Son of Nor Early Access Impressions
Son of Nor is a third-person action adventure game that blends magic and telekinesis with some great puzzles.
I’ve never been very fond of third person adventure games. The last one I enjoyed being the Tomb Raider reboot, yet Son of Nor pleasantly surprised me.
The back story is actually rather interesting, and it’s rare a game these days has a decent back story. One of the developers narrates and explains what the game story and setting is during an intro cutscene.
Right from the start the gameplay mechanics and movement system worked brilliantly. It's actually one of the smoothest controlling games I’ve played in a while, There is no latency between issuing a command and it executing. Jumping platforms and picking up items worked brilliantly, and it certainly helps that the game’s performance is also great.
Motion is smooth, and responsive, the game runs well and plays even better. The graphics might look a decade out of date, but the gameplay easily makes up for that.
Did I mention the beautiful water effects/physics? No? Well it’s amazing! The game is certainly an oddball, with visuals that look very dated, but gameplay, and mechanics that could easily surpass many games that have come out lately.
In fact it handled better than Tomb Raider for me, and even allows you to use the Emotiv Brain Computer interface, for really getting into character as a mighty telekinetic.
Puzzles are also solved using your telekinesis, and I’ve never been good at puzzles in games. Easily getting stuck on the most simple of them. Yet here, well; I rather like them. The designers really knew what they were doing and puzzles are introduced very early on in simple quests.
There’s someone stuck in some sand, quick! Lower it with your powers to let them out. This man needs help carrying melons, here, use your powers to lift and move them to a set area/pen.
These might seem like boring quests, and that they are; but they give you the underlying skills you need to solve some rather complex and amazing quests later on. Such as breaking a pillar, and using it on a massive pressure plate, which in turns activates some sort of laser that kills if you’re too close. It shows you how to increase and decrease the distance of the object you’re controlling and more. Rather great game design.
There’s even a little tidbit some people might even miss entirely, and I loved it! During the intro cutscene it’s shown that both primary races were created from sand. If you kill an enemy, their body reverts to compacted sand. The same for your character as you take damage; the more damage you take the more of your body reverts the material of its creation.
From dust to dust, a rather brilliant little thing to add to the game and play on its very lore.
Now the music? Well, it along with the rest of the game so far is phenomenal. I really, like the music. They really put in some effort here, and I could easily just stay in an area and listen to it.
All in all Son of Nor is a great indie action-adventure game. They seamlessly blended their mechanics into the gameplay and it just works. Plus it’s damn good fun!
I could easily recommend this as an early access game, and you should certainly keep an eye on it. Yes the game still needs quite a bit of work, but it’s got a very good base already, and I’m eager to see how the game develops.
