Through history, there have been a good amount of classic fables featuring sheep and wolves. The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Wolf and the Lamb, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, Ralph Wolf’s constant failed attempts to steal the sheep without Sam Sheepdog noticing, et cetera. However, none of them have taken the form of roguelike 2D action games. Not until developers Lifuel came along with their debut game Stand-Alone, which presents a twisted apocalyptic sci-fi version of such tales, as seen below with the game’s latest trailer. And now it has a new, upgraded demo to check out,which you can experience over on Steamto see if this action-packed fable has a good amount of bite.
Sacrificial Lambs
Stand-Alone takes place in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals, where countless sheep have been massacred by the maniacal Dr. Wolf. Normally, there’s supposed to be a guardian robot known as a “shepherd,” but this story begins with our guardian having their memories erased and being abandoned, finally awakened in a robo-sheep body. Despite having no memories, they fight back against the wolves with their massive greatsword, battling on their own and hopefully putting an end to Dr. Wolf’s insane experiments. There may be some rather unsettling secrets and truths that they’ll discover along the way, though…
…The story in Stand-Alone appears to take some rather dark turns, which is contrasted by the bright pixel art style.
In case the shot of the crucifixions alone didn’t tip you off, the story in Stand-Alone appears to take some rather dark turns, which is contrasted by the bright pixel art style. But one of the real draws is in the game’s hack-and-slash gameplay. After defeating enemies, you actually have the power to download skills from them, and then modify them in order to come up with several combinations of passive and active skills to experiment with, eventually landing on those that work right for you and that make short work of your enemies. Having played the previous demo earlier this year, this writer can confirm that the gameplay is indeed quite fun, quick, and fluid, at least in their opinion.
The new demo for Stand-Alone features one whole chapter, where players can explore various nodes filled with randomly generated content. This also includes a new elite wolf to fight along with special cutscenes for those able to defeat elite enemies and bosses, alongside the ability to play with mouse and number key mappings, as well as various fixes. It should definitely be worth checking out, and hopefully serves as a sign that the full game will deliver in 2025, when Stand-Alone arrives for the PC (with no other platforms having been announced yet). If nothing else, one has to wonder what the conclusion to this fable is…
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