Enter the immersive and unrelenting dungeons of Exanima.

Releasing back in 2015 on Steam early access Exanima by Bare Mettle Entertainment has been through a long development, and it shows. The pure care and creative genius on display is clear in critical reviews all over the world wide web. Since its release it has undergone extensive gameplay changes, graphical tweaks and overall design changes that have transformed it into one of the most immersive and thrilling third person dungeon crawlers I have ever played. In this review I will be going over many of the core aspects that I fallen for in my 105 hours of playing Exanima.

Sound

Arguably one of the most important features of an alluring Dungeon crawler the sound design does not disappoint. From the stellar music which I will talk more on later, to the terrifying sounds of creatures that inhabit the shadowy world, Exanima shines as a leader example on how to build a truly terrifying medieval game.

The creatures in Exanima are truly foes to be feared, and when you hear the gurgling growl of a horrid fleshy monster to the dull moan of a zombie like creature your heart skips a beat at each turn, for throughout the entire run through the labyrinth you have no desire to run into these things.

The music is fantastic with Bethain Lee-Lewis at the helm of the original soundtrack with Jūra E. Šedytė as the vocals. Together the music is something to be appreciated on its own let alone put into the world of Exanima where it only lends to its scary atmosphere.

Graphics

The Graphics in this game must be seen in game to be enjoyed properly. Be it running through the dark sewers surrounded by foul beasts or a in a grand cave of light and magic you will always be impressed by how intricate the world feels.

The lighting is one of those brilliant things that doesn’t get noticed so much but can be appreciated so much. The look of two knights in shining armour in the dark off night with only the flaming torches to light them up is something to behold in game with so little developers. Never have I been pulled out by strange low-resolution textures or janky objects; everything is very well done to maximise your immersion. Between terrifying monsters or simple zombies, the value of fear into losing your fictional character to some horrid demise, is amplified tenfold in these dark corridoes and cavernous pits. The lighting is on par with the best of AAA titles these days, and you can feel the love and care through out every level the game mercilessly throws at you.

Combat

Combat is very nuanced and hard, it will take time to learn as it is based on physics, timing, distance, footwork, armour, and the weapon itself. Many people have come away from this game with one-line negative reviews on Steam after only playing 2-5 hours of the game, and no wonder, it takes practices like any martial art you won’t be a pro in an hour.

Rushing and opponent while spamming the attack button is far from what this game allows, e.i you will be killed. Movement is directed by the typical WASD format while your direction is controlled by your curser. Keeping yourself in range of your weapon whilst being able to duck away from an incoming strike is fundamental to survival and I recommend a good amount of time spent in the practice arena to learn, you will die but with each death will come knowledge, look at how your opponent moves, copy their foot work, and learn to time your attacks with how you move your character. A strike while lunging into your opponent will deal significantly more damage than if you stand still.

Armour plays a huge part in your survivability in the world. You can suffer any number of injuries in Exanima all of which will be bad for your overall health depending on how you were hit and where. These injury types are slash, pierce, impact, and crush. Slash is your armour’s ability to withstand a slashing weapon strike, this is less of a problem with metal armour. Pierce is your armour’s ability to withstand a point impact weapon like a thrust from a sword or the pointy end of a pole hammer, metal armour is very susceptible to this king of damage, so skill and care around these weapons will help win the day. Impact and crush are remarkably similar in the sense that they both rely on the same kind of damage. Blunt force trauma, armour is very weak against this kind of force, weapons like axes, maces and hammers are particularly good at delivering it, crush is the lethal variant of the two where impact will only affect your stamina, crush will cause you a physical injury due to the impact force having defeated your armour. Lots of care to avoid these strikes are necessary when confronted with them. Different armour will have various degrees of quality and you will have to be on the lookout for the best armour to suite your needs.

Advanced combat is something to behold, like a reward for learning the intricacies of the game. Advanced techniques are a combination of basic moves to pull of special ones, for instance grappling, body slams and tripping moves that can absolutely win you a fight. All this is based on playing with the physics of the game. One good example of this would be that despite there being no actual bindable move for a shield bash if you swing with a shield side strike and use the momentum of a dash into your opponent, you can send them straight to the ground with your shield.

This is not without its faults however and often you may find yourself spinning around and back stepping into your enemy, or when you think you have performed a fend, (Abandon your attack to parry,) you get smacked in the face. But these are avoidable with practice and more refinement on the developer’s part, of which they are very vocal and honest about what their working on. (Discord and their own website, Bare Mettle Entertainment.)

What makes the combat special in Exanima is the finesse in which the medieval martial art is presented, the combination between active physics and freedom of the cursor creates infinite possible ways to deal with an opponent, no two kills are the same be it throughout the campaign or the arena. Combat if you look at the old manuals and modern-day practitioners is almost like a dance, and this dance of death is replicated very well in Exanima.

Magic

Yes, there I magic in Exanima. It is called Thaumaturgy and its pretty cool. Thaumaturgy is a real thing and is based on the idea of a magical person being able to perform miracles or other strange paranormal events.

This real world aspect surtanly plays a part in the game as the spells are something of miricles themselves. One of them alows you to manipulate an ememies mind so the become passive to you, alowing you to slip out of a difficult situation. Another spell alows you to make a puppet of an ememy so they can carry you stuff and fight for you. Of couse however, there is a limit. Just like heath you lose your magical stamina to your actions.

Campaign

I think the best way to give you the reader an insight into the campaign of this game is to take you on the adventure that was my first time playing the story. This will be mostly spoiler free.

Some things to note first about the campaign and Exanima in general is death is permanent, checkpoint don’t happen often and when they do, it is far back whence you came, so avoiding confrontation is paramount, especially in early stages when you have no armour.

First thing I see when my character awakens groggy in a dark room with one door and a single flaming torch as light is a short metal pole, which is to be my weapon. I went up to the door and click on it to no avail. I tried the handle and many other things; I even searched around to find a key to unlock it. All this was unsuccessful, until I accidentally held left mouse and dragged the door toward me opening it completely. This little event would become a staple for the rest of this story.

With my metal pole and torch, I ran to a junction where all but one door was open, now with the knowledge to open doors I went ahead to do that and went down the long hallway I was presented with. This led to my first encounter where upon I was smacked in the side with an axe a few times and promptly fell asleep. In Exanima your health bar is yellow and is exhaustion, but if you take an injury, it fills red depending on severity, taking this red damage reduces your overall stamina when fighting so you can take less hits before passing out, and as you can imagine taking a full red bar equals death.

So, I was now reduced to under half of my total stamina, but I found after walking around for a bit that most enemies are not hostile unless you get up and in their face. This knowledge was useful because I could now go throughout most of the level without fighting anyone.

At one point I even found a blue glowing potion that allowed me to heal to full so that was grouse. Further on in my exploration I found a man named Derrin, and after a small chat he agreed to help me, from this decision he was shortly shanked to death by a zombie. I should mention also that along with this helpful fellow there are scattered around the dungeon many extremely professionally written pages of lore and interesting books that only help in describing the world you’re in and add ominous warnings about the journey ahead.

By this point I had found a helmet, some armour and an ornate dagger buried under some rubble and was confronted by a hostile zombie wilding a longsword in a large courtyard, swinging randomly he hit me in the neck, then on the head and I dropped dead.

That is the essence of campaign Exanima, it is hard, unforgiving and will not give you moment’s notice before it ends your hour long playthrough. But do not be deterred, as this was only the beginning of many more runs to which I was quite successful in getting very far into the game, and that is the best part of it, you are rewarded handsomely for your victories, be it new armour for exploring a place, or defeating a giant suite of armour for a smaller version, the risk is worth the reward and certainly the play time.

Arena

Arena is the perfect playground for getting use to the combat in Exanima. The game keeps its risk verses reward element and it’s a little more forgiving than the main campaign especially for new players.

The beginning of the arena has you make a character that acts as the leader, whom you can’t let die. From there you enrol hired and recruited fighters into every kind of fight you can imagine with intelligent and difficult enemies, there is also a tournament that happens every five days that your master fighters can take part in and is incredibly challenging. If you win these you will get perfect weapons and if you win every tournament in a season, you get a unique set of armour.

The risk is still ever present however and you must think carefully about who you put into the arena and with what equipment they are given. Because if they die you will lose a lot of time and training, however you won’t lose your gear as it will be pooled into your arsenal to distribute to other fighters.

Getting through the first few levels is a dangerous game as you don’t have much to protect you from sharp objects such as knifes and saw blades. I would recommend playing low level characters in their rank but with equipment set to inept until you get to adept where metal armour like Brigandines and helmets are usable. This rank also brings out some heavy hitting weapons like pole axes and pole hammers which will drop you quickly unless you are properly equipped. Weapons and armour are all associated level caps as mentioned before, and a fighter can only use that piece in the required level and above. This means no full plate against peasants with sticks.

All weapons are also procedurally generated meaning there are hundreds of possible variants for each type of weapon. These are mostly categorised by quality of the weapon as the worse its quality the worse the states are going to be. The armour is mostly the same though they haven’t added procedural generation to it.

Now. Money is a bit of a grind to get but it will get easier when you have some master equipped in full plate, because you be able to enter high reward fights at a master level as well as special fights which allow you fight, for instance someone of any level, so you can beat a peasant and his stick with a great sword and shining armour. Or you can do 1v3s which yield a lot of money but are hard. All these fights tend to give higher money counts and will help you get money in the bank.

Community

The community of Exanima, at least the Steam community is quite a nice one. Granted there’s no multiplayer yet, which to my knowledge tends to be the bane of sword fighting game communities. However, people are generally nice with fellows adding guides to the combat and levels as well as interactive maps for those who are struggling. There are often many people showing of new moves they discovered whether it be shield bashing the daylights out some peasant to pinning a knight to the ground with a poleaxe. The community seems to thrive off learning from other people. In my experience going and watching other people play and find cool items has been a god send while trying to implement these techniques into my own roster.

Upcoming news

Current news in the community is the reveal of multiplayer and Co-op play will be a thing in the future. The developers conformed that there will be opportunity to fight other people in the arena as well as playing with friends in the campaign. This news has been received very well by fans of the game and everyone is looking forward to its implementation. However, it is not projected to be soon, as the developers are prioritising getting the game to the best it can be before this is worked on.

Currently the developers are working on the campaign and its story elements along with new levels and fights to be had. Along with the new campaign workings more magic is set to be introduced soon as the developers want to add more depth to the mind-bending games of Thaumaturgy.

I spoke to my assessor to work out how and to what end a review could look like in a feature article context.

The way I planned my review was to follow real industry guidelines to allow for an authentic replication of a review. This being the number of hours needed in research of the topic and the presentation of the final product.

I developed a personal timeline for my piece using the information presented to me in class, with that I laid out a guild to follow for when certain steps needed to be completed in the process.

I recorded feed back and suggestions from my fellow students in my notes book and followed where they led me in terms of creating a better feature article.

Working with copyright I made sure that all images captured in the game were taken by me and the title screen taken from the proper source.

Using feedback, I added areas of discussion including using developer’s names in relation to certain topics to add life to the people behind the scenes. I also used feedback to influence they way the imagery was used in the article.

My desk and computer have been the same level in compliance with OHAS since I got the things. And I took regular breaks which included proper exercise and other novel activities.

Conclusion

In conclusion the question stays, should you buy this game? If you’re into realistic medieval fighting games, absolutely you will love the area and all those unique challenges. If you are into hardcore atmospheric dungeon crawlers with a medieval spin, you’ll love the campaign. If you don’t like any of that or the third person camera, physics mechanics or the perma death you may not be so into this one.