the end, especially as it spawns groups of like 6 god damn enemies, that are all blocking constantly, hit you through block, and bounce between the front and back row, while also throwing projectiles. It’s fucking annoying, and slows the pace to a crawl. This along the fact that all the late game weapons kinda suck ass, and are slow and awkward to use. I was using the same fucking rapier from floor 1 until I HAD to get rid of it because it was barely doing anything anymore.

Valbrace

Valbrace is super interesting, and I do like it, but it really cooled on me as I was beating it, and I don’t think I ever have reason to go back to it, unlike so many other games here.

Also, from this point on, I probably won’t be elaborating on new members of staff. Why? Well, it’s now 1988, and over the next year, we will see eight total testers appear and disappear, and most of them are not very important, except for maaaybe two of them. One will become a full time tester, Delia Pace, and one will become the receptionist, Faiz Hanek. I’ll also talk about one of them, Sten Murzbach, MUCH later, but for now, no staff changes are particularly important…. except for one.

Valbrace is the final game made by long-time UFO Soft alumni Chiffon Bola. Was she fired? No. On February 29th, a month after her last game, Valbrace, was released, Chiffon Bola went missing. She is never found, and is presumed dead. I will go more into this later, as well, but it’s a pretty dark day for UFOsoft, which must continue on. But dark clouds are on the horizon, and the writing is starting to be seen on the wall by some of the people working there, who are getting uncomfortable with management, and a few… other things, which will become apparent soon.

7/10