Sloclap’s Absolver is the kind of game I can’t wait for the public to get their hands on because I want to see what people can do with it when they have all its tools at their disposal.
While Absolver is an RPG, one with a story for those looking for a more solitary experience, the part of it I was most fascinated by when I got hands-on time with the game was when I went head-to-head against an opponent with each of us using our own, customized movesets.
The game focuses on hand-to-hand combat, but rather than define a character’s playstyle for the player, the game gives players the option to customize their own moveset, one that’s made up of several stances and potential combinations. While in any single stance players use a personalized moveset—one that transitions into another fluidly, opening up another set of attacks. The key to really taking advantage of Absolver is understanding how these moves flow into other stances and how to best tailor them to a playstyle that is most effective for gaining the upper hand in a fight.
These customization features are why Absolver‘s future is one that I’m excited to see unfold. YouTube and Twitter are filled with videos of impressive plays and tutorials in the fighting game community, but with the options players have with Absolver these can be taken a step further with fans creating new attacks and stance combinations that they’ll share online. With the right enthusiastic community of players behind it, Absolver is the kind of game I would love to see its player base really experiment with.
Even beyond seeing these original movesets shared, the competitive possibilities are also incredibly enticing. In a game like Street Fighter or Tekken, seasoned players tend to have an idea of what to expect each time they play against a certain character because they’re pre-defined and established. This isn’t the case for Absolver, and it means that a competitive player is going to have to be far more adaptable because they’re not going to have an idea of what’s coming.
This was something I experienced first hand when, at the end of the demo, I was set up against an opponent and we got to pit our individual loadouts and strategies against one another. I may have lost the fight, but I saw the fruits of my labour when my attacks caught him off guard and learning how to best use them on the fly won me a round.
Whether Absolver can live up to all my wildest dreams is yet to be seen, but when I played it I could only imagine the many possibilities a game with modifiable movesets had to offer. The RPG may have a single player campaign that lays the foundation for its multiplayer, but I want to see what the public can do when the tools of its customization options are laid out before them.
Absolver is coming to PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Mac in 2017.
