Praey For The Gods

Review

If you are looking for a cold place, you are on the right page! Praey For The Gods is an action-adventure game set on a wintry and freezing island. As it is quite inhospitable, you do get along with some survival gameplay elements as well.

The game has been developed by No Matter Studios, a small indie studio that formed for this game. And I must admit that being a team of only three people is quite admirable to me. But, unfortunately… It is with a bit of pain that I must admit that Praey For The Gods did not exactly fill my expectations.

As I won the game on Steamgifts and had to review it, I was very happy to do so since that was the one I wanted to try out the most from that wave. I never had the opportunity to play Shadows of the Colossus, and I always wanted to try it. So, that game left me very curious, and I thought that it would fill that hole. In the end, well, I finished it with a really mixed feeling. It was clearly not as good as I was expecting. At the same time, this is not the worst game ever, and it does have some qualities for it. Let me expend my point of view through this review!

When you first begin a new journey, the game asks you about the difficulty you are wishing for your adventure. You have two options to determine, both about the overall gameplay and the survival feature, so you would have some freedom about how you want to experiment with the game, depending on your tastes. I personally picked the normal difficulty, along with the easiest choice regarding the survival option. And this was not the best choice, in my opinion. As the game itself was overall easy enough, I regret not having had a more thorough experience regarding the survival feature. That part was already light enough; I do think that I would have enjoyed the game a bit more with a harder option.

As you pick up what fits you the best, you get a few white texts on a black screens to give a bit of context, then you see your character waking up aground on the coast, after a boat trip from... wherever you came from, and... That’s it. Let’s go!

You then get a small road fragment that serves as a tutorial and shows you everything you will need throughout your ride. You can jump, climb, use a grappling hook, or fly with some sort of fabric. You will have to take care of yourself too, like eating and heating yourself near fires. You will be able to fight with swords and bows too!

And then you get your first boss to banish. In 10 minutes of gameplay. Woohoo! That is happening so fast.

Pray for the Gods clearly takes its main inspiration from Shadows of the Colossus as well as some other sources, like Zelda. You will have to fight a bunch of gigantic monsters that represent the gods and that you are supposed to prey on to save the world from the doom that is happening, because why not? Looking at the corpses all along the road, from the previous expeditions, nobody else was able to do the job anyway. But you sure will, right?

But huh. What is your name again? Who are you? Why did they send you, in particular? Are you the last person alive? Where do you even come from?

The whole story feels lacking and is not really explained. You are just some reddish girl with no name and barely any kind of voice. A few couple of grunts, and no voice acting. I do think that the main character feels impersonal. It could be anyone, and that would not change anything in the slightest. You do get to find some pieces of paper as collectibles that have been lost by the previous crews sent on expeditions over here, and that will give you some lore. But that is pretty much all you will get. To be honest, it is not like I really cared about the story anyway, for the few bits there were.

So, basically, you fight your first god in a 10-minute fight, lasting as long as the whole other tutorial part. It serves as a way to show you how to defeat them. All of them. Because yes, all the boss fights will basically be the same, with only a few differences. You have to hook yourself to the gigantic monsters, often after stunning them somehow, then find a weak spot on their body and attack that part. Repeat for every others weak spots until they die. Repeat for all the other bosses.

As you beat your first god, you fall unconscious and be drag to a safe zone at the center of the map. It will happen every time that you beat a god, and it will serve as your main base. A drawing on a wall is showing you who is left to defeat, and a light coming from the sky will show you the way to the next boss. You do have the freedom to follow that light to fight the gods in the order the game wants you to do so, or go fight any other boss you want, as you can cross their paths in your way. You do get to find some extra champions, too, that are not counted and serve as extra content, but right after losing on my first try, I did not bother with them anymore.

The whole world seems pretty empty, in general. It’s really cool that you have something to fight with; if only you could, like… actually use them… There are very few monsters, and they are mostly weak, appear in small numbers, and don’t spawn often. I am wondering if a harder difficulty in the gameplay would have made that part more interesting as well.

Along with your main goal, you can travel the map to find collectibles, craft items, and some hidden extra gear by completing puzzles inside caves that will also serve as temporary safe points. But, to be honest, it is not like any of the extra gears will be that useful. Maybe in the hardest difficulty, but your default gear is already efficient enough. Mostly since you can upgrade them and get decent stats.

You can gather a bunch of different resources by hunting or cutting down trees with an axe. Those will serve as fires to warm you, eat, sleep, or upgrade your stuff. But with my picked up difficulty , it is seemingly useless. (note : should i expand that sentence a bit more? You can also get some upgrades for your character with the help of another collectible: the totems. Those ones are not giving you any piece of lore, but they let you choose between a higher life or stamina. The second point is more important, at least for me, since you will be able to last longer while grabbing the bosses, and it is not like they will do really heavy damage. And even so, you would be able to take a potion or eat something to regenerate your health. It seems like even fall damages are not really impacting, you can be thrown hundreds of meters and still be alive.

So, yes, with only a few upgrades for your character and some for your base gear, you will be able to beat the game without any kind of major problem.

Again, the boss's fights are redundant and won’t cause you much trouble either. Their attacks are not that impressive or numerous, and they will more likely try to make you fall. That is why I do think that stamina is more important than life, since it will help you stay gripped longer. In my opinion, those battles are very long and annoying. You just fall again and again, and you just need to hook over and over, finding the way to take them down, and just go to the next one mechanically.

The audio part does not help much. You will get mostly ambient sounds, like wind. The musics are very few and, despite being decent, they are not really memorable and will mostly be there during the fights, worsening the general feeling of emptyness on the island.

I was not really impressed by the graphic part either. It was okay at best. I do like the fact that you let trail from walking on snowy areas. However, the animations tend to be basics, and I even noticed that when you fire an arrow at a bunny, it just vanishes instead of having a death animation. That was kind of special.

Visually, you do get a majority of blue/grey/white, which totally fit the artic ambiance. You do get a bit of red to highlight some points of details, (berries, grappling spots…). You also have a small hub near you to give you a bunch of information, like your health, stamina, level of hunger, heat, and sleep deprivation.

Welp, to conclude, what can I say? It was not the funniest game ever, and I must admit that I did force myself to go to the end. Maybe that was not a game for me, but I would simply not recommend Praey of the Gods, except if you really have nothing else to play. At a full price of around 30 dollars/euros, I bet that you could find something better, though, if you did not get it already from Humble bundle.

In conclusion

Rating
• Story:	🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑
• Graphics:	🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
• Gameplay:	🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
• Sound:	🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
• Fun Meter:	🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑

Pros	Cons
- Refreshing breathe of air - A varied set of actions - Survival elements in the gameplay	- Repetitive - Not so fun to play - The world feels empty - Survival difficulty set in easy makes it feel almost inexistant

Edited By RayOfLight.