It has been a long time since I played a game in early access, and I think I found the perfect one. I remember seeing the game on Twitter a few weeks back. I put it on my wishlist and ultimately forgot about the game until the literal last moment when the Steam Summer Sale was ending. This week’s theme is paper and I am filling out the pages with the blood of my enemies. This week is Vellum.
Vellum is a co-op roguelike from Alvios Games/Inc. The game was released into Early Access in March and is only available on the PC. The game retails for $15.
Honest to God, I do not think there is a story, plot, or anything attached to this game so far. All I know is that you and your friends are “scribes.” Ink pen-like people who are protecting what looks like to be a library from the likes of some bad guys. Jump into chapters of books and beat up the baddies.
Everything is themed around books.
Gameplay is pretty much what you would expect from a roguelike. Players have a standard attack, a heavy one, a dash, and an ultimate ability, so to speak. I don’t really know what the signature abilities do aside from more damage. All of which can be fully customized within the hub area. The “signature spell” usually boils down to a different color and an alternative way to deal more damage. The signature spells add borderline nothing to evolve the gameplay just another way to beat up on bad guys. The hub is filled with things to do: customize your character, customize the load-outs, fill out the quest board, fill in the permanent upgrade board, and choose what stages you want to play on. Once you want to play, head to the font in the middle and select a book, which, so far there are a lot of books/chapters to choose from.
Each chapter is boiled down to a series of wave-based missions. There are waves of enemies coming at you and when defeated rewards are granted that buff the efficiency of the player. In the beginning, players have a choice of an upgrade that the enemies will obtain. Things like faster walking, more defense, damage upgrades, and even a zombie that emerges from the dead bad guy can be chosen. A portal spawns in a random section of the area that drops in a bunch of themed enemies. Enemies like a giant pumpkin man, zombies, bears, and other gross-looking baddies come out of these portals depending on which book is chosen. After the bar at the top is filled, end-of-round rewards are doled out. Things like damage buffs, specific attack buffs (to primary, secondary, and dash) and a slew of other upgrades can be chosen out of three scrolls (or six on occasion).
There are two upgrade points given out to players to upgrade that will, usually, give out passive rewards to the player depending on, again, which chapter was chosen. Healing orbs can drop, more defense, more damage, and other perks can be purchased to help with the ever-growing threat.
The core gameplay is simple: survive and sometimes that alone is quite difficult.
Vellum‘s core gameplay has a nice foundation but when you can tweak the difficulty to your whim, issues arise from that, mainly that the game can get quite difficult quite quickly. A friend and I tweaked the difficulty to +3 and it had given the enemies invulnerability to damage for a small amount of time and we were back in the lobby in less than five minutes. Classes can be customized to make it a little easier but we were still only getting to the second level and having to go back to the lobby because it was too difficult. This is relative because if we chose no upgrade then the game was too easy forcing us into a system of upgrades that were consistent with a manageable difficulty.
The gameplay so far is pretty shallow, but it is fun nonetheless.
Vellum looks great but when in the throes of combat it is a busy-looking game that results in untimely resets to runs. The book theme is ever present and reminds the player constantly that the game revolves around books, to the point that LITERALLY EVERYTHING somehow coincides with books, even the title. regardless, environments are nice and varied, even for an early access game it is pretty impressive.
Vellum has a way of sparking something I don’t think I ever encountered in a video game…Boredom. The only thing that remember from actually playing the game was that aggressive scribbling sound when the loading screens occur. Another way for the game to show you is that it’s a game with a parchment theme.
Vellum was advertised to me to be a game like Risk of Rain, and being one of the foremost experts on the game, I can safely say that Vellum is nowhere near the perfection that Risk of Rain is. Vellum is fun but that is only because it satisfies a power fantasy. Everyone loves power fantasies but Vellum only offers one kind, actual power. There is no depth to its roguelike gameplay. You really only ever want damage buffs and if you do not choose them, then be ready to restart from the beginning because you will not succeed.
Vellum is really fun with friends but alone it is boring as all hell, the difficulty spikes are annoying and runs end only because you cannot really see what the hell is going on when waves of enemies are blocking the screen.
7/10 I hope that the time in Early Access can really make the game evolve into a roguelike with more depth
Grinds and Games 