Secret of the Geraki

Secret of the Geraki is an action adventure game created by Jeroen_Sol in RPG Maker VX Ace that focuses on exploration and is currently still in early development. Recreating the style of the 8-bit adventure classics, the game follows the adventures of an archeologist in a fictional world as he explores the ruins of an old temple of the ancient Geraki culture. In order to escape with both his newly gathered research and his own life, the protagonist must find his way through a massive complex filled with monsters, puzzles, ciphers and treasures. But while the main premises of the game are very interesting, unfortunately some parts don't work well the way they currently are, which quickly made an experience that could and should have been exciting and engaging become much more frustrating than was probably ever intended.

Let's start off with the good things. The graphics of Secret of the Geraki are very nicely made 8-bit style, and although not always used to maximal aesthetic effect, it fits the atmosphere of the game quite well. The main goal is to navigate the large ruins dungeon you are trapped in, and gradually explore more of it as you open up secret doors and collect items that allow you to overcome new types of obstacles. A very important part of exploration is discovering new symbols of the Geraki language, and figuring out their meaning. Usually, these symbols appear in small groups on stone tablets in the different rooms of the ruins, and they give you a hint as to what you objective in this room is. Some of them are more straightforward than others, but every time you solve a problem that they are connected with, their meaning will be entered into your dictionary, so that you can decipher future clues more easily. I found these symbols to be a brilliant gameplay element, and in my opinion they are one of the greatest strengths of Secret of the Geraki. However, I also kept finding myself in situations where it wasn't clear to me what the symbols were meant to tell me, and apparently the same combination of symbols can mean different things in different rooms.





Then, there is the combat. Personally, I am a huge fan of action-based battle systems, and so I had high hopes for this aspect of the game. The protagonist is armed, unsurprisingly, with a powerful whip, which can be used to smash enemies and some obstacles. Monsters or vermin that creep around the ruins will sometimes block your progress or attack you, and you will need to make extensive use of the whip to get rid of them. The problem with this system is twofold: Firstly, enemies tend to move around at random and relatively quickly, especially after you've hit them once. And secondly, the whip only has a very short reach. Thus, you can only hit enemies directly in front of you, making combat much more a matter of luck than of skill. Especially in situations where you are required to engage in combat to progress, that becomes annoying very quickly. In addition, the enemies' speed and behaviour can cause you to take damage almost randomly if something decides to run into you.
This ties into another problem, namely the fact that while your health regenerates over time, it does so at a ridiculously low rate. There is a type of tile that quickly heals you, but I only encountered one of them in the whole game. As a result, you can get pretty much stuck for a long time in certain areas, because you are too hurt to survive the journey back out.





As far as navigating the the ruins goes, in the beginning it is very linear and straightforward, but after the first boss it becomes a lot more difficult. There's a lot of areas to explore, and their layout becomes more confusing as you go. Also, there is a whole area where your field of vision is severely restricted, which is where I found myself lost and unable to proceed. (There might also have been a bug of some kind that blocked me, however, as evidenced in the image below.)





As a whole, I very much appreciated the basic concept behind Secret of the Geraki, but its implementation seemed lacking to me. That doesn't mean that it's a bad game the way it is right now. I just think that with a few improvements, the quality and enjoyability could be increased a lot. My suggestions would be:
- Either increase the area of effect of the whip, or make enemies' movement more predictable. The Banshee boss was very hard, but could be won relatively reliably with the right strategy. If this were true for all enemies, combat would be much less frustrating.
- Give the player a few consumable items to instantly restore health, or have the automatic regeneration speed up when the player is standing still. It's no fun having to wait for an eternity to be able to power through a dangerous section again.
- Try to make sure that enemies don't continue to walk around (and even through you) while your basic menu is open.
- Most important of all: Please, provide an in-game map. The game even directly tells you to draw a map for yourself - but really, there is a reason why games aren't made in this fashion any more. Considering how vast and complicated the layout of this game's setting is, a map is definitely necessary. But forcing the player to draw a literal, physical map for themselves is just annoying, no matter how much it fits the oldschool style of game. If you really want that to be an integral part of your game, think again, and then don't do it. You can always allow the player to disable the map option if they're really eager to try out the "true" oldschool experience.

I'll be keeping an eye on this game for when a newer version comes out, because I definitely think it shows a lot of promise. But no matter how much it tries to emulate the style of an earlier era of gaming, Secret of the Geraki needs to become less clunky in order to be as enjoyable as it can be.