Now here's something new and interesting! Dark Scavenger was honestly picked up to make up a tier on a Bundle Stars Pick'n'Mix bundle page. I grabbed it purely on the art style used as it looked different from anything else on offer.

What we have here is a mix of a visual novel, adventure game, and RPG. All blended together in a style I've not seen out of little web demos that contain about five rooms tops.

There's a lot of jargon here in the world building that one may glance over, but it all comes together in a lot of gaming content.

You are adrift in space. Why? Who knows. But you soon come across Den. An entity of supreme power who wants to devour you. What do you do? Punch that bastard right in his semi corporeal face torso spleen... body?

The battle is design ed to feel unfair and bring you close to death, but when you win you are taken aboard a craft run by some Dark Scavengers. A space faction that goes to derelict crafts and buildings to take the remaining loot that is left. Except the three that find you are just a little bit weird and love crafting.

• Kamaho, is the default leader and boss man who looks like a lich. He's the ship's weapons expert.
• Falsen, is a dapper green zombie character who's more than a bit eccentric. He's the ship's item specialist.
• Gazer, is a Giger like alien who loves cartoons and pingpong. Gazer can't or won't communicate with words and uses expressions, actions, and smells to talk. He(?) recruits people to aid you out.

Right away you find that the ship is low on fuel, because of course it is, and you stop at a nearby world to find something to power it so you and the scavengers can continue the journey in space.

From here the game takes on several different formats. You can click on various areas of the screen to get a text description and potentially take some actions. These do have a small amount of flow on consequences throughout the various game chapters and it is worth checking everything out. There does appear to be a tiny amount of randomisation to what happens, but the maps are the same each playthough.

Interacting may allow you to find basic loot and quest items. The basic items you can't use right way and quest items are contextual, if you are in an encounter where they can be used you'll have the option of doing so. Or running the game without and suffering the consequences.

They tend to make the chapter boss easier to deal with in the combat sections, or allow you to bypass them altogether through a diplomacy action. In rare events this can be done for the various mooks you come across, but you should be prepared for a lot of fighting.

There's a fair amount of lore to read here too if you want to. The comedic tone makes it more enjoyable to read about the local Daas conflict rather than reading it as a badly written SF&F novel. The game does not take it self too seriously, even with the eminent threat of destruction, and uses the over the top nature of it all to its advantage without resorting to bad jokey jokes and just being a little bit zany.

Each map section you are in allows you to collect up to three different general items. Before you transition to the next map page you are placed back in the ship and have to decide which of the crew to give them to craft you an item.

Since each item can be given to any crew member, and each crew member can only craft something once per transition period. AND! You have to craft everything before moving on you have to go by the item itself and what each of the aliens say about it.

For example an electric looking item may cause Kamaho to craft you a basic shock weapon, Falsen to create you an item that stuns under certain conditions, and Gazer may summon a shock based ally to aid you.

Or the item could result in different elemental conditions depending on which of the crew you give it to. It's here the replayability comes into effect in a minor way. And since it is up to three items you'll have plenty of cases where you can stock up in weapons, items, or allies.

Combat itself follows standard turn based rules with a few tweaks.

At the core of it you select a weapon or ally and select an enemy to attack. Each weapon or ally has a range of damage it can do and conditions where they fail or hit for stuns and crits. Everything has a uses/durability rating to it though, so you don't want to waste a seemingly low powered attack as it may have cases where it does better elsewhere.

Items can also be placed on enemies at before you attack to increase damage or chances of effect. Some are applied immediately, others take a full turn of action. It pays to read the description!

There are precious few items that do direct healing. And while you are healed between chapters and in even rarer special events, you'll mostly rely on the potion bottle. This bring you to full health as a free action, though drains the bottle completely and you can only drink when full.

For whatever reason outside of balance, stunning an enemy fills up the bottle by around 20%. As the game progresses you can craft various items and weapons that allow chain attacks. This is especially useful when taking on multiple encounters per battle.

If you do die, and this is likely to happen, you have four options. Retry the battle, building on what you have learnt. Restart the area the battle was in, in case you missed something to make it easier, or restart the chapter. You can swear and quit in protest, but while there is a challenge here learning how to deal with them is on the easier side.

All weapons, items, and allies carry over to the next chapter. The earlier ones will have a lower damage output vs the new enemies with a higher HP pool, but I'd recommend holding on to them.

Outside of combat and in the adventure/novel sections you can use items of various types (wood, metal, strong, long, sharp, blunt, etc...) to get out of encounters without suffering damage.

It's a great way to use up old loot as there's no way to sell anything you find or upgrade what you have. Individual encounters may do a trade for an item or information, otherwise there's no economic side to this game.

This was a surprising amount of fun. The type of game I'd normally pass on without a second glance. There's a decent amount of depth out of this indie title to keep you entertained. New Game + mode also allows you to restart with everything you've collected over course of the game.

Sure some of the art can look a bit basic, and over time the OST can get a bit repetitive, but for such a small team they've done a decent job and making what feels like a proper game, and not a proof-of-concept demo.

If you like tradition cRPG games and want one with an adventure game flavour, I do recommend taking a look.

Game Acquisition: Bundle Stars (Pick'n'Mix).
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 20 April 2017
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP or better
Processor: 2.0 GHz
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Storage: 100 MB available space
Additional Notes: Native Resolution 800x600 (no fullscreen mode)