EGX 2015 | Eitr Hands-On Impressions
Before heading to EGX this year I had never heard of Eitr. In fact by the time Sunday rolled around I was still only barely aware of its existence, having only glanced its booth half a dozen times on my way to various appointments. However it came with a high recommendation from a friend on Saturday night, so I vowed to go and play it blind, with no more information other than the fact that I had to go and try it. And I’m very glad I did, so my thanks to Jennifer if you’re reading this, for turning me onto a pretty great game.
My entire experience of Eitr was that of wandering around a dungeon, lost in the darkness, occasionally coming across random groups of enemies. I was looking for the chamber I had seen others find, the one containing the enormous and deadly boss encounter, but all I kept finding were skeletons, and even they were giving me a run for my money.
Eitr is a 2D action hack and slash game that, as it turns out, takes a lot of its cues from the Dark Souls series. In the game you are cast as the Shield Maiden, a woman whose fate is destroyed after Loki unleashes the Eitr, a black substance that covers the great tree Yggdrasil in darkness. The Shield Maiden must traverse the nine Norse worlds to unravel her fate.
While a comparison to Dark Souls seems obvious given the inherent difficulty found in Eitr, the similarities run much deeper. Combat, while taking place on a 2D plane, will feel very similar to anyone who has played Bloodborne or a Souls game. It’s all about precise timing, picking your spots and your opportunities to attack without leaving yourself vulnerable to a devastating counter attack.
Blocking (providing you have a shield) and dodging are your main tools of survival in Eitr, with both being tied to a stamina bar, along with each swing of your weapon, which requires constant management to ensure that you’re not stuck without the ability to attack or dodge at a critical moment. You’re also able to parry attacks, though this requires incredibly precise timing to avoid taking a hit, if successful it leaves your enemy open to a counter attack.
Of course there’s a lot more to Eitr than that. You’ll have access to potions for healing and special attacks, both of which are in limited supply and both of which you can replenish at campfires. Ingeniously enough you can also replenish your supplies by attacking enemies. If you die a roulette wheel spins to afflict you with a random negative effect for your next run, or be something positive to help you out if you’ve died numerous times, though this feature was disabled for the purposes of the EGX demo.
There was also an extensive looking inventory system at play in Eitr, though I only got to skim the surface of it. Most of the monsters I killed dropped some kind of loot, usually a ring of some sort, that offered special bonuses to health, attack damage and a variety of other stats. These items are, of course, coded by rarity. The rarer the item the more powerful its effects, though you already knew that of course, after decades of RPG conditioning. You are also able to sacrifice carrying a shield in your offhand for carrying a second weapon, which conveys the added bonus of extra attacks at the expense of being able to effectively block.
In the end I didn’t find the boss chamber. After twenty-minutes of wandering aimlessly lost in the deep, dark dungeon I found the campfire where I had begun my journey. I maneuvered the Shield Maiden back to the place that I had found her, and had her sit by the fire, slightly better equipped and more powerful for the next poor soul who decided to sit down and continue her journey through the dark, content in the knowledge that one day I would find the boss and get smooshed by him then, instead. At least that would be in private.
Eitr is due to launch in 2016 for PC and PS4.
