Shattered - Tale of the Forgotten King

Shattered - Tale of the Forgotten King is a dark action RPG from indie developer Redlock Studio, set in a world called Hypnos that literally broke apart when its ruler disappeared. You play a Wanderer piecing together what happened through environmental exploration, combat encounters, and testimonies from survivors who may or may not be telling the truth. That last mechanic, the unreliable-narrator angle on lore delivery, is the most interesting thing the game does. Different NPCs give you contradictory accounts of the King's fate, and deciding who to believe shapes how you read the world. For players who love sitting with ambiguity, that is a genuine draw. The combat is the other major pillar. Shattered plays like a lighter take on Soulsborne mechanics: stamina management, dodge windows, weighty hits, and bosses that will punish impatience. It is not as deep or as precisely tuned as its obvious inspirations, but it is competent and occasionally satisfying. There is a leveling system with attribute investment, and you can lean into strength builds, dexterity-style quick weapons, or a hybrid approach. Past the first dozen hours the build variety starts to feel thinner than advertised, and the mid-game enemy roster recycles a bit too often, but the boss encounters themselves are the clear highlights and several of them are genuinely memorable. Platforming in an open-world dark RPG sounds like a weird pitch, and honestly it is a mixed result. The world of Hypnos uses floating landmasses and vertical traversal as a core design principle, which gives the game a distinctive look and some genuinely cool exploration moments. The issue is that the platforming physics are loose enough that deaths here feel unfair in a way that combat deaths rarely do. It is one of those design choices that signals ambition while also needing another few months of polish it clearly did not get. The writing rewards attention more than the runtime justifies. There is real craft in the worldbuilding, and the fragments of lore you collect feel like they were written by someone who cared about internal consistency. Filler quests exist, unfortunately, and the pacing sags in the second half when the game seems unsure whether to be a walking sim of dread or a Soulslike gauntlet. Players who push through purely for narrative payoff will find something worth the effort; players who came for tight combat loops may check out before the better bosses arrive. With a Mixed rating on Steam and a Metacritic score sitting at 68, Shattered sits in that uncomfortable middle tier of indie RPGs: better than its reception suggests in some areas, rougher than its ambitions in others. It is the kind of game that a certain type of player, someone who obsessively reads item descriptions and replays the opening after finishing to catch foreshadowing, will rate much higher than average. Everyone else will bounce off the sluggish mid-game. If you are in the first group, there is a genuinely interesting dark fantasy world here that deserves more attention than it got at launch.

Monika · Scout Team

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