Day Nine: One Step From Eden
All I want for Christmas is more Mega Man Battle Network
One Step From Eatin’ All The Cookies
Remember Mega Man Battle Network? He’s back! In roguelike form. Tougher, too. A lot tougher. He turned his mind to steak and weights like that one kid in that Bromheads Jacket song, and came back with a vengeance, and it’s shockingly good.
Read on to find out why One Step From Eden, also known as Battle Network for masochists, is a game that you should play.
What is it?
One Step From Eden is a roguelike deckbuilder with real-time combat. You pick a character and go on your way, fighting enemies, collecting new cards to reinforce your deck, and you go on in typical roguelite fashion going into random encounters until you fight a boss. Fight the big boss at the end and win.
If you’ve never played the Mega Man Battle Network games, I’ll explain the gameplay real quick. It takes place on a grid divided into two sides: your side, and the enemy’s side. The two are separate, and you can’t cross into each other’s space, except when using certain attacks. You move around the grid one square at a time. Your goal is to deal damage to your opponent until their health reaches zero. You use cards that get discarded once they’re used. You need mana to use the cards. Mana regenerates slowly over time. You move around the grid, dodging enemy attacks, waiting for your mana to replenish, so you can attack with what you have in hand.
One Step From Eden takes this concept and cranks it up to eleven. The grid has an additional row and column, which doesn’t sound like much, but it makes the play field significantly bigger. It speeds the game up significantly, and it makes enemies more aggressive and gives them larger and more complicated attacks. The only thing that isn’t a version of something from Battle Network on steroids is the fact that you can only have two attacks equiped at once, and there aren’t any combinations like in Battle Network.
The game is a great action game. It’s fast-paced, the enemies have interesting behaviors and attack patterns that get you moving across the board. You have to think on the fly because you only have two cards on you at once, so if you want to make combinations, you have to weigh the risk and rewards of waiting for another card, or using what you have on hand, even if it’s not as powerful, but safer.
The deckbuilding aspect is strong, too. There are different “schools” of card, each classified by what they do and how they play. There’s the elemental school, which focuses on elemental damage and simple status effects, the miseri cards focus on poison and trading your own health for damage, there’s one that specializes in deck manipulation and another based on defense, among others. They all have interesting synergies, allowing for varied and effective playstyles. My personal favorite is the Miseri brand. I like the risk/reward of fighting at low health and stacking big poison.
Each school of deck types corresponds to a character, and there are ten of them in total. Each has their own basic attack and gimmick. They each represent their decks well, and you can pick cards from other decks to make new synergies. There are some that are simple, like Saffron, the game’s postergirl, who focuses on elemental spells, attacks that do straightforward damage, and she has a second life. She’s great for new players, but is versatile enough to keep veterans interested.
On the other end of the spectrum there’s Violette, one of my favorites, who is a violinist. When she attacks, she spawns musical notes in four directions, and you can catch one for different effects. Keeping track of all her buffs/debuffs while dodging attacks takes a lot of mental work, but once you master it and it becomes second nature, you’ll be dancing across the grid, and it’s extremely rewarding.
Short
It’s a roguelite, so each run takes around 30 minutes. During that time, you’ll be engaged with the game at full intensity. It’s dense, and wastes very little time. There are ten characters, most locked from the start, each with a second version to unlock and multiple endings. The game is very replayable, and it’s perfect for a quick run whenever you feel like it. It’s also tough, which means you’ll be able to play it over and over again and get better at it. Once you get the hang of it and start doing well, learning enemy patterns and finishing levels without getting hit, it’s a huge dopamine hit. Very few games leave so much room for players to grow skill-wise. Except maybe for Shmups, which this plays like at high intensities.
Worse Graphics
The game has 2D graphics with low-resolution sprites. They’re chunky and you can count the pixels on everything at a glance. This is a big no-no. Developers think gamers want high resolution 3D graphics.
The game has a solid art style. Each character is very well designed, with great silhouettes and color palettes. The enemies also look great, with varied designs that hint at their function. The animations are well done and the special effects are good at conveying what each attack does, even if it gets chaotic and hard to follow sometimes.
The music is great, too. Ethereal piano melodies for the calmer moments (few and far between), and everything else gets Mega Man inspired electronic tracks with thumping percussion along with airy melodies layered with synth accents.
Made by People Paid More to Work Less
One Step From Eden was made by Thomas Moon Kang, a solo developer. He used to work in web development/UI/UX and went into game development to make One Step From Eden. He hired other freelance artists to help with the graphics and soundtrack.
The game was published by Humble Games, the publishing branch of the online game store Humble Bundle, which started off selling indie game bundles. They help with funding and let the creator keep full control of the IP after publishing and allow for full creative rights. Sounds like a good deal.
The fact that Thomas quit his job to work on this game means that, to him, it was better than working a nine to five office job. That sounds like a good gig, and that he was paid more to work less. Maybe he worked more since he’s a solo dev, but working on something you love for eight hours straight is way better than working a boring job for half as long. I count this as a win in that department.
Conclusion
One Step From Eden is a great game. It’s intense, tough, and frantic, but at the same time incredibly rewarding and fun to master. It offers a lot of variations on its solid base gameplay with its characters and cards, which makes for a replayable experience. The card mechanics are well-implemented, allowing you to make powerful builds and experiment freely. It’s a great deckbuilder with fantastic gameplay.
You can get One Step From Eden for $20, and again, sing along with me if you know the words, it goes on sale frequently. As of writing this, it’s on sale for 60% off at $8. In my opinion, this game is more than worth it at full price. I really enjoy it, it gets the Roger Renfro stamp of approval, and it will get a full review at some point.