Solid. Tenebris: Terra Incognito is a solid game. It’s like a soup. There’s a bowl here with lots of ingredients mixed together with flavour. Big chunks of meat and vegetables. It’s chewy. There’s a lot to get through. Crash landed in your ship The Solaris in the middle of the Wastelands, it is not long before encounter the indigenous population of various species of monster size insects that are on the hunt to experience the tastiest in human meat. It is up to you as the controller of a squad of various skilled soldiers and crew to take on the threat directly, improve and diversify the skill level of your team and emerge victorious, or simply survive before your team exhausts itself.
Tenebris is all about turn based fun like Darkest Dungeon, or any traditional RPG and reminds me slightly of that wonder X-Com but on a 2D plane. You’ll generally be heading from one point to another, with the occasional diversion, actively moving your team onwards and gathering items that you see as you explore, often triggering encounters as you do. You’ll explore but don’t have huge choices as you do, but the levels themselves are varied enough to keep you interested in moving forward.
Overall the graphics are simple, effective and the sprite work overall is rather impressive. There’s a fair amount of imagination to the various enemies that you encounter, though its clear some of them are riffing off of the kind of alien insect designs you would expect. That’s not really a criticism though as it is probably a challenge in itself to create something unique that doesn’t look like it is from some kind of franchise is a challenge in itself. The animation for the characters is pretty well done, and fits well withing the selected artistic style they have chosen for the game.
Animations in the battles are also very well done, as with similar games, it can be difficult to animate for every possible attack and how it can be reacted for and Tenebris does its best to make that work, though I thought it would be nice to see the changes the character make in terms of weapons and sometime equipment to also be shown in the characters. You feel like you are progressing as you level up, but you don’t necessarily look like you are progressing, if that makes sense.
Tenebris is that huge plate of buffet like choices. There’s so many options on offer here, you can feel a bit overwhelmed at the beginning.. I found myself just pressing attacks and hoping that they work. Often a lot of your attacks will have cool downs or limits that are imposed on you, and so often your choice will be down to what is available to you at that time. This choice only widens as the game goes on, as the number of unique skills your team have grow into. Tenebris demands play so that you can gather the relevant experience for you to continue and succeed, and with roughly 17 different classes and skills to work towards, you can now see a shadow appearing over the hill, with worn down fingers and a look of tiredness in its eyes, wearing a t-shirt that says the word GRIND. We’ll get onto that though.
There’s a lot of information to take in game as you progress, so try to skip things at your peril. If you’re a big fan of turn based games then most of this is going to be very familiar indeed. Often mid game you’ll be picking up equipment and you need to be mindful of switching out to the most optimum load out. Mostly you’ll need to be spending time during mission to do what they suggest and switch out and rest your team before you send them on another mission. the main downside to this is that levelling only happen the to team that you have just fielded, so you’ll often have no choice but to replay missions again to make sure that you are topping up everyone’s experience as you go. Otherwise you can end up with skill gaps between team member that are difficult to equalise.
While it runs on the Steamdeck very well, its clearly made for the bigger screens out there. It is not impossible to read what is going on but it sometimes make you have to squint to read what each attack does. Especially if you are trying to understand what each weapon is doing for you. This is clearest when you are in mid battle and are trying to select a suitable attack or a boon for the team. Though, you’re never under pressure time wise, and it will go away once you have more experience playing the game. Those who prefer bigger text are going to struggle.
There’s enough here to keep any one going for a while, there’s an permadeath ironman like mode which I confess I didn’t go near as I don’t dislike myself enough to go through the pain of wiping out a squad I’ve spent hours working on. But you do you. I think my main concern with the game is the nature of the grind that will be required if you really want to succeed with all of your party members. Levels aren’t roguelike and don’t change, with in some case is a welcome thing, but you can’t help that the experience would be slightly more enjoyable if the unplayed party gained something from just being alive. Tenebris biggest concern is that even with all the levels, upgrades, weapon choice and interesting enemies, you’ll end up rinse and repeating so many times that you’ll end up switching off because you’re playing it to level up instead of playing to have fun.
Again. Solid. Tenebris: Terra Incognito is a solid game. It’s like a soup. There’s a bowl here with lots of ingredients mixed together with flavour. Big chunks of meat and vegetables. It’s chewy. There’s a lot to get through. There’s no a huge amount of seasoning, so you’ll feel full, probably satisfied, but you’ll wish you didn’t have to chew so much.
Developed by Phantasmica Studios.
