Salima

the spells don't do anything yet far as i can tell but just porting the casting system is super cool.

But I think my favorite thing about them is the horror aspect. I often see it asked why they are in the game and what purpose they serve. After all they only see to hurt the player and add friction to the game. Seeing the monster designs and the visual effects and hearing the music and sound effects though it's clear that the storms are here for horror. Vintage Story advertises itself as 'an uncompromising wilderness survival sandbox' yes, but immediately following that statement is 'inspired by lovecraftian horror themes'. There's a lot of things Vintage Story is and one of those things is a horror game or at least a game with a very hefty horror element.

The more I look into the caves and the ruins and the more I read the lore too that more that becomes apparent. Vintage Story is a cozy game. It's a game that takes the survival aspect of Minecraft and turns it up to 11. It's a game about slowly progressing through a tech tree as you relive the technological advancement of mankind. But it's also a lovecraftian horror story where people delved too deep and it all went to shit. It's a world where horrors beyond your imagination spawn in from rifts in reality and where large gears will turn in the sky as you begin to lose your grip on things. A world of cryptic notes about some past calamity and a horrifying disease. And it's that bit that the temporal storms are really for.

A temporal storm is, to me, a tornado made eldritch. It is taking the idea of needing to bunker down and mixing that with cosmic horror. The sky darkens, reality around you begins to shift, there are gears off in the distance and our good friend Dave. Monsters are everywhere, high level ones, and they can even spawn in your house. And then there's the damned noises. The noises are honestly what gets to me most. I'm not sure how the effect is without headphones, but with headphones off you can hear the sounds of monsters all around you. Sometimes they are right behind you. But when you turn around to see if there's anything there, there isn't. It's paranoia inducing. And that's lovely.

It does leave me wondering though. In terms of how this is going to play out as the game continues and as its progression deepens. We only just have started the story. There is more of it to be added and with more of it more dungeons with more loot and presumably more tech. Storms can already be turned into fairly benign farming opportunities. What will further progression do the the difficulty and staying power of them?

Hey, they changed the Dylan portrait on the website! (He still turns to the viewer though).