Test - Inayah: Life After Gods: Test: This Metroidvania would like to be like Hollow Knight

Metroid vanias are available in all conceivable shapes and colors. In order to have a chance in this oversaturated genre with numerous top titles, not only does everything have to fit in a playful way. It takes extraordinary ideas, for example a rousing story, a wonderful look or a sophisticated combat system. Inayah: Life After Gods wants to score in all three categories - and drives against the wall.

Wow, it looks pretty! As a confessing fan hand -drawn graphics and finely elaborated animations, I cannot help it with the tongue with a tongue with Inayah: Life after Gods. Bright colors, detailed backgrounds with several levels, saddle -resistant 60 frames per second - yes, that looks strong! Exogenesis studios, consisting of former developers of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader or Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, definitely deliver an eye -catcher with their first title. So the first impression is right.

Weapons with added value

After a stroke of fate at the beginning of the game, Inayah is looking for the members of her tribe who have been missing for a long time. Are there still relatives? Or is the young woman actually the last of a people to which she only has vague childhood memories? Your journey leads through a post-apocalyptic world, which basically follows the Metroidvania scheme. There are different biomes that are connected in numerous ways. However, you do not have to find any special skills for the progress. Instead, higher jumping or climbing certain walls is associated with inayah's weapons.

After a short game time, you have double blades, flails and fists, between which you can change at any time and often even have to: So you first hold onto the wall by means of gloves, switch to the sound in the following leap to win upwards, and finally go back to the gloves, thanks to which you can take the lead above. Elsewhere, the flail is needed, with which Inayah can claw at anchor points and catapult up.

In the fight against humanoid wasps, nimble dinosaurs, carnivorous plants, fire -breathing fireflies and other creatures, the three different weapons of course also serve important services. The fists are strong in close combat, the slow flail causes great damage and the blades represent a compromise of punch and reach. In addition, each weapon has three special skills, such as protective shield or blade throw. With collected experience points, these skills are improved as well as inayah's life energy and resistance.

In the description, however, said improvements are as cumbersome as they can be triggered in the game. Among other things, it says in the menu: "After damage has been inflicted with blade dance, the next 3 attacks will restore 1 percent of life points." Or also: "After killing an enemy with smash, all effects to restore life points are increased by 50 percent for 15 seconds." Various effects can therefore be combined for a better effect, but this can hardly be used in view of the cryptic conditions. It is all the more difficult that you can only unlock a fraction of all upgrades and also have no way to redistribute the points used.

Error in the system

Basically, the weapons do their job in every situation, be it jumping and climbing or fighting the enemies. Unusual tactics are not needed, rather you get all the ordinary opponents with simple combos small. Unfortunately, the change of weapons is problematic. Optionally, you can switch over a selection wheel, shoulder printing or over the control cross, but all variants have disadvantages.

When using a controller, the shoulder button option comes with an input delay. Accordingly, the change does not always succeed - ergo you fall down or reach for it. A similar delay is noticeable in the Control Cross Method, which each weapon assigns a direction.

With the selection wheel variant, the change works a little better, but it is far from good. In addition, it ensures constant short interruptions in the gameplay. It feels like pressing the pause button between every action. This means that you can get out of the rhythm and crash in particular when switching between the weapons.

The two different map views also have large quirks. The first shows the entire play area. However, you only see where Inayah is currently, but not your exact position within a room. Because these usually have several levels and branches, you cannot orient yourself reasonably. This makes the search for a storage point or an NPC, including a quest, quickly become a time -consuming matter.

Variant two depicts the current room in detail. Inayah's location is displayed in a way, as well as all inputs and outputs, memory points or teleporters with which your crisscross through the game world can travel. The disadvantage is that with this representation you can find it difficult to see in which direction it continues. As if that would not be enough, the connection of the rooms creates confusion. So you can get into areas that are clearly above or below your current location, very often through doors that lie on the left or right side - that makes no sense!

In the end you only have to permanently switch between the two variants back and forth in order to stay halfway on course. You couldn't have done it more cumbersome! What spoke against a single, clear map that it is available in practically every other metroid vania?

From emotionless to haphazard

Backtracking, i.e. the return to previously visited areas, belongs to the Metroidvania like the Plasma Beam to Samus Aran. At Inayah, the forest area, village, sci-fi laboratory, caves or even ruins are on the travel route. However, new skills rarely come around, but mainly experience points for unlocking the small -scale weapon improvements. So -called implants, for example a classic dual jump or a strengthening of the attack power, are purely optional and are not required for progress.

Inayah's little companion, the flying robot Sputnik is bizarre. It can open the color -coded doors and occasionally serves as an anchor point for the flail. You can also control it yourself, but in this case you can hardly move out of Inayah's haze - otherwise the screen becomes dark because the robot loses the connection. Accordingly, these exploration flights are almost useless. The restricted functionality gives the impression that Exogenesis studios had originally wanted to integrate the robot more into the gameplay, but at some point, due to time or cost reasons.

The story is also served at a maximum of half -cooking. You listen to English dialogues and then often choose one of three answer options with which you shape Inayah's character. In the long term, however, it is not significant whether it reacts helpful, self -centered or common: cuts are an absolute rarity and in the course of the game itself you notice no difference anyway. The great emotional potential that offers the search for Inayah's family is hardly scratched. As well as if the internal journal not even provides information about which missions belong to the actual history and which optional nature are. If there are differences at all ...

There are also the boss fights. Among other things, you get to do with a carnivorous plant, fight a giant beetle and rider on his back or duel with a crazy chief that swings a mighty hammer. These battles attract the level of difficulty: you have little space in the rooms to maneuver, the chunks are enormously in a lot and, conversely, divide so that sometimes two (!) Hits do you.

Various weapons upgrades, especially with regard to critical damage, work wonders in some places. Elsewhere, Inayah is the victim until you have found out which combination of weapons, implants and procedures at least give you the chance of winning. If you do not see any country even after tens of attempts, there is probably a lack of a special implant that could give you an advantage. Unfortunately, the search is packed with annoying baking tracking, inappropriate control, boring dialogues and too many looks at the two confusing cards.

Note: We tested Inayah: Life after Gods on the PC in version 1.0.1.