Coridden is the archetypical indie game. While many AAA titles play it safe with too much money on the line, indies are usually free of this pressure and can explore their wonderful ideas without reservation. At the same time, lack of experience or limited team sizes rear their heads and a misshapen creation pops out of the oven on occasion. Coridden thrives with bold ideas and heart, but a weak foundation in the basics and lack of polish hold it back.
Our heroes exist in a pre-historic setting with electrical equipment and computers scattered about. The people rely on swords, spears, and bows while existing concurrently with technology beyond even the real world’s abilities. While this discordance seems odd as I type it, when playing the game, I never second-guessed it. In fact, as I played this local cooperative action RPG with my sister, we briefly remarked how cool and innovative the setting is.
Right out of the gate, enigmatic gauntlets are thrust upon us, allowing us to shapeshift into reptiles, given we have the appropriate DNA. A mysterious AI travels alongside us as we search for our missing father. Multiple storylines start, which would typically stimulate intrigue, but the writing’s a bit rough. However, I also found the writing to be full of heart, as themes of family are core to Coridden’s story in a raw way we don’t usually see from big budget titles. While I had a hard time reading and internalizing the lore logs scattered around, I also couldn’t get into the dialogue or character development. Part of this may be due to the rough voice acting.
Since this is an indie title, voice actors looking to start their careers or just acting as a hobby may have offered their talents; unfortunately, most of the delivery isn’t stellar. Several readings feel stilted, awkward, or abruptly intense during a string of calm lines. One or two actors show promise, but the various exchanges could use some direction. Alternatively, the music is outstanding. In fact, I’d say that atmospheric music suits the barren and lush landscapes wonderfully. Whoever composed the music for Coridden should be proud of their work. While my time with the game wasn’t always joyous, I could at least fall back on how awesome the aural experience was, which includes the sound design of hacking, slashing, burning, and biting.
Visually, Coridden doesn’t look bad. By today’s standards, this might be a bit below expectations, but if this indie released ten years ago, I’d be impressed. What I love is the vibrance of the ability effects. Electricity, fire, and the glow of rocks or flowers in dark areas keep the game popping. I wish the enemies had more variety, as I frequently felt like I was fighting yet-another-reptile. Some of the later enemies change up the formula, such as with reptiles clad in hackles and oddly curved tails, but I couldn’t really discern the difference between most of the mobs of enemies I fought. Monsters glow red when they’re about to hit, which is a good game design decision—albeit not a novel one—but when fighting more than ten dinosaurs, I just see a mass of red enemies swimming in a sea of tan that doesn’t mean much beyond: kill everything now or you better get out.
So, how does it all play? Coridden is an isometric action RPG that emphasizes melee and ranged combat, as well as activatable abilities that go on cooldown. Energy (stamina) management is a little important, but what we quickly learned was that once I’ve depleted a bar and my character can’t attack anymore, transform into a reptile and use those cooldowns. Reptile out of energy? Change back to human and use those cooldowns. While this sounds boring and repetitive—and some certainly will think it is—the variety of skills, the importance of positioning, and working with your cooperative partners spice everything up enough to keep combat engaging. The reptile bites, the human swings a sword, and abilities make sparkles.
Everyone take note of the skill trees here. This is where Coridden truly shines. I have interesting choices to make across human classes (which I can mix and match) and what reptile DNA I am using. Each reptile has multiple skill trees, and while some overlaps exist, they are not copied and pasted directly—some skills overlap, but not all. Humans and reptiles can only equip four activatable skills each, meaning some passives require leveling. Most of the passives aren’t that complex—think increased crit chance or health percent—but I enjoyed deciding if I should explore certain activatables over others, and how those interact with my team. I love making tank-support builds, and I had plenty of choices here, whereas my sister went full-on damage and enjoyed having an elemental answer for any situation.
We didn’t dabble in side quests too much for a few reasons. First, they’re mostly fetch quests or rescue missions. Second, the stories leave something to be desired. Third, we kinda wanted to be done with the game and focusing on the main story kept the game at a crunchy challenge. Don’t get me wrong, we had fun with Coridden, and the combat, while repetitive, is a tasty bag of original flavor potato chips. Problem is, the lack of polish and various frustrations make Coridden unnecessarily stressful to play.
I feel like I should have mentioned my grievances first, because they’re important, but I don’t want people to get an overly negative impression of the game. Where to start? Okay, so, the camera is an absolute mess. Most of the time it’s fine, but if you ever get near the edge of a map, travel behind some tall foreground (like a tower or hanging pipes inside a building), or stray too far from your compatriots, you’re going to have problems. We were frequently obscured, which is easy enough to fix by pressing a hotkey to mount a friend who’s in reptile form, but if we’re both stuck behind something in the foreground, can’t get around obstacles on the ground, and flying enemies are pinging us—this is bad. We also had issues going out of bounds after clipping through mountains that we thought we were supposed to climb, but couldn’t. Rapids (water) are a core feature of the mid-game, and we went in when we weren’t supposed to. Fine, our bad. Unfortunately, this almost soft-locked us (we could have restarted the game), as we were stuck rubbing up against an armpit of rocks. I’ll leave it at that.
Coridden, while lacking polish, also shines like a diamond with its wealth of ideas, theming, and creative setting. Almost better as a proof-of-concept, my intention isn’t to steer the developers away from success, but to highlight that the hard part’s been done: good game design. All that’s needed is some QA. For you, reader, you may enjoy seeing what’s being chewed on here, but don’t go in expecting a crisp experience.
