The Game Kitchen and Team17 have now delivered on their promise of official Linux (and macOS) support for Blasphemous as it's now available.
Set in a world where a foul curse has fallen upon the land simply known as The Miracle, which visibly and tangibly manifests peoples "guilt, repentance, mourning and every pain of the soul of all kind". You play as The Penitent One, sole survivor of a massacre known as the Silent Sorrow. Trapped in an endless cycle of death and rebirth, it’s down to you to free the world from this terrible fate and reach the origin of your anguish. It sounds quite horrible but it sure does make for an engrossing setting.
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Feature Highlight:
- Explore a Non-Linear World: Overcome fearsome enemies and deadly traps as you venture through a variety of different landscapes, and search for redemption in the dark gothic world of Cvstodia.
- Brutal Combat: Release the power of Mea Culpa, a sword born from guilt itself, to slaughter your foes. Acquire devastating new combos and special moves as you purge all in your path.
- Executions: Unleash your wrath and relish in the gory dismemberment of your adversaries - all in beautifully rendered, pixel-perfect execution animations.
- Customise Your Build: Discover and equip Relics, Rosary Beads, Prayers and Sword Hearts to give you the new abilities and stat boosts you need to survive. Experiment with different combinations to suit your playstyle.
- Intense Boss Battles: Hordes of gigantic, twisted creatures stand between you and your goal. Learn how they move, survive their devastating attacks and emerge victorious.
- Unlock the Mysteries of Cvstodia: The world is full of tormented souls. Some offer you aid, some may ask for something in return. Uncover the stories and fates of these tortured characters to gain rewards and a deeper understanding of the dark world you inhabit.
They mentioned that the newly supported platforms are fully up to date with all the latest goodies too.
Note: we were sent a key by the developer some time ago. Performance seems wonderfully smooth, gamepad input works great with the Xbox One controller (working vibration and all). I did notice a minor issue with some missing gamepad prompts when it tells you how to access you inventory (bug report) and the map but it's perfect other than that. Looks like it was worth the wait and the port seems great. Certainly doesn't ease you into it, with a huge enemy jumping into screen within the first few minutes and wow - does it get intense quickly.
Pictured: the new Linux port of Blasphemous in action. Shortly before my first death.
Some games you pick up and you just get that instant feeling of a connection, Blasphemous gave me that right away. Not surprised it's seen such good reviews from other critics and users alike, this is going to be good. Challenging, sweat-inducing frantic action but what awesome world-building it has to get you pulled in right from the start.
You can buy it from Humble Store and Steam for a key, and hopefully at some point the Linux build will be up on GOG.
Quoting: GuestQuoting: ageresQuoting: GuestCould you go into some more detail about what parts you found boring?Lots of backtracking...
Interesting, thanks for the info. I've played and completed Hollow Knight before and I loved it. I'll check out Minoria.
I don't think there's that much backtracking to be honest and in the latest update/DLC (haven't played it yet) they added more fast travel stations.
Quoting: ageresQuoting: GuestCould you go into some more detail about what parts you found boring?Lots of backtracking, lack of fast travel stations, slow movement speed. Every enemy can kill you easily, then you'll have to return to your corpse, Dark Souls-style, otherwise after every death you'll be getting less and less currency points, therefore more tiresome grinding. Janky platforming. Upgrades are useless. Most of things you'll find are lore text, uninteresting and hard to read. I'd recommend to play Hollow Knight instead.
You describe Hollow Knight... then recommend Hollow Knight??? Don't forget how useless HK's map is, or that you don't even have a map until you randomly stumble upon the map maker. Sheesh!
Also is this a port from a company or The Game Kitchen made a in-house native Linux build ?
Finally Liam, still a rough idea but if you read this message, what would be your position about a raffle/give away of a copy of the game ? (Been thinking about give aways for a while now, I'd happily offer a game copy, humble dev support for work on Linux and also humble Linux promotion)
Last edited by a0kami on 21 September 2020 at 6:40 pm UTC
The guilt system is better than both Salt and Sanctuary and Hollow Knight too. In HK, you were pretty much forced to go back to the scene of your death to reclaim your full health, and similarly in S&S, you rarely wanted to lose a whole run's accrued Salt. But here, you only accrue a little guilt on death, which restricts how often you can use your special ability. I think it also keeps tracks of your guilt on the map, so if it accrues too far, then you can go track some of it down to reclaim it later. Much more flexibility. Like HK, there's also a couple of specials that will allow you to completely "heal up" for a price.
The enemies are generally a that hard-to-achieve mix of "difficult at"first" and then "stupidly easy once you understand their attack pattern".
Beautiful graphics, great sound design. Some of the voice acting is a bit hit and miss, but that's fairly minor. Really enjoying it so far.
Quoting: scaineYou describe Hollow Knight... then recommend Hollow Knight??? Don't forget how useless HK's map is, or that you don't even have a map until you randomly stumble upon the map maker. Sheesh!HK has fast movement and combat, comfortable jumping, HP regaining from enemies. I haven't had any problems with its map. The map pieces are impossible to miss, and they are located near area entrances. If you want to see really bad map implementation, look at Feudal Alloy. For me, HK is the best metroidvania ever, and I compare other games with it. I'm glad you are enjoying Blasphemous, but I don't like it myself.
Quoting: scaineSome of the voice acting is a bit hit and miss, but that's fairly minor.
Have you tried Spanish voiceover ? The game is about Andalusia religious folklore and original language is quite well!
Quoting: ageresQuoting: scaineYou describe Hollow Knight... then recommend Hollow Knight??? Don't forget how useless HK's map is, or that you don't even have a map until you randomly stumble upon the map maker. Sheesh!HK has fast movement and combat, comfortable jumping, HP regaining from enemies. I haven't had any problems with its map. The map pieces are impossible to miss, and they are located near area entrances. If you want to see really bad map implementation, look at Feudal Alloy. For me, HK is the best metroidvania ever, and I compare other games with it. I'm glad you are enjoying Blasphemous, but I don't like it myself.
Blasphemy mimics HK's movement nearly perfectly, imo. Movement is basically identical, right down to the dash (although Blasphemous adds like a quarter-second recharge to prevent spamming). There's no HP regain from enemies, true - it follow the S&S model for that, limiting your runs to the number of healing flasks you have. However, since enemies regenerate when you restore flasks, it has much the same effect as HK - where you can't heal in HK if you run out of enemies to kill. I actually prefer the Blasphemous/S&S model because it prevents you from needing to kill lots of tiny enemies just to store healing power. Indeed, Blasphemous' map often exploits this, allowing you bypass "beaten" enemies by unlocking gates, pushing trees over onto previously impassable spikes, or granting access to lifts and other shortcuts.
In short, I'm pretty gobsmacked that anyone can both like Hollow Knight and dislike Blasphemous. They're different... but in tiny ways. I also enjoyed Hollow Knight, but despite 50 hours over two runs, I never found the interest in finishing it - both map finding and the "return to scene of death" mechanic made the game just too tedious to deal with. I spent much longer in Salt and Sanctuary, completing it three times. Hopefully I'll have a similar run in Blasphemous.
Quoting: ShmerlWas it inspired by Bosch?
As in, the artist? I don't think so, although there's a bit of overlap in the twisted religious theme. The Wikipedia page for the game cites "the religious art and iconography of Seville, Spain" as the main inspiration.
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