Have you ever wanted to play a game like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars, but solo and without dealing with other players? Well you’re in luck, because Kyn allows you to do something quite similar to that. Kyn is an action-adventure/RPG type of game similar to those, except it’s single player and not an MMO. The game’s controls are somewhat similar to WoW & Guild Wars, so if you’ve played either of those much at all, it shouldn’t take you much time at all to adjust to Kyn. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be any support for WASD movement. The game makes you click to move, which can be somewhat annoying depending on your perspective. It also doesn’t support game controllers from what I could tell. Personally I would prefer WASD support or at least support for the Xbox 360 PC controller. The graphics & music in Kyn are quite impressive in my opinion, especially when you consider that this is an indie game made by a 2 man team. Tangrin has done an excellent job with these aspects.
When you kill enemies in Kyn they drop different kinds of loot. Sometimes you’ll get gold, sometimes armor or weapons, sometimes crafting items. Apparently you can craft new items in this game though in the parts I’ve played so far I haven’t found any way to do so. Unlike in WoW, however, you can pick up loot without being next to it, which is nice. There doesn’t appear to be any use for gold thus far. Either that or I just haven’t progressed enough in the game to find a use for it.
Another feature that Kyn has similar to WoW & Guild Wars are the talent trees. The ones in Kyn are like a hybrid between old WoW talent trees and new WoW talent trees. You get access to all three trees immediately (at least in this preview version anyways) and can use skills from any tree. You can swap abilities in and out like in Guild Wars or in the current WoW talent system.
Kyn is somewhat like an Action RPG or perhaps Action-Adventure. I haven’t seen any experience being earned, so either that is not yet implemented or perhaps you don’t start earning it until later on or perhaps it’s going on silently in the background, not sure. There wasn’t any visible way to track your characters’ levels from what I could tell. But again, this could just be not yet implemented. It would appear that leveling is planned if it’s not already included as tooltips for equipment indicate a required level for some of them. Items can also require a certain amount of character stats, such as Body to equip. You can reassign these at your will, so if you want all your points to go towards Body, you can do so, you just need to subtract the others first. I’m assuming when you level up you’ll gain more points to assign, but that is 100% confirmed.
One thing different from WoW & Guild Wars (at least the first one anyways) is that Kyn features puzzles like an Action-Adventure game would. The ones I encountered thus far remind me a lot of the Zelda series. These required the player to press switches to do different things. One puzzle used the switches to raise & lower gates in the current area. You have to use both characters individually to do so as the switch will deactivate if you move off it. So you have to keep swapping back & forth to progress. Another similar puzzle did the same kind of thing but this time it was used to raise & lower water (somewhat similar to the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time).
Combat in the game is pretty straightforward, you click on enemies and your characters will auto-attack or you can use skills/abilities/spells on them as well. This can require some micro-managing as your character doesn’t seem to want to auto-attack unless you’re right next to the enemy. Both characters get a resurrection spell, so if one dies be sure to cast that right away. If both die you have to reload a saved game or restart from the beginning (your choice). The game does do auto saves at various points, but it’s recommended to do periodic saves yourself. You do get an ability that recharges after use which allows you to temporarily slow time. This can be useful to heal up, revive, or run away from enemies.
One thing I noticed, which I’m not sure if it’s a bug or a feature, but at one point I was trying to open my inventory after combat to check out the items I picked up and it wouldn’t let me. Not sure what was going on with that. But other than that Kyn seems like a pretty enjoyable game so far. I’m not really sure what the storyline is other than your characters previously being stuck in a cave and having to find your way back home. You start off on the surface and then your first quest tasks you with finding your village. This game shares similarities with the Diablo series as well, so if you like that, you’ll probably like Kyn as well. It’s scheduled to be released on PC, Mac, & Linux this Summer, so be sure to check it out.