Preview: Son Of Nor – Steam Early Access

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You know those games you find yourself rambling off anecdotes from in those watercooler moments? (On which note, forgive me if I think of them as kettle moments; I’m British). Well prepare to add another to your list, because Stillalive Studios‘ new title Son Of Nor is here to win your heart with its unique brand of magical lizardman-slaying fun – all in the name of protecting the remnants of humanity of course. Recently, I got a chance to get my hands on a copy of the Steam Early Access release, in all its terraforming, mind-bending glory.

Son Of Nor first came on our radar in the form of a Kickstarter campaign back in 2013, being pitched as “a singleplayer and co-op action adventure game set in a dynamic desert world, which can be shaped by the player’s magic”. Well, it turns out well over two thousand backers also saw the potential of this ambitious indie title and it was successfully funded in May, then passing through Steam’s Greenlight programme. The game is still very much in development, but boy has it come a long way since. Stillalive Studios recently released a major content update and the game is really beginning to take shape.

Upon opening the game, I was met with the option to jump straight into one of Son Of Nor‘s featured levels, allowing the player to leap ahead to test powers and abilities from later stages of the game, as well as the new Proving Ground gamemode, a destructive playground in which players can experiment with their combat abilities. I opted to plunge into the main singleplayer campaign to get a feel for the rich world Stillalive Studios have created.

The first step is character creation, to which the developers have just added three additional playable characters, introducing both male and female options (sorry, Ubi…). Play as ‘Son of the Night’ (a promising student from a well-respected family), a ‘Silent Shadow’ (a late magic-bloomer and lone survivor of a fire that claimed your family), ‘Anvil’ (a physically strong Son, denied access to the Radir (the church of Nor by his parents in childhood) and ‘Desert Flower’ (another late-bloomer with a less grumpy face than the Silent Shadow). Character choice is purely cosmetic at this stage, though it will be interesting to see how the studio develops this at later stages. A few tweaks to outfit and colour tinting and Lhiara (my brave Desert Flower) was ready to set forth into the desert and wreak telekinetic vengeance on the marauding Sarahul – the lizard-like race that have pushed humanity to the brink of extinction.

The game starts you in a deep, sand-filled crevasse (picture the dried up Siq river gorge of Petra, famously featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). I was immediately impressed by the polish of the overall look and feel. Even in its early stages, the graphics are testament to this indie studio’s high standards, truly making the best of what the Unity engine has to offer – from the general art style and smooth character animations to the swaying foliage, little dust devils and the rays of golden sun piercing through the sparse canopy above me. Instructed to “follow the path” I began to make my way down the ravine (one nice feature of the use of this setting is that it allows for linear areas without feeling inexplicably restrained by such game classics as invisible walls). You soon come across a fellow Son of Nor engaged in a fight with your first Sarahul – I say fight; the poor lizardman is held, levitating above the floor, effectively trussed and ready for you to brutally slay with one of the conveniently placed boulders alongside. With the level of magic at our fingertips I almost feel sorry for him. “I don’t think I can hold him very much longer!” yells the Son, and I bury my concerns and send his corpse hurtling into the nearest wall. What I first mistook for yet-to-be-implemented ragdoll physics is actually a clever alternative that makes sense in the game’s magic-rich desert setting – slain enemies (or indeed companions) turn to shatterable sandstone statues, which can in turn be weaponised and thrown at their comrades. In line with this, and keeping UI elements to an absolute minimum (which is always nice), damage to the player character is manifested in patches of their clothes and skin being replaced with a sandy texture that returns to normal as the regenerating health kicks in.

The beauty of Son Of Nor comes in its core mechanics. The flexibility of the telekinesis is something I’m not sure I’ll ever tire of. Combat comes in the form of tearing rocks from the walls, hurling them at your foes, slowing them by plunging the sand beneath their feet into a pit that sends them stumbling and or attacking from the highground by raising a tower for yourself. All this comes before the introduction even of your additional powers, which grant you control over various elements, from capturing wind and using it to knock enemies onto their backs to imbuing rocks with fire to create explosive projectiles.

Outside of combat, your powers are no less vital. The game consists of a multitude of platforming and puzzle-solving elements. Right from the offset you are creating raised pillars of sand to access distant ledges and using your telekinesis to rotate runed pillars to gain access to artifacts hidden deep within ancient temples.

What’s so captivating about the use of magic in the game is just how utterly empowering it is. If Star Wars: The Force Unleashed fueled gamers’ passion for Force powers, Son Of Nor just poured petrol on that inferno. It’s rare that a game makes you feel like a truly mighty wielder of magic with only your basic starting powers, but hurling objects around like with nought but the power of your mind and shaping the entire environment around you gives you a feeling that can only be described as ‘bad ass’ – even if it did occasionally occur to me that the sweet and innocent looking Lhiara, entrusted with the responsibility of protecting the Edge (our remaining refuge), seemed to be displaying scant regard for the world around her, leaving a trail of devastation in her wake. In one particular instance, having spawned inside the local temple, and having not yet got over the novelty of Magneto-like ability to hold Shift and cause everything nearby to levitate, ready to be fired at a semi-automatic rate, I left several rooms in a state of ruin… just because I could.

Though the award for Noshrac’s biggest vandal had to go to one particularly malevolent Sarahul mage, who showed up to destroy everyone’s favourite giant statue with an inexplicable glowy green orb. Nice one Robey McLizardface. I can only imagine there must be a few more Sarahul like him around, otherwise I’m mighty curious as to how humanity has been pushed this far towards extinction when it seems a couple of Sons or Daughters of Nor could probably stand on a ledge with a decent stock of rocks and hold off most modern-day militaries with their telekinetic swagger.

The Edge serves as not only a home base, but also a place to do a little good, with a priest instructing me to set off into the town and find people who need our help. It’s an assortment of typically trivial (but often amusing) RPG starter tasks that give us another chance to get to grips with our base powers – from freeing someone buried in sand (because why not?) to putting out flaming scrolls by dunking them in some (rather pretty looking) water. In one instance, I managed to lose my bearings and fail miserably to beat another Son of Nor in a challenge to dislodge as many potentially dangerous loose rocks as possible. In retaliation for this undermining of my authority I saw fit to crush him with one of the aforementioned rocks and shatter his stony cadaver against his own front door. Woo! Protector of the people!

Quests, abilities and so forth are managed out of a Spellbook, in a function familiar to many gamers. As you build up your array of powers and explore all that Noshrac has to offer, you soon find yourself shedding the shackles of doing odd jobs for the local populous and instead delving into conspiracy, exploring secret temples and battling an assortment of enemies from other mages to giant beetles to robotic guardians reminiscent of the steam-powered Dwarven automatons of the Elder Scrolls series.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what the final release of Son Of Nor has to offer. The game is already displaying tons of promise and their end goal is pretty ambitious – incorporating everything from cooperative play to native support of next-gen hardware, such as the Oculus Rift, Emotiv EPOC and Tobii Eyetracking – but, having played it in its current form, I’m confident Stillalive Studios has what it takes to deliver. Now, I’m off to get frustrated at having to actually use my hands to make a cup of tea. I’ll try not to break anything…

Son of Nor is available through Steam Early Access for PC, Mac and Linux and is being pitched for a Q1 2015 release. Visit the official website to learn more.