With Christmas having just rolled around the corner, it was nice to be surprised with a festive treat. Obviously, I’m not talking about mince pies or terrible Secret Santas, I’m talking Svarog’s Dream. An ode to the tough, open-ended fantasy RPGs of yesteryear. Developed by VI Game Forge, this is a passion project brimming with fervour and zeal. A world of mystery, Gods at war and a hostile land to explore, what’s not to be absorbed into?
Emerging from the Underworld with demons in tow, can Svarog’s Dream sustain itself as deities collide or will it fall victim to the divine war it aims to portray?
Perun For Your Life
You begin Svarog’s Dream – as you’ll become very accustomed to – getting brutally beaten into the dirt. Upon succumbing to your wounds, you awake in the Underworld. You begin your journey in a new avatar, sent in a confused haze back into the world of the living. You may want to get acquainted with Veles’ realm, as I found myself being quite the frequent visitor indeed.
A key part of Svarog’s Dream is its implementation of death and rebirth. Every time I got mauled by a bear, boiled alive by a sorcerer or smacked into the depths by a skeleton, my soul was sent down to be mocked. Respawning involves choosing a new NPC type to try again with. Your overall level means stats will always be roughly equivalent, but you’ll lose Talents (buffs/traits) and your loot.
Luckily, reclaiming your possessions is relatively forgiving, provided you haven’t been felled in a particularly nasty area surrounded by necromancy. I learnt the brutality of Svarog’s world very early on after getting trashed by the same bear three times. Normally, this is the part I’d call the game frustrating and irritating, but it’s not.
Quite the contrary, as the rapid manner you find yourself touring the Underworld makes for a tense experience. Losing 10k of coins is horrendous if you haven’t stored backup weapons or armour for your next human husk to inhabit. It’s a cool system, one that’s deepened by how you can lose a long-standing powered-up character or have to venture for minutes into the wilderness to regain gear.
As the hours drifted by, I found the consequences became less significant (especially after buying a house and storing my funds). However, the system itself is fun and adapting to a new type of character keeps things fresh and engaging.
Veles-tian Steel
Now, entering Svarog’s Dream might have you daydreaming about old-school RPGs like Baldur’s Gate or the original Fallout titles. You’re set loose on a relatively large map, with settlements to discover and quests to stumble upon. You can go anywhere from the start, providing a welcome off-hands approach to player choice, though I wouldn’t recommend it. The wilderness is dangerous, after all.
Want to specialise in melee combat and become an armoured tank? Or are you more partial to a speedy and nimble archer? You can outfit your avatars however you wish and there are plenty of options in weaponry and armour. This is a proper fantasy universe that’s begging for you to experiment and try your hand in. Death may be punishing but it’s also an opportunity to try out new builds and styles, which is great.
In terms of questing, it’s not quite as impressive. The main story questlines provide some unique and impressive set pieces, including a supped-up sequence where you one-hit slaughter everything in sight to a weirdly intense choir song. You’ll climb a mountain to speak to God and descend into the depths of the Underworld itself.
Side quests and player choice are where things aren’t quite to the same standard. There will usually be two or three potential outcomes, but they’re all pre-determined. Sent to murder a succubus witch accused by a priest? You can’t just walk up and kill her, you have to talk to her first, then arbitrarily decide to befriend (the definitely correct choice) or show her steel. While it’s certainly not poor, more freedom and player agency would have felt more fitting with the setting and type of game this is.
Lord of The Underworld
In order to polish off quests and improve your lot in these temporary lives, you’ll naturally be doing a lot of fighting. Svarog’s Dream is a top-down RPG mainly controlled as a clicker. You point your character where to go, ping off their abilities when required and spend time gathering resources or managing inventory.
There’s a real addictive underbelly to the game. I found myself journeying to a part of the map I’d yet undiscovered just because of the promise of a town. No quest marker or unnecessary exposition is needed, just straight-up excitement towards exploring. A couple of times I was underpowered (or too recently reborn) to take on a main mission, so I simply ventured out and levelled up by engaging with the world.
Combat is relatively tough but this is in the interest of keeping you focused. Enemies can hit hard, especially when groups of skeletons or beasts can overwhelm you, and large creatures can straight-up slingshot you out of the atmosphere. There’s more than one ticket to the Underworld in Svarog’s Dream, that’s for sure. It can occasionally be a little clunky and some powers have skewed hit detection, but nothing too major.
Which is similar to my other minor gripes regarding the gameplay. Managing inventory is more finicky and time-consuming than it may need to be, like having to move newly crafted pieces into your inventory individually, and then into a stack. Pathfinding can go askew quite often, with my chosen husk wandering off like a drunk seeing a brothel in the distance. Additionally, an option to auto-traverse to a designated point on a map would have been welcome to prevent needless micro-management clicking.
What are ya’ buyin’? All the potions and food – ever – apparently.
Dream of A Brighter Life
Despite these minor soul-detaching gripes, however, my enduring image of Svarog’s Dream is the little stories I created on my journey. Stumbling across a creature that hated the Horde and directing it towards them, only for it to be enraged when I accidentally smacked it in combat and caused it to turn on me, had me chuckling.
Finding a mercenary who can only spout jokes and gets sent to Veles in seconds is a humorously creative little distraction. It’s also a testament to VI Game Forge and the developers with how much attention and care they’ve poured into this world. From the backstory of the lore, the Gods, the conflict and the mini-stories you’ll welcomely fall into, there’s so much to appreciate.
A particularly stellar moment came when a guard warned me to know my identity before confronting a sorcerer. I battled through hordes of undead, overcame necromancy I’d never seen before, toppled a wave-kissed fort decimated by time. When I reached the end, said sorcerer asks me my name. I didn’t know, I didn’t bother to read it when I selected them. He controlled my mind and made my head implode.
Mouth agape, I applauded the audacity of the game to punish me for being impatient and unobservant. All too often, Svarog’s Dream will catch you out, and you’ll be all the more enthused by it.
Catching The Eye of The Gods
Aside from its gameplay and story elements, Svarog’s Dream has an aesthetic that would please even the One-God itself. Never mind the quests and creatures to kill, walking around this land reveals blood-red lakes infested with goblins and perilous caverns dripping with lethal creatures. From snow-kissed mountains to vast swathes of forest land, there’s a visual feast to be sampled upon for the brave adventurer.
That’s not to say it’s all Godly sunshine and horde-ridden rainbows, however. Svarog’s Dream suffers some rough edges in terms of combat animations going wilder than the boars you hunt. Lighting for the most part is wonderfully utilised across the day-night cycle, but every now and then it can look out of place or strangely ill-fitting.
As with almost any small indie title with big ambitions, this is going to be a mixed bag. The visual hiccups never disrupt the immersive feel that’s been crafted for this abundant land filled with landmarks and discoveries to happen upon, however. The mini-map and actual map struggling to make heads or tails of cave interiors only really matter if you choose to let it, for example.
More importantly, I appreciated just how much effort has gone into sharpening this fantasy world’s sword. The edge may be dulled at times, but the blade itself has enough bite to suitably behead a werewolf. Which is lucky, cause these werewolves are anything but dull.
Come For The Daydream, Stay For The Nightmare
Svarog’s Dream can take anywhere from 10-20 hours to “finish”. Of course, that’s entirely dependent on whether you burn through the main questline faster than a church melts candles. Or whether, like me, you take your time to wander off into this brutal yet enticing fantasy setting. I suppose it’ll also depend on how many dozens of deaths you experience… ’cause I definitely didn’t. Certainly not.
In truth, I think you’d be doing yourself and the developers a disservice if you don’t get lost and mangled by a bear at least once. Despite the lack of voice acting and some clunkier systems borne out of a small dev team making a massive game, I found myself loading back in again and again, demise after demise, to unveil more engrossing secrets wherever I could.
Svarog’s Dream is an old-school RPG that’s a wonderful homage to games and series that we see far too little of nowadays. It may not have the star power nor the budget of Baldur’s Gate 3, but that doesn’t mean its world is any less enthralling to explore and get killed in. A brilliant way to cap off 2023, Svarog’s Dream is a reverie worth getting lost in.
VI Game Forge have shot for the Heavens and incredibly, almost landed a near-perfect shot. Svarog’s Dream is a game brimming with wonder, brutality and creativity. Clunky systems and ideas that can’t quite reach their potential, unfortunately, mar the beauty of the Gods in places. Yet, this certainly doesn’t detract from what is a brilliantly crafted RPG and an admirably ambitious indie title.
Svarog’s Dream is available now on PC (review platform).
Developer: VI Game Forge
Publisher: VI Game Forge
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
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