Thorne - Death Merchants

I went in expecting the usual RPG Maker cheerfulness - bright overworld, chipper music, slimes everywhere. Thorne - Death Merchants delivered none of that, and I mean that as a compliment. This is a dark fantasy action-RPG built on RPG Maker but deliberately stripped of its default comfort zone: muted color palettes, grim writing that doesn't shy away from profanity, and a starting premise that drops you chained in a cell accused of a murder you didn't commit. The setting, centered on the corrupt village of Hollow Lake, has enough moral grime to feel like it belongs in a different engine entirely. Combat is real-time, not the turn-based template you'd expect from the toolset. Thorne - aka The Crow - enters the game already at level twenty, which is a smart design choice that sidesteps the tiresome opening grind and signals you're playing a seasoned killer, not a farm boy hero. His toolkit includes sword swings, throwable knives, molotov cocktails, a self-heal, and a berserk mode that kicks in when you're close to death. The enemy variety covers wolves, bandits, goblins, witches, sorcerers, and demonic water creatures - enough to keep the short runtime varied. On leveling up you receive five stat points to distribute freely across attributes like strength and agility, though the game is frustratingly quiet about what those stats actually do in concrete numbers. That opacity is the kind of thing that would send me back to the wiki, except there isn't much of one. The rougher edges are worth naming clearly. Combat responsiveness has a lag between throwing items and switching to melee that isn't consistent enough to feel intentional. Your character can snag on terrain geometry and requires some wiggling to free. There is no auto-save, which hurts more than it should given the difficulty spikes. The dialogue has spelling errors scattered throughout, and the windowed-only display will frustrate anyone who defaults to fullscreen. These are small-studio growing pains, but they compound in a two-hour game where every minute counts. The reason the Steam community still sits at roughly 79% positive, though, is the writing. The story - Thorne untangling why he was framed while navigating a village full of people who may or may not want him dead - is genuinely engaging. The characters are morally ambiguous in ways that feel earned rather than performative. Puzzle elements inside the level design reward lateral thinking rather than just switch-finding. The episodic structure means this entry functions as a prologue to a larger series, and several reviewers noted it felt like it ended just as it was getting started. That is both the best and worst thing you can say about it. Who should pick this up: players who enjoy story-first action-RPGs with a dark fantasy edge, have no allergies to RPG Maker aesthetics, and want something completable in a single sitting. Anyone chasing deep build optimization or expecting Diablo-style loot loops will be under-served. Treat it as episode one of a character study, not a standalone systems game, and it earns its place in your library. Diego, Scout Team

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