izigame.me

Honestly, a pretty refreshing counterpoint to current trends, and a nice throwback.
It's a fairly straightforward 2D top down combat/puzzle "progression" game.
Hesitant to label it as 'RPG', since the roleplaying was always a flimsy tag, but hey. It's what we got.
What makes it a nice throwback, is that the whole level is hand crafted and fixed. No 'procedural generation', but that's what makes it good and interesting.
It's not perfect of course.
The weapon balance is a bit wonky.
With the axe being my least favourite. If I didn't "have" to use it on some enemies, I simply wouldn't. the delay between input and swing (because of the wind up for the aoe attack) is too long, making it awkward to fight with anything but a completely still tree.
Enemies aren't perfect either. With the giant bone-spider having too long a reach for how instant its attacks are. Or the spin-tree. Then again, maybe I haven't perfected fighting them.
Finally, a lot of the game feels like "toys have been taken away". The dash is too weak until fully upgraded ... etc.
But as I've said I like it overall.
There isn't too much handholding.
The puzzles are nice, but simple enough to not have to spend hours thinking before getting back to the thick of things.
The combat is on the easy side for me. But that's not a bad thing, as the main point is to go see and unlock all the things, without being stymied too much.
And the game comes as a nice little package of fun.
It's not too expensive. At £8.50, it's a fair price for what it is (I completed it in less than a full day)
And the story is minimal, but interestingly weird.
and overall, I found the unlocking / upgrading part engaging without having to do grinding before moving on.
If you get stuck on one side of the map, you can always try another. And there are always little tidbits to look for, and discover.
The aesthetic is also quite nice overall
If you like games with top-down combat and some puzzles like Bastion, or Hyper Light Drifter, you'll probably like this one too

I'm really torn on whether I would recommend this game or not.
Let's get the main thing clear, the mechanics and gameplay here are fine, good even. The developer clearly thought about how to design the puzzles and areas in a way that was fair and satisfying for the player to progress through. There are a variety of weapon and ability unlocks that double as progression gates (like in a metroidvania) to direct the player and reward progression. The combat while not amazing is good enough with the difficulty coming from spacing the character, dodging attacks, and managing attack timing (enhanced with the introduction of some enemies that can only be harmed by certain weapons/abilities). Death is also forgiving in that apart from respawning the enemies and progressing the day count (which as far as I can tell has no impact) there is no punishment.
This is all sounding positive and should result in me recommending the game, the problem is the package these mechanics are delivered in. There is no story or world here. Your character is resurrected by a spirit who explains nothing before disappearing. You get to speak to this spirit another two times, once when they point you to the boss, and again at the end. That's it. There are two other NPCs that I can recall who have a couple of lines that ultimately do nothing, and of course there's the boss who has a couple of lines at the very end of the game and that's it.
Many people will no doubt say that a game doesn't need to have a story or NPCs to interact with, and these people would be correct for many titles but Kingsgrave doesn't feel like one of those games. The entire time I was playing this I was feeling like I was in the prologue before the game started proper - right up until I finished the game. The rebuilding of villages the game promises is just a way to unlock weapons and and abilities. Apart from the ruin of each specific building getting repaired there is no change to the world. There is no "reclaiming" of your realm unless you count the torches that light up when enemies in an area are killed. Villagers that you rescue (find) are just another resource count, they are not characters.
Ultimately Kingsgrave feels more like a vertical slice that someone decided to publish as a stand alone game rather than actually fully develop. The mechanics in isolation make a really good game, but considering all the unfulfilled potential they come with, the end result is just disappointing.

Some minor spoilers in here. Honestly on the fence about whether I can recommend the game or not. Really wish there was a mixed/undecided option.

The price is fair enough but there isn't particularly much meat to the game. The overworld seems to have some thought put into it early on but a few hours in you realize you've seen all it has to offer. Unfortunately the over world is basically all there is. The mines are basically just a big room to go underground and pick up some ores on the ground while a mushroom throws spores at you. There's one actual dungeon in the game and it lasts about 2 minutes before you fight the first and final boss which comes down to basically just casting your spell until it dies. You'll find yourself probably putting 7-10 hours into the game if you're doing everything.

The game is somewhat buggy. Some enemies such as jumping trees (at least that's what they looked like) hit boxes becoming misaligned sometimes forcing me to aim a tile or two below the enemy, the hp regen ability bugged out and disabled sometimes after death until I restarted the game just for it to happen again until I decided to just pretend it didn't exist, tiles will sometimes blink out of existence as you move, and as you get a lot of dash upgrades the skill starts to have some pathing issues. It was quite aggravating but nothing that absolutely broke the game. Maybe you won't run into the same bugs I did but they were pretty consistent for me.

If you're really hungry for a top-down adventure game and have experienced most of the others worthwhile on Steam then go ahead you might have some fun. While the idea for the game sounds great though, I recommend tempering your expectations going in.