From the start it’s clear that Trulon: The Shadow Engine, a fantasy role-playing game, was inspired by many games that came before it. The graphics, soundtrack, and narrative harken back to my childhood favorites like The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy VII. The combat is turn-based, highly strategic, and feels like the lovechild of Gwent and Pokémon insofar as the player must utilize a deck of attack and defense cards in order to vanquish foes.
The story follows Gladia, a monster hunter, on her quest to investigate mysterious monster sightings near her home town. Unfortunately, the narrative only gets more derivative from there. Still, although the plot and character development are a bit weak, I kept returning to the game in order to experience more fights. I particularly liked the steampunk-meets-Miyazaki design of the monsters and villains, and I slogged through the thin story only to see what kinds of strange creatures the next area would hold. That’s where the enjoyment ends however.
I was prevented from fully completing the game due to a series of aggravating soft crashes. Seemingly random fights, quest objectives, and zones in the game cause it to freeze, sometimes resulting in the need to completely reset the console. After losing numerous hours to trying to circumvent these crashes, I ultimately decided that it wasn’t worth it. This is incredibly disappointing given I found myself wanting to play for the intellectually challenging and beautifully designed combat. If you find yourself desiring a similar style of gameplay like I did, my advice? Go play Gwent! The graphics are beautiful, and you’ll get your card-based strategy fix without losing hours of experience when the game decides not to work.
I did some research into the crashes which cause you to lose progress and many gamers are reporting similar issues. It doesn’t matter how much I like Trulon: The Shadow Engine, the fact is that the game is unplayable. It reminds me of Thief when it came out. Thief would get stuck on the fourth chapter and you would have to start from the beginning. Such game-breaking issues are inexcusable in my opinion. I tried my best to overcome them but it’s incredibly disheartening. The developers need to release a patch immediately which fixes these problems.
Summary
If Trulon: The Shadow Engine can fix its bugs and crashes, this game has the potential to be incredibly accessible. There are no strobing lights that would trigger seizures, and the turn-based combat allows for folks with reduced reflexes to enjoy the thrill of defeating high level enemies. Subtitles are built into the game, though I can’t speak to how dyslexic-friendly the fonts are, and the controls could be easily remapped to a joystick with one or two buttons. It would be great if there could be an option for the card actions to be spoken to ensure more accessibility for gamers with vision loss. Overall, the biggest obstacle for disabled gamers is the same one for non-disabled gamers: the game-breaking bugs.
Jess contributed 16 articles to ICXM in 2017, covering game reviews, and Xbox news with a focus on hands-on impressions and verified-source reporting. Their bylines on the site span the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @Enceladosaurus.