I briefly mentioned IVAN in a previous article, and I feel that was unfair for this quite interesting little piece. Sure, it has permadeath, and is a great example of it, but IVAN is a much larger package than just dying.
I mean, that said, there's not actually that much more to the game than dying. Over and over. Sometimes violently (always violently), sometimes to something you didn't think could kill you (like everything, like fucking vomiting for shit's sake), and sometimes you'll just die and not know why (Your head starts to bleed badly! You die! Would you like to see your inventory?) The game is, simplified, Dark Souls except it doesn't want you to get better and it doesn't want you to ever, ever win. In fact, they say that the mere act of being able to finish the game through any of it's three endings is a bugged feature of the game. Funny, isn't it?
You start off in a little island village with your dog Kenny, after a brief and humourous intro that sums up how hilarious and violent the game will be, you're thrown into the underground passage to cross to the mainland and deliver a message to the capital. And then it gets silly. Soon you'll start finding weapons or armour, and equipping them is absolutely vital. Everything is absolutely randomised, so you might find a magic wand of door creation before you find a shoe.
The combat is fairly basic, but with an interesting twist. You've got your basic "press direction towards enemy to attack until they die" strategy going on, but the damage you and some enemies take vary across body parts. You have 7 places you can be attacked: Head, torso, groin, right arm, left arm, right leg and left leg. If your head, torso or groin are destroyed, you die, but you can lose any of your limbs and still carry on, at a huge debuff to your strength, speed or endurance.
But you can get them back. In one of the funniest mechanics in a game I've ever seen. In the game their are certain deity's that you can pray to, consisting of Good, Neutral and Evil gods and goddesses. Who you pray to depends on what they give you, some will give you a random magic ability, instantly refill your hunger, slay your enemies, summon a helper, polymorph you, change your weapon or armour's hardness, or do absolutely nothing. But almost all of them will try to give you your bodyparts back if something is missing. Pray to the god of war and metal, lol, now I haz an iron leg. Pray to the goddess of nutrition, yeyz, I gots mah leg back as skin. Pray to the goddess of famine and disease, uh.... poison mushroom leg...... yaaaaaaaay... Would you like to see your inventory?
The loot and items is a fairly impressive list. You've got a hardness level of all kinds of items, which you can enchant to make better or pray for a god to do it. You've got your swords, maces, full helmets, fairly standard stuff. But actually finding that stuff, well, that's a thrill of its own. You might encounter something incredibly hard and only have like 4 wands and a pokey stick. What do you do? Break all the wands to see what happens of course. You can either zap with or snap wands of all the different types, fireballs, lightning, cloning, necromancy, mirroring, all kinds of silly things. Hint: please do not snap a wand of acid rain. In fact, you probably shouldn't snap any of them. Would you like to see your inventory?
Each life will see you try and get as far as possible, kill as many enemies as possible, get as good loot as possible, mix risk and reward and try to attain the impossible and actually finish the game. The game tracks the score of your best 200 characters and lists how they die in a screen you see upon every character's death, and you'll see it a lot, and it's an absolute charm to see it every time. You name each one specifically, so you remember old Hedgehog or Snakebite. I usually go with the naming convention of the thing I died of last time. One of my best characters is "Acute Poisoning the lawful human".
We must discuss negative points! With a game as varied and interesting as this, there's little to mock. However, it seems to me that development stopped years and years ago, so we won't see much more than what it is now which is a shame. I would love to see it keep going and get some true recognition out there.
If you've ever played a roguelike before, you should pick this up and see how you like getting beaten, battered, destroyed and dismembered time and time again. If you've never played a roguelike before, you should pick this up and
see how you like getting beaten, battered, destroyed and dismembered
time and time again. What I'm saying is that you should pick this up.
As I said in my last review, IVAN is a free download and available here:
http://ivan.sourceforge.net/
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