Connor
Japan really does have its own thing going on.
Maybe that’s not the best way to start this review, but it is the right way to start it.
After a lifetime of mostly sticking to the English speaking side of video game development, here’s me jumping into another market for the first time, not with a Fromsoft or Nintendo game, but with something AGRESSIVELY Japanese.
The characters are anthropomorphic beans.
There are sparkling lights on everything.
The first major milestone I am really given is to reach floor 100 of a dungeon.
ROBOTS.
I am a bean with a sword and this is my story.
The first thing you might notice when you start up Ignistone is the art-style.
It’s rudimentary, crafted from basic shapes and bold lines.
The entire thing might have been made in MS Paint. The player character has a face made of three vector objects and the NPCs are small collections of simple shapes with very direct keypoint to keypoint animations.
It’s cutesy but not anime… before you ask.
Everything bounces for its static animation… perhaps a little too animatedly. The entire world we inhabit here seems to be located on the seat of a gigantic revving Harley Davidson.
The only time the art-style became distracting to me was when passing through a level barrier and spotting the obvious object layering in the perfectly straight line the character model disappeared behind.
That’s not to say there is no beauty to be found here.
There is colour everywhere, certainly more than you would find in some grey and grey cover based shooter with graphics you need something from NASA to run.
Walking through the festival in the hubworld is reminiscent of moving through an actual crowd.
Little spots of dialogue pop up around us letting us know that beans have been disappearing recently and that the blacksmith isn’t open yet and other standard RPG hero stuff.
It evokes that night market feeling of pushing your way through a crowd of people all doing their own thing.
Intro music is a very simple string melody playing over a narrator telling the story we are playing.
From there we move onto a main menu with a more jovial and cartoonish feeling to it.
In game, much like with graphics, music is simplistic but effective.
The shift between wandering, dungeon and battle music is barely noticeable, but effectively manages the shift in mood between prep and fight.
There is no voice acting, only classic electronic RPG buzzing noises over moving chatboxes.
Translation quality is hard to asses.
There don’t appear to be any direct errors and all information gets across… but something certainly hits the ear a little sideways.
“Nice to meet you, I will tell you an ancient legend. Clear the old mine within 10 dungeon attempts, something golden awaits if you do.”
OK, thanks person I just met and don’t know the name of. I’m sure that dialogue sounded seamless and natural in Japanese.
To be fair, I am the only person at this festival carrying a wooden shield and sword in the ready position.
We start with a smart little bean making robots to challenge his friend / eternal rival to a fight… which he always loses.
That’s us by the way, not the robot maker, the guy he challenges.
The genius bean will become our companion throughout the dungeon we are here to plunder and will grow on you with time.
We, meanwhile, are a bit more mysterious.
The player character is gender ambiguous and draped in some kind of bedsheet ghost costume with obvious pointy ears. I can’t help but wonder if our own true appearance is going to be a plot point down the line.
The core gameplay is a ‘choose-a-path’ style dungeon crawler.
We enter the mine and get three paths to pick for each level. The order in which we will encounter enemies, resources and healing is shown ahead of time in each of the three, and so we have a strategic choice to make.
Take a safer path with lots of healing? Or pick something more threatening for tough fights but increased return.
We collect resources in the dungeon and return to town periodically to upgrade equipment and items.
What starts as a fairly straightforward pattern of emergent gameplay and a touch of cultural confusion on my part swiftly became an addictive loop of penetrating deeper into the dungeon to gain more resources to upgrade equipment to get deeper into the dungeon.
Something about the entire process was extremely absorbing.
I was down to level 90 and considering whether to keep my momentum up or go back to town to upgrade when I realised I had been tricked into having fun.
Dastardly.
In summary, give it a shot.
This game doesn’t look like something that would hold your attention for any length of time at first glance, and you shouldn’t expect super complex mechanics, but within is something that will find you wanting to keep going… just for one. More. Level.
Released: October 2023
Rating: G
Platforms reviewed: PC
Genre: RPG
Developer: Mono Entertainment
Publisher: Kodansha Games Creator’s Lab