PC
A mistake I think I can be prone to is allowing perfection to be the enemy of good. Certainly not in my own actions, but in the games I’ll select for coverage on this site. Which feels like a very unfairly pre-damning way to begin my review of the extremely lovely and highly commendable Maple Blade.
This short, adorable turn-based action game has you playing as the Purifier, a young girl charged with walking through the spooky woods of the Sage Grounds, a grid-shaped top-down randomized area filled with trees, gravestones, coins, shrines and ghosties. Your initial goal is to rescue a missing cat and return her to the Visitor’s Center for the Sage Grounds (quite a pleasant and safe place during the day, it seems), after which you get given a whole list of objectives to complete across as many nights as it takes.
In Maple Blade, the ghosts only move when you do, and the tile-based movement and arrows showing a ghost’s intended direction means you can calculate safe routes to get around. However, you also have your purifying sword that allows you to project ahead a set number of tiles to warp to a certain point, and should that cross the path of, or be the same tile as, a ghost, you’ll eliminate it. Purifying ghosts awards you Chaos points (more depending upon from how many tiles away you bopped it), and Chaos can be spent using your sword to chop down trees to create new paths through the Grounds. That’s the gist of it, unless you’re playing in the much harder Challenge Mode where enemies are also able to move when you’re moving the cursor across tiles to aim your attacks.
To get back out of the Sage Grounds, you need to find three randomly located keys in order to re-open the gate, and each step you take advances the time. The later it gets, the more dangerous the Grounds become, and if you reach midnight then things get really rough. It all makes for a really neat system, a very satisfying rogue-ish adventure where each night’s trip comes with great risk. Lose all your hearts and you’ll wake up back at the Visitor’s Center without any of the money you picked up and none of the tasks you completed solved. Return safely and you can spend your cash on bonus abilities at a shop, or on purely decorative items for your task-listing mobile phone, and most importantly on completely functionless new hats for the cat to wear.
The ultimate goal is to cross off every task on the to-do list, to reach the game’s finale. In the meantime, there’s also a peculiar demonic shrine where you can take on extra challenges to complete from seasonal demon types (who will adjust the Sage Grounds’ aesthetic accordingly), and a whole bunch of NPCs to chat to back at the Center. And I loved it! I loved everything about it. And then it was over.
This is the issue I have. Maple Blade is such a good idea that its brevity does it such a disservice. If anything, it’s confusingly short. In my completed run I was only able to do the tasks of one of the demons, and have been left very confused how I’d ever have done the others. Also, while the game’s ending rationalises why the Sage Grounds are no longer haunted (and thus no longer really playable), I wanted to keep going! Add more tasks! They don’t need to be complicated, they could be as simple asking me to pick up any other doohickey or lost item, and the challenge could be raised by adding more keys, or larger numbers of ghosts earlier in the night.
The game was intended to be short, a passion project by developer Travis Root, and I absolutely understand the joy of a small, contained game, and indeed respect that the level of work required to keep adding more story and dynamics was never part of the plan. Yet, I feel like it’s begging to be allowed to at the very least carry on being played. Instead, finishing it drops you to desktop, and the only way to play more is to start a new save game.
I’ll say, when my only complaint about a game is that I want to keep playing it, it’s not exactly a condemnation! It just all feels like it’s set up to last longer, with more stuff to buy in the shops, more collectibles to purchase, more demons to worship, and NPCs just stood there who could ask you to go find them five acorns or whatever. Because the actual act of playing is so much fun I want more excuses to do that!
It’s worth noting that Challenge Mode does give a reason to play the game again. It offers one extra challenge with a neat reward, and at the same time makes the entire game a degree tougher. Here you only have three hearts maximum, and the ghosts can move when you’re aiming your sword movements, and those two things combined have left me delighted by how much harder I have to think. It’s still very achievable, but still doesn’t add a vast amount that’s new. Oh, and I have to replay a third time because I never found out what happens if I listen to the vampire…
It’s also gorgeous, with lovely pixel art, and the autumnal vibe is the best. The characters are superbly well written, given you know exactly who everyone is within just a couple of sentences, and it manages to feel “cozy” without feeling tepid. I have so much respect for what’s achieved here. I just want a bit more! Another bite! So much heartfelt work has been put in to create such a superbly crafted and unique approach that it does itself a disservice by not letting it all be fully explored.
Still, for a fiver, goodness me you should get this. Perhaps if enough of you do Root will feel compelled to elaborate on it! Or perhaps even better, make a new game that more deeply realises such obvious talents.
- Travis Root
- Steam, Itch
- £4/$5/5€
- Official Site
All Buried Treasure articles are funded by Patreon backers. If you want to see more reviews of great indie games, please consider backing this project.
81
