Salem

Now this is a post I'm glad to write. If you trust me by now just click the link and go play the game right now! Otherwise just read why you should do it. Without further due, from Armor Games here is Salem. 

Get ready for one of those games.

This game immediately grabbed my attention with the way the story was presented, and even more after the first segment of the game. Its pretty obvious from the get-go that its a very story-driven game, so I'll be very careful with spoilers, but basically you are a demon hunter that goes to a city overrun with demons to slay them. But rest assured, the story gets pretty interesting on the very first level, and to be honest it got me hooked.

Still on the storytelling, the dialogues are fully voiced and well voiced at that, and are really well conceived. They flow naturally into the game and are no annoyance at all. In fact, after my curiosity for the story line spiked (quite soon I must say) I welcomed every dialogue. Not only that, the graphical presentation is quite nice.

Spoiler free dialogue (though one to find!).

The gameplay itself is not only very good, but also quite original. It has a very simple underlying mechanic, but the game handles it extremely well. You'll have a trusty crossbow that is completely unable to harm demons, and a very powerful lantern-artifact that will enable you to harm them with various mechanics. I really don't want to get to much into the details here because the battle system is a wounder to slowly understand so lets just leave it at that.

As for the level design and pacing it is great. The world is basically populated by bosses and one or two "trash mobs". Every boss has an unique way to defeat them, and that is up to you to discover. Not only that, as you progress into the game the difficulty ramp increases very well, making each encounter challenging and rewarding. And the latter boss battles are quite difficult but this game as something few have: when you fail, you know its your fault, and you know how to play better next time.

One of the levels.

Great art and soundtrack make the game shine. One of the very few faults this game has is some of the combat moves that are not as fluid as the rest of them, and the fact that its a very short game. But it has a New Game + option (that I immediately jumped into) that will give that game a little more life.

In conclusion, Salem is a great and very original game with some very high production values, and is definitely a must play.

Game Rating: 9/10