IndieRPGs.com Checks Out Balrum

Hey guys! You might have noticed that I managed to record and upload a couple of new episodes of IndieRPGs.com Checks Out over the weekend! First up was Balrum–you can see the first 50 minutes or so below:

So, what’d I think?

Honestly, I’m unsure about this one.

I’ll start with the good. Massive effort was clearly put into making the world around you feel alive: NPCs have behaviors tied to the day and night cycle, and you can interact with nearly everything on the screen to an extent that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a modern RPG.

Now, here’s the problem: Balrum starts off really slow, and I get the nagging feeling that I was barely able to scratch its surface during the less-than-an-hour I had to give it. Most of my playtime was taken up with character dialogue–and frankly, that dialogue was neither interactive nor gripping enough to really suck me in.

I wasn’t thrilled by my experience with the combat system either, although I’m pretty sure I did something wrong in my various attempts to incinerate the wildlife wandering around our woodland village. (There’s no way a fireball spell would actually force you to engage at melee range, right?)

If you like your RPGs with a heavy dollop of survival and crafting, I get the sense that you will enjoy the hell out of Balrum. As a matter of taste, those things just aren’t core to what I personally love in RPGs, so the experience left me a little cold; but perhaps I’ll warm to Balrum a bit more once actual dungeons (present on the game’s feature list) and combat start to show up.

Balrum is available on Steam for $14.99. Windows and Mac.