Folklore is full of reasons not to go into the woods alone; from the very real threat of wild animals to the supernatural danger of evil spirits, a dark forest is a bad place to be. Nevertheless, like many heroes before her, Howl's protagonist must face the terrors lurking among the trees.

Despite the decaying nature of its Scandinavian fairy-tale world, Howl's relaxed pace combines with soothing visuals and music to create a lovely little workout for your brain. Now that it's launched on all major consoles as well as PC, anyone can test their mettle against the ravenous Beasts.

Howl depicts a forested world dotted with small towns and villages. Society is on the brink of collapse due to the presence of Beasts, werewolf-like creatures whose numbers grow every day. Anyone who so much as hears the Beasts' howl is transformed into a Beast.

The Prophet is a young woman who is destined t🍷o end the curse. She is Deaf, making her immune to the effects of the Howl, but her only defense against the Beasts’ claws and teeth are her trusty crossbow and a handful of tricks that she picks up on her journey.

On each map♔, players must guide the Prophet to the exit in turn-based rounds, evading or defeating the Beasts in her path. She can take several actions each round - six after a few early upgrades - but all of them have to be planned in advance. Often, this means you’ll hav🍬e to take a leap of faith, such as planning to fire an arrow trusting that a Beast will be there to take the hit when the time comes.

There’s no randomness to the Beasts’ actions - they always follow set behaviors, usually in direct response to the Prophet’s actions. The game's main challenge - and the core of the gameplay - is anticipating the movements of several Beasts at once as you plan each round’s actions. This makes the gameplay somewhat reminiscent of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Into The Breach, albeit with much shorter levels.

Howl has an optional Assist Mode that lets you see how the Beasts will respon⛎d to each move 🅺you make while planning.

Upgrades are earned by collecting the skulls of slain Beasts, incentivizing players to fight rather than flee. However, you also need Confidence for key skills, which is gained by completing maps in a set number of turns and rescuing any survivors you meet before they’re killed or turned into Beasts. The game says outright that on some maps it’s impossible to do both in the same attempt, so you’ll likely need to revisit some levels with a different strategy in order to 🥀unlock everything.

Howl’s difficulty cuꩵrve gives a bit of whiplash; the first chapter is practically a walk in the werewolf-infested park, but about midway through the second, things get much harder. For me, the turning point was a map that consisted simply of a wide-open clearing packed with m🍨ore Beasts than I’d seen in one place up to that point. I thought, “How am I supposed to pull this off?” With some trial and error, though, I was able to devise a route that reached the goal in time, and another that dropped all the Beasts without getting myself cornered and torn apart.

Past that point, Howl starts to feel like it’s best approachedﷺ as a puzzle-of-the-day challenge rather than trying to rush through to the end of the game. The soothing guitar soundtrack makes it great for relaxing, and﷽ like any great puzzler, it feels good to come back to an impossible-seeming map and have it suddenly click. By the same token, though, playing several maps in succession feels repetitive once you’re familiar with the mechanics, so it’s best to play the game in small doses to keep it from getting stale.

The trickiest🙈 part of Howl’s gameplay occurs once you start unlocking skills. These add new abilities to the Prophet’s available actions, such as firing an explosive bolt or leaping over several tiles at once. There’s a catch, though; they can only be used at a specific point in the turn order. For example, the Prophet can only drop a smoke bomb as her second action of a round, or use her powerful telekinetic push on the fourth.

While skills allow for more flexibility and so🎶lutions to otherwise-impossible situations, careful timing and predicting how the Beasts will move becomes even more important - and challenging - the more the Prophet levels up. This is especially true later in the game, when multiple skills take up the same position in the queue, forcing you to choose one or the other. Every map can be beaten within the allotted number of turns, though many requirꦜe precisely the right sequence of actions to make it happen.

Howl has a charming ink-on-parchment visual style that’s in keeping with the seꦕtting. The Prophet’s actions are planned on a scroll - she’s liꦚterally writing her prophecy as she goes, hoping that she can break the curse. It’s revealed early on that previous Prophets have tried and failed, so her gift doesn’t make her the chosen one by any means. The current Prophet doesn’t know whether she’ll succeed or meet a grisly end like her predecessors, but she presses forward regardless.

While Howl’s story is aﷺ standard tale of an untested heroine thrust into peril, it’s well-presented. This is due in no small part to the narration by Samantha Dakin, whose voice and performance perfectly match the game’s sense of cal💃m amid danger.

Ultimately, while Howl doesn’t do anything new or groundbreaking, it’s a solid indie title that knows what it wants to be. Its aesthetics and challenge make it a compelling experience, especially for players looking for something to work into their daily puzzle rotations - a crossword or Wordle for fantasy fans.

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