Preview: Splintered Is a Special Early Access Game

Have you heard about Splintered, a Dragon Quest-like game strongly influenced by early JRPGs that is also packed with randomizer options? No? I mean, it’s understandable. I only fought out about it offhand by going through a few rounds of my Steam Discovery queue, but geez, I’m wishing it didn’t take that kind of effort. After going through some of what is immediately available at its launch, I get the feeling dotMake Studios could be making something special, and I wish more people knew about it. Splintered begins with a massive betrayal. After selecting your avatar’s appearance, you learn that your kingdom is betrayed, the king is dead, everyone is against you, your sister went off to a battlefront, and it is up to you to retrieve an artifact in the hopes of starting to fight back. What follows is a mostly traditional JRPG style experience strongly influenced by Dragon Quest. You head out from the castle. You fight turn-based battles against monsters from a first-person perspective. You explore dungeons (with torches for visibility) for key items and to complete objectives. There are NPCs to talk to in towns. You might even happen upon a little sidequest, such as playing “hide and seek.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxeDYJEA5zo&ab_channel=RichardMurtland There are elements that set it apart, of course. First, the approach to equipment and abilities is fascinating. You choose two specialties when you first start the game, which influence stats. You pick up equipment, which influences your abilities based on experience you earn via using it to attack enemies. In addition to standard leveling up upon defeating foes, you also get additional bonus skills by defeating certain numbers of foes. Since you’re basically learning from them by hunting them down. (It’s very satisfying.) So your build is directly affected by your choices and gameplay style. It’s a level of depth I didn’t expect. DotMake Studios also completely integrates the idea of game randomizer elements into Splintered. So you aren’t just unlocking and experiencing randomized quests and making or using seeds, but that is also integral to the story. When you get through a chapter, the world is splintered. So all of the monsters are reshuffled and adjusted, the landscape looks different, you may be able to pursue different options for yourself, and it is completely acknowledged. It’s early in development, for sure, but I was so surprised at how invested you can get and how committed to the bit the developer is. Images via dotMake Studios I’m also pretty impressed by the general quality and foundation found in Splintered so far, considering it is an early access game. I didn’t experience any bugs after about seven hours of play, which is a pleasant surprise. It runs well. It looks good. The soundtrack is perhaps the only underwhelming part, but given this is an early build maybe we’ll see that change? (I would just mute the game and play other music.) For those who do have questions or experience issues, the developer is active on the Steam discussions board. I primarily played on a Lenovo Legion Go and it was fine, but I noticed Richard Murtland did create a whole thread for Steam Deck help. I can’t get over how it seems like nobody is talking about Splintered, because it strikes me as a really special early access game. There’s a lot of potential here. I can clearly see how much dotMake Studios respects and loves older JRPGs like Dragon Quest, and that helped shape this. Not only that, but the skill acquisition elements and randomizer features do feel very novel and like they could offer a lot of potential both now and in the final release. Splintered is in Steam Early Access for the PC now. The post Preview: Splintered Is a Special Early Access Game appeared first on Siliconera.

Apr 12, 2025 - 14:22

Preview: Splintered Is a Special Early Access Game

Have you heard about Splintered, a Dragon Quest-like game strongly influenced by early JRPGs that is also packed with randomizer options? No? I mean, it’s understandable. I only fought out about it offhand by going through a few rounds of my Steam Discovery queue, but geez, I’m wishing it didn’t take that kind of effort. After going through some of what is immediately available at its launch, I get the feeling dotMake Studios could be making something special, and I wish more people knew about it.

Splintered begins with a massive betrayal. After selecting your avatar’s appearance, you learn that your kingdom is betrayed, the king is dead, everyone is against you, your sister went off to a battlefront, and it is up to you to retrieve an artifact in the hopes of starting to fight back. What follows is a mostly traditional JRPG style experience strongly influenced by Dragon Quest. You head out from the castle. You fight turn-based battles against monsters from a first-person perspective. You explore dungeons (with torches for visibility) for key items and to complete objectives. There are NPCs to talk to in towns. You might even happen upon a little sidequest, such as playing “hide and seek.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxeDYJEA5zo&ab_channel=RichardMurtland

There are elements that set it apart, of course. First, the approach to equipment and abilities is fascinating. You choose two specialties when you first start the game, which influence stats. You pick up equipment, which influences your abilities based on experience you earn via using it to attack enemies. In addition to standard leveling up upon defeating foes, you also get additional bonus skills by defeating certain numbers of foes. Since you’re basically learning from them by hunting them down. (It’s very satisfying.) So your build is directly affected by your choices and gameplay style. It’s a level of depth I didn’t expect.

DotMake Studios also completely integrates the idea of game randomizer elements into Splintered. So you aren’t just unlocking and experiencing randomized quests and making or using seeds, but that is also integral to the story. When you get through a chapter, the world is splintered. So all of the monsters are reshuffled and adjusted, the landscape looks different, you may be able to pursue different options for yourself, and it is completely acknowledged. It’s early in development, for sure, but I was so surprised at how invested you can get and how committed to the bit the developer is.

I’m also pretty impressed by the general quality and foundation found in Splintered so far, considering it is an early access game. I didn’t experience any bugs after about seven hours of play, which is a pleasant surprise. It runs well. It looks good. The soundtrack is perhaps the only underwhelming part, but given this is an early build maybe we’ll see that change? (I would just mute the game and play other music.) For those who do have questions or experience issues, the developer is active on the Steam discussions board. I primarily played on a Lenovo Legion Go and it was fine, but I noticed Richard Murtland did create a whole thread for Steam Deck help.

I can’t get over how it seems like nobody is talking about Splintered, because it strikes me as a really special early access game. There’s a lot of potential here. I can clearly see how much dotMake Studios respects and loves older JRPGs like Dragon Quest, and that helped shape this. Not only that, but the skill acquisition elements and randomizer features do feel very novel and like they could offer a lot of potential both now and in the final release.

Splintered is in Steam Early Access for the PC now.

The post Preview: Splintered Is a Special Early Access Game appeared first on Siliconera.