A while back, someone made a thread on Steamgifts asking for a list of all prologue games, and someone else simply linked to a Steam search of the word “prologue.” I decided to go down that list and add the interesting-looking ones to my backlog since they’re all free, but now that I’ve played them, I realize most of them are really just glorified demos instead of being genuine, standalone prologues to their main game counterparts. Because of this, there isn’t much to talk about since–yeah, of course the demo for the puzzle game is gonna be easy and boring since it only includes the few puzzles that gets you used to the mechanics. It’s not even a good way to judge whether or not the full game is worth buying since you don’t know if it’ll actually add depth to its mechanics and have clever puzzles, or if it’ll just spin its wheels and keep introducing new gimmicks like other mediocre “puzzle” games before it. That said, there are a few of these demos I can recommend playing on their own:
-
Prologue For A Vacant Kingdom
2 hours playtime
3 of 4 achievements
-
GunBlocks: Prologue
2 hours playtime
9 of 12 achievements
-
Reverie Knights Tactics: Prologue
3 hours playtime
no achievements
Prologue For A Vacant Kingdom
I played on normal mode, and the three multi-phase bullet-hell bosses managed to be challenging without going overboard too much (though there were a couple times I felt the need to use the in-game time-slow power). The non-bullet-hell segments have the potential to be expanded into being actual puzzles, but given how quickly the water-redirection mechanics were abandoned in favor of a number-combination-riddle, I’m worried the full game will just keep switching between gimmicks. There’s also a fourth bullet-hell boss you can only access after beating the rest of the prologue, though you also need to find a couple hidden items to unlock it; although the secret paths aren’t unfairly hidden or anything, it can be kinda tedious backtracking everywhere to look for them if you missed one. Also, the fourth boss did go overboard a bit too much IMO, especially the third phase having the projectile bouncing off walls offscreen so you don’t really have time to react to it when it heads towards you.
GunBlocks: Prologue
A Tetris block falls from the sky each turn, and you use them to create stairs or bridges to get over obstacles, while also shooting enemies and other obstacles. Since the whole game is turn-based, it’s not hard to see how those two hours only really encompasses two or three levels, and thus isn’t a good benchmark on whether the full game is worth a purchase (at least, not on its own). That said, you unlock a “race” level after beating the main prologue, and that helps add to the demo’s value as a standalone title; the race is still turn-based (and I wasn’t really a fan of how it was three rounds in a row instead of just one level), but there’s still some challenge since you have to shoot other racers to stun them, then avoid their counterattacks. EDIT: The race level has three difficulties, but beating the harder ones first doesn’t give you the achievement for beating the easier ones, which is annoying.
Reverie Knights Tactics: Prologue
The first battle of this turn-based tactics game is really bad. Not only is it en medias res–dumping a bunch of mechanics and special attacks on you while you’re still learning the basics, only to take away most of said abilities (and team members!) in the very next battle–but it’s also a supposed-to-lose battle! (something only implied beforehand due to the lack of objective and regular enemy reinforcements). It also made me think glancing attacks were based on a percent-chance (which TBH may very well still be the case), but after finishing the demo, I think it only happens when attacking a character facing you (as opposed to flanking or backstabbing the enemy). I also wasn’t too fond of how certain attacks and abilities force you to spend 2 AP if you have that much, but allow a slightly-weaker version to be used if you only have 1 AP remaining (why not let me use the 1 AP version twice? EDIT: or use it once and then move?). That said, if you can get past all that, the core gameplay is pretty good: none of the moves rely on percent-chances, so the mechanics are reliable and challenges fair, but battles also have optional objectives you can complete for extra EXP and currency. The game won’t let you replay a battle if you move on, so you’d have to decide right then whether or not to retry to get all the objectives/items for that map, but I was always able to complete all objectives on my first try. The game never explains that units don’t heal between battles, but even that isn’t much of an issue since you’ll have plenty of healing items by the time that becomes a noticeable issue.
Squadron 51 Prologue gets an honorable mention, but 1) the monochrome colors can make it a little hard to distinguish things at times, 2) there were some enemies that came from the top of the screen in the first level, and I never saw the dot indicating incoming enemies from that direction like other enemy-waves have (they killed me the first time), and 3) it was delisted with no demo counterpart on the full game’s store page, so you can only play it if you added it beforehand.
Hero of Ice Fairy: Prologue is another honorable mention despite still being available since 1) there’s only really one boss fight and nothing else, 2) jump is mapped to the analog LT button instead of the more-immediate-acting LB button–and controls can’t be rebound (the game is a twinstick-shooter/platformer hybrid), and 3) one attack in the “challenge” version of the fight (the one with the raining knives followed by the three /// lasers) was a bit too ambiguous regarding what would hurt me and what wouldn’t, so I never figured out how to avoid damage despite taking a few passes at it. Not saying it can’t be done, just that it could be made more clear.
P.S. If you’re especially curious why I wouldn’t recommend the other prologues I played, you can check my list of games (ctrl+f prologue) and name the ones you wanna hear about in the comments.