Grave Spirit

[eMTe]

Within an ancient land, undisturbed for ages, evil resides in a towering fortress... A young wanderer, without a name and past, has been forced to travel to this fortress by a shadowy spirit who controls his every move. Setting out on an uncertain journey, the nameless wanderer has no choice but to succeed in pleasing the spirit's wishes or die trying...

Together with The Longing Ribbon most atmospheric rpgmaker game Ive played.

Developer: Ravencoast Studio
http://ravencoast.com/gsindex.html (is down)

Download at CWF:
http://www.curlysworldoffreeware.com/games/view/409

[Pater Alf]

Not bad! There are some things the developer created that I've never seen in a RPGMaker game before, like the possibility to control a bird to interact with stuff your character can't reach or the changing colour of the character's eyes to tell the player about the health status.

The story isn't that innovative, but the game is atmospheric, partly because of the dark graphics and partly because of the excellent soundtrack composed by Brandon Abley ("Wilfred the Hero").

[Chroelle]

It is not until the end that you appreciate the game fully. This also means that the beginning of the game is the most tame of the sections of it. This might result in many gamers quitting this before it really begins.
The idea about the bird seemed to be something that was going to be filling up this game with lots of new types of puzzles, but it never got that much more important than it was right after you got it, so it seemed that the developer might have misjudged his use of it.
Also the story was very weird at first, and you feel that you might have accidentally skipped an intro. This is not the case, you just need to finish the game to get an idea of what happened before you start the game.
Good surprise at the end, and plot suddenly opened up tp be very good indeed.
Bosses were differing in difficulty to an extent where it was hard to know if you were in for a tough fight or a walk in the park. Good diversity in types of attacks and enemies. Puzzles were easy, but gave you a good flow in the game with no real hold-ups. Pathfinding was easy, so you never really got lost.
The game has two secret areas that I never found, and the collection of coins is supposed to give you a secret skill. I never found that either but cant imagine it was important either as nothing really sprang out and yelled - this would be good place to be able to [insert secret skill here].

The game could have been better presented which would have given it a much stronger presense. I am afraid many will shut this down before it really catches on. Sad but true. Just like the end.

[Moogle]

Homepage is down, you need a new one. I'll go looking. I'll also see if I can get a working download for this tonight.

[Pater Alf]

http://www.planetfreeplay.com/game/Grave-Spirit/

[Chroelle]

It just dawned on me that eMTe never voted for this one, and he wrote in his description that he did play it... But hey... as long as it gets a third vote I am happy.

[Moogle]

The action sequences werent spectactularly thrilling, but the game hooked me from the start and presented lots of challenging puzzles, an interesting concept, and a well-thought out storyline (although a bit hard to understand in the beginning, like Chroelle and Drasir-Vel said.) In the beginning of the game it directs you to the manual and says you should read it before starting, and trust me, you'll want to read it, although the controls are very basic, and the more advanced controls are explained in-game.

[Chroelle]

Well if you need a new place to download Grave Spirit then why not try CWF:
http://www.curlysworldoffreeware.com/games/view/409

[Pater Alf]

And if you liked the game, you could download the soundtrack from Brandon Abley's site:

http://www.brandonabley.com/?page_id=79