Cornerstone Alpha Demo Hands-On
Cornerstone: The Song of Tyrim caught our attention thanks to it’s charming and appealing art style and it’s focus on physics-based puzzles and exploration. The developers were heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda and Dark Souls whilst making this game, and it shows. The cell-shaded art style is very reminiscent of Wind Waker and the combat system isn’t unlike that of Dark Souls. The game is currently up on Kickstarter and recently passed the half-way mark of its $30,000 goal. We were able to try the alpha demo for the game to get an idea of what to expect out of Cornerstone, if development is funded.
The first thing you will notice once you get off your boat and set foot into the charming land where Cornerstone takes place in is that the world is bright and colourful and the soft, cheerful music complements it perfectly. Clearly, a lot of effort has been put into making the world look and feel similar to that of Wind Waker. Even if the majority of the objects have a very basic look to them - this is an alpha build after all - the art direction in Cornerstone makes the objects look sharp and well presented regardless. You aren’t given any instructions as to where to go or what to do, but as you entered the area, a panoramic pan of the area drops a hint that you might want to pick up your hammer and shield located on a nearby cliff.
How you make your way to the cliff is entirely up to you. After spending some time getting used to Cornerstone‘s floaty controls, I tried to figure out how to get on the cliff. I decided to work backwards; I saw my objective, the hammer and shield, noticed that it had to be accessed from above and in order to get above I had to climb a ladder. The problem was that the ladder was on another cliff which was too far away to jump to, however, a crane holding a small wooden platform could help me cross. I jumped onto the platform and tried to jump to the other cliff. The platform was too far away and I dropped into the sea below. No matter, I swam back to shore and tried again. This time, I noticed that I could spin the crane by pushing against it, my first experience with Cornerstone‘s physics-based puzzle-solving. This allowed for the platform to move in between the two cliff sides and made my crossing a lot easier.
Once on the other side, it got a lot more straight forward: I climbed the ladder and found a recipe for a torch in a nearby house. Cornerstone strongly emphasizes the use of crafting in order to progress, seemingly useless items scattered around the map can be built into important objects that will be essential to progress the way you want. After crafting myself my newly learned torch recipe, I set is ablaze and spread the fire to a nearby vine. The vine caught fire, and released a sort of wooden elevator, which led straight to my equipment! On the way down, the elevator also created a bridge by knocking over a wooden structure so I could make my way back more easily.
With my equipment in hand, it was time for me to proceed into an area populated by big burly men with huge weapons and shields. Combat is difficult and is usually optional, however for this first enemy I had to fight him in order to continue. The combat system in Cornerstone is pretty standard; swing your hammer with the left mouse button, block with your right and roll around to evade attacks and quickly get behind an enemy. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done, the controls for the game are already floaty and imprecise which made it very difficult for me to use my roll move properly. In addition to this, there isn’t any feedback on whether you hit the enemy or not. I know this is alpha, but an audio cue or a more pronounced visual cue that my hammer connected with my enemy would have gone a long way. Killing my first enemy took me several tries and, even then, I didn’t feel like I got how to fight effectively. I would much rather avoid it.
Cornerstone does have a basic stealth system to sneak past enemies, but it’s not always reliable and screwing up can put you in a very bad situation as you are stuck with guards chasing you from all directions. This leads me to talk about the enemy AI; like the combat system, I was really unimpressed. Enemies blindly chase you and never seem to stop, sometimes when you get out of their sight they may go back to patrolling, other times they’ll just stand there, waiting for you to peek out of that big rock again. It’s very random, and everytime I saw an enemy I would hope they wouldn’t spot me so I didn’t have to use the tedious combat system or have them follow me until I found an exit.
This made the second area of the game very tedious and frustrating, it was easily the part of the demo which I disliked the most. Once you solve a few basic puzzles and sneak or fight your way past a dozen or so guards, you enter a castle dungeon and move on to the final area which is meant to showcase Cornerstone‘s boss fights. After solving a few more physics puzzles you find yourself in a large open room where druids are chanting and channeling some magical energy into a vortex. This vortex sucks up rocks and crates and hurls them out towards you. It seemed like the game engine would struggle to keep track of all these moving objects and often the frame rate dropped quite visibly during the encounter. However, as I know this is an alpha build, I’ll turn a blind eye on the technical issues of Cornerstone.
The boss fight was simple enough and didn’t require any puzzle solving or combat, which was kind of disappointing. Once you have defeated the “boss” the demo is over.
I had very mixed impression of Cornerstone whilst playing this demo. I love the art style and the idea of physics-based puzzles, however the game’s controls lack accuracy and precision, which can make the puzzle solving more vexing than what it should be. By playing through the demo, however, I could see that there were other ways I could have solved these puzzles, either by using your boat or by abusing the crafting system more. The demo was successful at showing me the breadth of its puzzles and how they can be tackled in many different ways.
On the other hand, the combat system really disappointed me. It was hard to grasp even if the controls and idea behind it is very simple and it led me to be very frustrated while fighting, especially since there is a lack of feedback when you are hitting people and vice-versa. I also would have enjoyed to see puzzles exploit the game physics more. With a few minor exceptions, all the puzzles I had to solve were very basic and I didn’t feel as if the physics really added an original twist to them. Hitting a switch, picking up a rock to climb onto a higher ledge, all of these are puzzles we’ve already been through in games which didn’t rely on physics and, in turn, had much more precise controls.
Whilst the potential for a unique game is there, this Cornerstone demo never really delivered that “aha!” moment where it truly shocked me with something original. The physics based puzzles are nice, but it feels like the developers are trading off the precision of the controls in order to make the game work the way they want. A lot of work still has to go into Cornerstone.
If you want to learn more about Cornerstone: the Song of Tyrim, you can read our interview with the minds behind the game here.
