Oh, what a buggy mess this game is! Cornerstone is full of nasty surprises such as lousy controls, terrible camera, unpolished collision detection and the worst of them all – game breaking bugs that force you to start all over again. The mix of depression and frustration that filled our hearts when we discovered that the bird’s nest with a key is not on top of Alma’s chimney – and that it will never appear there unless you start the game again from the beginning – is something we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy. Swedish developers from Overflow Games are apparently not in a hurry to fix that and other bugs, since the patch may or may not be released “in the next couple of weeks” because they “have another project on priority right now”. Sigh.
Luckily, the game is very fun and you’re bound to ignore the bugs for the most part just to see the next location, quest, or another line of quirky dialogue.
The Song of Tyrim is an open world action adventure reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker – there are 8 islands you need to explore and the game has a low-poly colorful cartoony look. In order to explore the islands, you first need to get to them, and for that, you’ll need to build a ship. Which brings us to the key Cornerstone’s gameplay mechanic: crafting. You are going to build everything needed for successful adventuring – from weapons, armor and shields, to bandages, crates and explosive barrels. And in order to build things, you need resources and recipes which you collect by carefully exploring every location.
The story puts you in the shoes of a boy named Tyrim who sets sail to find his father and discover why the men of Borja Viking village have disappeared. Although the Borja tutorial area is discouragingly boring, the rest of the game is masterfully designed, its world rich with mysteries and memorable dungeons. Many locations offer multiple paths and freedom to approach encounters differently, depending on your equipment and health. You can fight the enemies directly or you can sneak around them. Or, you can sneak up to them and smite them from behind. Whatever works for you.
Fighting is based on a simple combination of blocking the enemies’ attacks and well-timed counter-attacks. We liked how it’s clearly not the focus here, as the majority of Cornerstone’s experience comes from exploration and enjoying the light-hearted story. Many of the game’s descriptions, conversations and quests are somewhat humorous – take for example this inscription from the Borja Viking stone:
“This stone marks Borja’s first success in battle. The invasion was perpetrated by a lone opponent, Elof the Stout. Halvadan, still the sole occupant of Borja at the time, saw him coming and climbed the Borja cliffs. When Elof approached the smouldering remains of Halvadan’s campfire, Halvadan pushed this stone block down from on high, crushing Elof. Even today, some of Elof remains on this stone.”
Add to that quests such as finding the ham to feed the hungry caretaker at the crazy wizards’ academy, so he can give you a book of fish taco recipes, and you get the picture. These send you to explore a very diverse set of dungeons and locations, ranging from picturesque villages to mining tunnels complete with mine cart riding like in Indiana Jones.
Many of Cornerstone’s puzzles (what, you thought there were no puzzles here?) are based on moving, smashing or blocking things, since there’s a heavy emphasis on physics. This way, simple fights that would otherwise be boring can look spectacular after you blow up several enemies at once, with their limbs and heads flying around and creating a mess that slows you down.
Unfortunately, like in many other physics-heavy games before, Cornerstone’s physics model is glitchy, and it can cause you to get stuck between boxes or to get killed while trying to roll out of a heap of garbage surrounded by a group of extremely unfriendly skeletons.
While Cornerstone has a simplistic visual style, its world is by no means simple, especially because much of your interaction with the environment is physics-based. The game world contains numerous objects that can be kicked, pushed, destroyed and thrown, which can have an adverse effect on performance in case you’re using an older CPU. If you’re stuck with a dual-core AMD processor, set “-force-gfx-direct” in the game’s launch options – it did wonders for us, as the game stopped stuttering in larger locations.
Despite the fact Cornerstone is generally a well-designed game, at some point bugs and problems mentioned previously start to get really irritating, and by that, we mean that after some 8-10 hours of gameplay you’ll want to stab yourself in the forehead with a fork rather than struggle through another messy fight or a “create a crate – jump on a higher platform” sequence, hellishly complicated by buggy physics and the camera that’s all over the place in close quarters. There is also the problem of constantly having to craft everything you want to use. Let’s be honest here: this system is nothing more than a prolonged draw animation for weapons and items. It serves no purpose. Unless it lets you build your own settlements or heavily customize your equipment, crafting adds nothing to a game.
However, we tend to separate bugs from the quality of a game’s story, quests and level design and that’s why we need to point out there’s a very nice game here underneath all the bugs and some unnecessary gameplay features. After a patch or two, Cornerstone will be ace. It’s interesting, it’s relaxing and most importantly – it’s fun.
Author: Senad Matić Karić
Cornerstone: The Song of Tyrim
Pros:
- The design
- Characters, dialogue
- Quests, fun gameplay
Cons:
- Bugs, unpolished physics
- Unnecessary crafting
