IndieRPGs.com Checks Out King Voxel (Alpha)

Since its announcement in March of this year, it seems like King Voxel has been in nearly every Back to Back article I’ve written. Given the number of times I’ve mentioned the game, you would think that I had some notion of whether it is any good or not–but up until the past few days, I’d been flying blind.

No longer! Developer Phillip Meyer of Lecker Clecker was good enough to provide me with an alpha build of the game; this video is the result:

Overall, my first impressions are positive. It nails the things about the original Zelda that made it special, and adds in some new twists that improve the experience. The procedural world / dungeon generation algorithm could use some tweaking, but it’s already a great feature that gives the game loads of replayability.

The biggest flaw I saw in my time with King Voxel concerns the nature of the boss sequences. They aren’t bad in and of themselves, but they perhaps hew a bit too faithfully to the design of the original Zelda. The fact that the player can simply walk out of the room after initiating a boss fight means that the stakes never feel particularly high during these encounters. Having unique boss music would help give these exchanges some tension as well. (Locking the player into boss fights would mean extra design work to prevent unwinnable situations against certain bosses, but I still think it would be worth the trouble.)

In any event, these complaints are relatively minor. I had a great time playing King Voxel, and given that the game is in alpha, there remains plenty of time to address its weaknesses. What there isn’t plenty of time for, though, is funding the game; head on over here to contribute to the King Voxel Kickstarter and try the demo for yourself.