Yesterday, I saw an announcement from the Enjin project (an old NFT gaming project) that they had managed to land their playtest of Age of Rust on the Steam storefront. Now, getting a blockchain based game into the widely used Steam store is a pretty awesome achievement and something that is incredibly good for exposure. So, I decided to give it a bit of a spin to see how the game played...

This is my initial impressions of the game after an evening with it! Keep it mind, it appears to be more a demo than a finished product, so many things might change in the time that it is being developed.

To get started, you will need to connect your Enjin wallet address (Ethereum, soon to be ported to a L2 "Jumpnet").

The Setup

You start the game, awoken by this person... the back story is a bit amnesiac... meaning that you are amnesiac, and she is incredibly non-forthcoming with information and help. It appears that after she has woken you up... that is all there is... and she will just let you do everything, with very little in the way of help or information!

Oddly enough, this is your player character... with a hood over their head. Why? Who knows.... I'm afraid that the story setup and introduction is completely NOT done at the moment. So, you have been woken up... and for some reason, you need to get out of.... wherever you are!

The Game

In comparison to many of the blockchain game that exist today, Age of Rust is incredibly beautiful from the art assets point of view. It is a first person perspective with a decent amount of lush scenery in the opening sequence/puzzle. That is something to keep in mind as well, despite the first person perspective, this is NOT a shooter. It is a puzzler more in the style of Myst.

Saying that it looks more beautiful than most of the other blockchain games available at the moment is setting a pretty low bar though... mostly, the art style and graphics look more like a game from about 5 years ago instead of something more modern.

The game is full of "interesting" quirks as well. Your saviour, after waking you up, decides to go and stand in a corner... the corner on the far end of the door that you are supposed to go out of! confusing...

... and it would be a good idea to mention the perspective as well. The scaling of the player character and world is completely all over the place. Your "eyes" when looking neutral straight appear to be about chest height, or the middle of the character model... this can be a little bit irritating, as I'm more used to having a normal perspective at eye level. It leads you to start feeling like you are a half-height person... and everything else is abnormally big...

... until you get to a different area, and then suddenly, you feel like you have suddenly grown or the world assets are much smaller, because suddenly you feel huge!

In the first puzzle area, there was a vending machine... I guess this is where you can purchase in-game blockchain assets to either assist in the puzzles or to unlock certain areas?

... but I couldn't know for sure, as everything was sold out... for Rustbits? Sigh... yet another token?

There are quite a number of invisible walls in the puzzle areas. This was a design limitation from decades ago... it isn't fun to start seeing areas where you suddenly run smack into an invisible wall!

... speaking of not fun, who the hell programs a jump action AFTER you release the spacebar? Pretty much every game in existence has you jump WHEN you press the space bar! Guess who fell to their death after experience that "feature".

So, despite giving you a gun in the first area, the game definitely more in-line with the first-person environmental puzzle genre. There are clues in the surroundings, and you are tasked with solving the little puzzles to get yourself out of the current area into the next puzzle area.

The puzzles aren't too difficult in the first area (more on that later...), especially as the space that you can run around in is INCREDIBLY limited (see invisible walls...). However, I did notice when I unlocked a particular door in the first puzzle, you couldn't see the door from the ground... so, you wouldn't be able to know which door unlocked, because the cutscene showed an area that you had NEVER seen before!

Hmmmmm.... there do appear to be some meta-game puzzles as well. At least, this code wasn't required for the first puzzle area.

Accessing the menu and inventory is a right pain in the #@$%@$#%. Most games will default to "ESC" for the menu... F1 is rarely the correct choice! Likewise, the "tab" for inventory default isn't my favourite option for getting there! Plus, there REALLY NEEDS to be a close button somewhere!

Using items in your inventory is not so intuitive. You can't just click on the appropriate puzzle with the inventory item. You need to go to the inventory and select "use" from there... but there is not hint that that is what is required! In this case, I needed to use the fuse that was in my inventory... so I was clicking around, trying to see if I had just missed some interaction target!?!?!??!

Later, you descend into some caves (who knows why...)... and in this section, you suddenly feel like a giant. The game also does some weird things after getting up from a crouch... it is hard to describe, but you don't get up straight, but do this weird bobbing thing...

There is a little bit of gunplay at the start of the cave section... where you blast numbers off an opposing Mech in the dark. So, much like an MMO rather than a FPS style... not something that I'm fond of... I don't like just shooting damage sponges to see numbers fly out of them!

... and after defeating the Mech, I was left with this floating gun. Which I couldn't pick up or reload from.... so, more non-standard game mechanics that aren't really explained.

This guy held a torch for me... which was really handy, as the place was getting a tad too dark for my liking... however...

... you are immediately introduced to a stealth-like section when you have to turn off the torch anyway!

Creeping around in the dark, you are again a giant... I'm crouching, and it feels like normal height... when I stand, it feels like I'm walking around a little sandpit!

... and no, Left Mouse doesn't let me climb anything! It is corridors all the way...

At this point, I was completely stuck... I reached two different endpoints on a cliff, both of which seemed to require something to unlock or pass. I couldn't get a Zipline from anywhere that I could see.. and there was no hint on where I could go and what I could do. I understand that this is a puzzle game, but when there is only a tight single corridor, it is hard to figure what and where the puzzle actually is!... or am I supposed to buy something?... with real crypto? Screw that!

Visuals, Sound and Performance

Visuals, as I had mentioned before are dated... but better than most blockchain games out there at the moment... but that is more a comment on the sorry state of blockchain games!

Performance was weirdly not good on my gaming laptop... it could be because I was streaming at the same time, but then I play much more demanding games whilst streaming without the stutteriness of this game. I suspect some level of optimisation needs to still happen...

My Thoughts

... hmmm, blobkchain based games. The promise has been there for quite sometime to have in-game assets being transferrable from player to player, or across games. Most of the games in the space have been play-to-ear, and Age of Rust does NOT go this route. There does appear to be a large scale meta-puzzle that will accompany the game (20 BTC?!?!??!)... but despite the fact that that would be a nice addition to your crypto holdings... the game is just too terrible and frustrating to play at the moment.

Perhaps, as it develops, it will get better... but at the moment, I would prefer to play a game that was NOT blockchain based, but that was actually a decent game.

Review Specs

Played at 1080p (144Hz) on:

XMG Fusion 15

CPU: Intel Core i7-9750H
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: SSD (SATA/Nvme)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 2070 Max-Q

Splinterlands (aka the best blockchain game out there!)

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