Recent reviews by Lament, Mourn and Despair

A good deal for the full price(in my opinion). If you're a fan of electro music and loved Furi you should get this. .mp3 and FLAC versions are in it. One thing to note, I've noticed differences from the in-game soundtrack (The Hand's theme doesn't sound as intense as it is in the game, and The Beat has a part mising (not sure about this]. Also, from what I've heard, due to Carpenter Brut's request, The Burst's build-up is removed. (But some good lad uploaded the re-arrangments from the in-game soundtrack, it's on YouTube).

Personal favourite : Wisdom of Rage

Furi is a top-down, boss rush, indie bullet hell action game hybrid developed by an indie studio named The Game Bakers. The game is about our protagonist, referred to as "The Stranger" by the other characters, trying to escape the jail he's in for the "bad things" he has done.


[Detailed Story Analysis] The protagonist after one of his routine torture sessions, is rescued by a man wearing a rabbit mask. He tells him in order to be free, he has to kill the jailer. After this, our protagonist fights the jailers in order to regain his freedom. After each fight, there are small walking sequences, these sequences are accompanied by our rabbit masked friend, The Voice. During these sequences, The Voice tells us about the story and what the upcoming jailer did to us or what we did to him. The walking sequences are great, it builds the tension, you get to see the beautiful landscapes and listen to glorious music also learn a bit about the story.


The combat is easy to pick but hard to master. The Stranger's arsenal is fairly limited, a 4 slash combo and a charged slash, a pistol to rapid fire or charge shot, dash, and parry. The parries in this game are different from others. When a boss is about to attack you, you hear a sound and see a visual cue for a parry. Press the button in time, and you'll get the parry (I actually thought this was more of a block) and also heal 1 HP (half of one of your bars). If you parry at the last possible second, you'll heal 1 HP and stun the boss, allowing you to execute a special attack. Also there's a boost mechanic. The combat in Furi is divided into two different parts. The "eat the armor away" and after that, most of the time, a close quarters duel where you and the boss will use melee attacks and you'll be able to damage the boss' HP. During close quarter sequences, your gun is replaced by a "boost" ability. Holding the button for shooting will make The Stranger point his sword towards the boss and channel(?) energy, your armor will also start to glow orange until you charge enough. A boosted slash deals a lot of damage and is a must if you want to swiftly defeat bosses. However, if you take a hit, your boost will go away and you will have to charge it up again. Another neat thing in combat is, your armor. You can light your armor up during the walking sequences by pressing a key (C on keyboard) but it's different in combat. When you parry an attack, your armor will glow green then turn blue after a while, get hit and it'll stop glowing. During close quarter sequences, if you and the boss has low health, your armor will glow a pinkish red(?) along with the audio, as if the audio is coming from somewhere deep. This adds a lot to the tension, and makes me feel Furi-ous. (pun intended) I believe that Furi mastered combat.


All of the bosses are unique and have their own movesets, attacks and attack patterns. I absolutely loved all of them (although, The Burst's last phase...) and their designs. They reminded me of Afro Samurai, especially The Stranger. During credits something caught my eye, the character designs were done by Takashi Okazaki, so if you loved Afro Samurai, you'll love this one too. It's also neat that getting ranks in boss battles let you see their concept arts and if you don't want to, you can always look them up on the internet. It kind of gives replayability. Concept arts are divided too, for the Furi difficulty battles, you get the normal concept arts with Takashi's notes and on Furier difficulty battles, you get their coloured version, neat right? About the difficulities, there are three of them. Promenade, Furi and Furier. The game recommends you to play on Furi for the experience but if you are not good at these kind of games, you can always play it on Promenade, although some achievements are locked in Promenade and from what I've heard the bosses have less phases(?), I first played on Furi and it was tough at first, but once I got the parry mechanics down all I needed to was learn the pattern. Furier on the other hand though, so many changes, changes that are fair but tough. In short, the bosses were great.


The graphics were pretty good in my opinion. I believe if fit what the game was trying to achieve.


The Soundtrack, yes, the soundtrack. The soundtrack is made by known electro artists (Carpenter Brut, Lorn, The Toxic Avenger, Wavesheaper etc.) and is absolutely beautiful. I believe the producers nailed the feel of the game. During walking sequences, it builds up the tension, makes you think "Who will I fight now?" and during the battles, it pumps you up. Take note AAA developers, having multiple producers make the OST means that the soundtrack will always be fresh. Personal favourite is Wisdom of Rage by Wavesheaper but I love the whole soundtrack with my heart. I got my money's worth 10 times.


I fell in love with the game, I genuinely did, who needs a gf when you can play Furi? An experience I can never forget, thank you, The Game Bakers for this, one in a life time experience. Currently trying to get all the achievements, 5 of 'em left. It's the least I can do to pay my respects to the game. (except, buying the artbook, which I can't right now and probably won't be able to in the future]

If you were wondering, I'm serious on the "Who needs a gf when you have Furi in your life?" part.

RUINER feels like a mash of different games like, Hotline Miami, Hyper Light Drifter, Superhot and Transistor.

[COMBAT]

Tough but fair and expect to die a lot. The way combat starts is, it's just you moving onto an area, get locked in a room of death and fight hordes of enemies until you can proceed to the next area. Simple but nice, although some people might find it repetitive but for me, it wasn't a problem.

[WEAPONS]

There is a lot of weapon variety (from what I've seen atleast) that have different stats and abilities, like plasma rifles, shotguns, assault rifles, pistols and melee weapons. My personal favourite is the Metal Pipe but it might change in the future. (You can also use a Katana which is a godsend for weeaboos :^^)

[ABILITIES]

There are a lot of abilities and you can re-spec them anytime for free. This sets up for different kinds of playstyles and combinations. I also liked the way you can plan your dashes by holding the RMB button.

[CONTROLS]

Controls are a tad hard since it's a top-down shooter. You have to press the button depending on the way that your character faces, f.e. if Puppy is looking right and you're supposed to go along a corridor, you have to press D to move forward. If Puppy faces north, you'll have to press W to move forward. This takes some time to get used to. A problem I had with the movement was the dashing, you dash using RMB and WASD. It would be nice if you could use the mouse direction to dash instead of WASD keys.

[GRAPHICS, EFFECTS, SOUND and MUSIC]

Superb graphics and colour palette for a cyber-punk era game. I really liked the random texts that pop up on the screen randomly, "KILL YOU" before initiating combat and "HELLO DARKNESS" "WE WERE NEVER FRIENDS" on Puppy's mask. On the other hand, the music choice for the game did a good job on catching the cyber-punk feeling. Sounds were pretty good too.

[CHARACTERS and BOSSES]

[More on this after I get further into the game. About bosses, they are a bit unfair and need to be tweaked.] I enjoyed the writing of the characters and the boss fights, although some of the bosses were really hard especially Donvious but after defeating them you feel like a badass.They could use a little tweaking to make it a little bit easier.

Another thing that really made me like the game more was the Kazuhira Miller moment.

Verdict : I give Transistor Light Miami a 10/10, mastapeece.