The Kobolds Left Behind

I don't usually write reviews. I'm making an exception for the fact that I had problems with the game not working correctly at first (soft-locking at several scenes), but after contacting the dev personally and telling them what was going on, they helped me out and quickly managed to fix the problem. They were also really friendly while at it! If that ain't called good customer service then I don't know what is. Now, as for the actual game review itself - It was exactly what the store page features sold it out to me as and this is why I bought it. A bite-sized mini-adventure with cute small kobolds, reasonably easy puzzles and big feels along the way. At first the cute characters caught my eyes but when I checked the trailer and found out there was voice acting also included, I was immediately sold! I didn't expect the feels to hit as hard as they did considering this was such a short adventure. Not all stories and adventures must have a happy ending to be good and this game was proof of that. An all around good experience for an hour-ish long game. A personal thank you to the dev for helping me out and for making this game <3

[h1]Sad kobold game[/h1] What you see is what you get! A fun romp with a couple of quirky kobold buddies. And then tears. Gameplay consists of walking around, searching for and picking up items to help you advance forward, and solving simple puzzles. Standard adventure game fare. But you're not here for that, you're here for the story! Our kobold heroes are instantly overly attached to Sophie, our protagonist, which is understandable! It's just what kobolds do. The nicer ones, anyway. But I did not expect the same to happen in return, which felt a bit strange. Sophie goes from uncaring to loving very, [i]very[/i] quickly. I suppose it was due to the game being quite short, a little over an hour or so? This makes it somewhat difficult to care about everyone and what is happening to them. What is there is pretty good, but there just isn't enough time to develop the characters and their relationship. Art is great, gameplay is good, voice acting is quite nice, and the music gets the job done - but I found it to be the one of the weaker parts of the overall presentation. All in all, good game! Wish there could have been more, and also wish there were more like it!

In my personal opinion, this game is not good. Entire Review is a spoiler, so be warned. [/Spoiler] Graphics: The game's graphics are alright. Not as bad as a unity asset flip, but about rpgmaker quality. The character's sprites are pretty good, but the confused ones are wonky. Gameplay: It's nothing too intricate. Just some simple puzzles, deduction, and combining items. But that's not the point of buying this game. Setting: You may be asking why this is a category? It's because this game is a weird hybrid of fantasy, that will occasionally throw modern elements such as radios or magazines your way. That's not even including the literal spaceship. Story: Oh boy, sit down young chap, because this hopeful to be writer is about to smack down this game so hard, whether that's justified or not. The story is simple, the dragons took a bunch of their kobolds, and left all the others so they could go to space for reasons that are never explained. And since unlike other fantasy settings, these kobolds are summoned creatures, their magical energy reserves are running out. You have Erika, who is clinging onto the faint hope that her "Queen" will come back for her. Niels, who is a stubborn, magic-wielding kobold. And then Bomb, the plucky, chaotic one. So as you progress, the protagonist, Sophie, bonds with these little critters. Erika overcomes her naive thoughts, and decides to follow Sophie. Niels reveals he hid a letter to Bomb from the Queen, which would've told her to get on the ship. Bomb forgives him, stating she never would've abandoned them in the first place. But how does it end? Well, you eventually make it to the vault full of treasure, but the little kobolds are almost out of energy! So, Erika sacrifices herself to reveal...an empty vault. And then after some dialogue, she vanishes and dies. The front page character died for an empty vault. So sadge. So, Sophie talks to and hugs the two remaining kobolds, before leaving. Niels and Bomb then destroy a crystal holding up the dragon queen's island, crashing the last remnants of this bygone age into the sea. They either die in the explosion, or shortly afterwards. Sophie makes three small markers for the deceased trio, and leaves. My problems: The game is too short, clocking in at only 1 hour. It doesn't give you enough time to understand the world, these characters, to get to know them. The ending is bonkers, killing off 3 out of the 4 characters of the entire game. I get it, sad ending, but personally, I think sad endings are not done well most of the time. Overall: I just found the game very lacking, to the point where I think calling it a game is a bit of a stretch. But what do I know? [/Spoiler]

It's a cute story with kobolds and good voice acting. As the store page and other reviews mention it's pretty short. If this worries you, I recommend starting with the dev's previous game, Dragon Audit, which has much more content for its price. https://store.steampowered.com/app/594380/Dragon_Audit/

A short and really touching game. Both very enjoyable and moved me to tears. I would highly recommend this game to anyone. As the description says it is about an hour long but it's an hour very well spent that will stick with you for a long while :)

If you are looking for a emotional story with characters you can fall in love with, you should consider giving this game a chance. I will say straight off the bat if you're looking for a happy story you wont find that here, it does have its fair share of humor but this game covers more serious topics like abandonment (Listing only the most prominent I felt during, but there is other heavy topics covered in this game), so have a supply of tissues to hand before you start!. The game isn't long but I feel that isn't a problem, I have 100 minutes on record and have 4 achievements left to get, so I got more time then I was expecting!. The art style is part of what sold me on this game, the characters are well made and the art matches the personalities really well, the levels are well thought out and easy to navigate, I found it pretty simple to figure out where I was suppose to go next. I even found my self exploring and naturally found where I was suppose to go, and the items I needed to progress. The puzzles where nice and simple and didn't detract from the main draw of the game which is the story. The solutions came naturally and didn't require endless amounts of pushing buttons until you brute forced your way through it. The story was impact full and stuck with me throughout the day after I finished. In fact, I still find my thoughts drifting back to the story, so to say it has won a special place in my heart is putting it lightly. The sound worked well and the music added to the ambiance of each scene and level as you explored!. Now I do have to sing the praises of the voice acting, it was so well done and I feel it brought the characters and the story to life. The actors brought so much emotion it added another level to an already very emotional story. To sum up all of my experience's while playing this game: Its a short emotional story with very appealing visuals, lovable characters that are given more depth thanks to a very well written story and brilliant voice acting and all of this topped off with well designed levels, a light garnish of jokes and well placed sound effects and music. The secret ingredient I think (and I can only assume otherwise it wouldn't be a secret ingredient now would it?) is the amount of heart and soul the dev/s put into the game. EDIT: Just played the game again and can confirm that it works wonderfully with no extra setup on the steam deck!

A short game but very cute. Loved the voice acting.

The game is too short, the padlock puzzle is poorly designed. dont buy the DLC its not worth the money for what little ya get outa it. 100% achievements in 2.2 hours. and that was with trying to fully explore for dialog and brute forcing the lock puzzle. if you happen to like kobolds than the story was somewhat okayish for five bucks i guess?. but its got practically no replay value and its far too short. and i did not particularly like the ending. could have been a better story if there were a way to get a happier ending.

[h3]REVIEW[/h3] This game is REALLY BORING [h1]CRITICISM: THE RED LIZARD DIES ([spoiler]SPOILER[/spoiler])[/h1] When the red lizard dies at the end I didn't feel sad because I only knew them for like 15 minutes and the game kept trying to tell me I knew all these lizards for a lot longer, it was super Tumblr writing and the person who wrote this felt weird If u want to play a sad game look elsewhere!!!

I Stumbled across this game by chance and thought I would give it a go. The reviews and description offered a sad game and I was curious to see if the Dev's would stick to it. To sum it up got pretty much what I expected, a short mildly comical story of grief, abandonment, and a few more minor themes. Finished the game in roughly an hour, did take me a moment longer then id like to admit to figuring out the steam puzzle. I personally do agree with some of the other reviews where I wish we had more time with the cast. the short allotted time meant a lot of the characters interactions felt a little forced along. Also generally liked all of the characters and wish I got to see more of them. bought the Deluxe edition mostly due to wanting to support the Dev's. However the game feels a tad pricey for something so short. With that said I still do highly recommend the purchase if you have the cash to spare as it was a fun short tale with nice characters that meshed well together for the most part.

I'm really enjoying playing this, the story has great mixes of all elements (trying not to spoil), i think the characters are fantastic and they remind me so much of cartoons and shows I watc and , sci fi and fantasy books I read. The voices are just amazing and fit it so well. I've not encountered any bugs, so for me The Kobolds Left Behind is technically sound for me I'm running this on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, through steam play with GE-Proton7-24, and it's all working fine for me. I could gush on about this for ages , but this really is the best newly released video game that I've played in quite a while, and it's very refreshing to see that good, well made, well written and well designed fun experiences are still being made. While writing this i'm listening to the soundtrack, and I realise I could just have this playing on in the background for ages, taking it all in. Kobalds pulls are your strings and I was really happy with how well written the story is.

Can Aggressively Stab Everything in Sight (Unsuccessfully).

This has no right of being so gut wrenching. It is perfect.

I'm gonna be honest, I think the game is:"okay." I knew that it was gonna be short but I felt as if there should have been a lot more added to it. Everything just felt too rushed for me. Sophie felt as if she got way too attached to the three strange kobolds that she found, I think she should have came off more unsentimental towards them, since she plays as the greedy treasure hunter, and as the game progressed and the kobolds showed some development towards one another, then she would start to care and feel for them. Erika was fine, I like'd her attachment towards the dragons and felt hurt by how they left them, and even tried to make contact to try and see if they could come back for them until being convinced that that wasn't going to work. I kinda wished that she still had her attachments towards the dragons and refused to believed that they left them for good a little longer, maybe express some more emotion as her friends try to snap her out of her futile devoutness. I thought her loyalty for Sophie was cute and I felt there could have been a more bond to their friendship. Now I'm not gonna spoil the ending on what happens but I didn't like how quickly her friends recovered after what she did for them. It felt so quick and seemed as if it didn't have the impact the dev was going for. Niels is honestly my favorite character in the game. He feels more fleshed out than the other characters and I like the humor in the recurring line: "Kobold Magic!" by him. He seemed a lot more aversion in the dragons, taking a strong disliking in them for going and even hiding an invitation from his friends, refusing to let them go until he realized he was in the wrong in doing so and expressed deep regret for it. Bomb is probably my least favorite character, it's not that I find dense but loving characters that speak in third person unlikable but she came off more annoying in the game than cute. Her recurring act in conjuring bombs in cut scenes seemed too repetitive. I know I said that I liked the "Kobold Magic" line from Niels and that was used a lot, but it make Niels hubristic and funny, like there was an ego he had and was proud in showing off his magic towards Sophie. Bomb, however, just conjured bombs and...that's it. I know someone's gonna find it adorable, but for me it was more bothersome. I think it would have been better if I was able to use her bombs in game, perhaps usig her bombs to make a clear path or destroying stuff to get items. I did like the tension she had towards Niels in that one part of the game but, even thought they already pointed it out, it was too rushed. The gameplay itself was fine too, I thought the puzzles were cool (Although I was pretty lost in that Pipe puzzle, and felt very stupid in not figuring it out and just relied on pressing stuff till something happened). I didn't like that one locked door where it required using hot sauce to open it. Now there wasn't much puzzles in the game but it was pretty obvious this game was gonna be more story-based so I didn't mind. I kinda wanted more detail in the flying castle--city--place, it felt too plain and boring. Now the artwork for the game is good, the floating islands looked fine and the character designs were good too. Overall, it was an okay game, probably not six dollars good but was worth the experience. I just felt there should be more added to it, more tension, more character development, a lot of missed opportunities here and there. If you want a quick story with not a lot to do, then this might be for you. As for the developers, I hope you all don't feel discouraged by this. I didn't regret buying this game and it had a good story to it. I rate it 5/10

made me attached to them so quick and my only gripe is that i couldnt spend more time with them

Short, sweet, and sad kobold adventure.