Flare and the Dungeon of Courage is a 3D Action game with a slight open world element. We play as a young girl that has been thrown into the wilderness and tasked with conquering a dungeon to prove her valor. To start us off in our journey, we have a few glowing messages on the floor which teach us the controls. It will show keyboard prompts, but this title does have controller support and simple enough controls to quickly figure out what each button does. What may puzzle you is that robed man just standing there and twitching like he’s out of a zombie movie. As concerning as this tick of his is, he is completely harmless, asking us to bring some sacrificial blood to be allowed through the gate blocking our path.
By now, you’ve likely tried out the jump button. It has quite the strange animation on your way down that has you do an overly exaggerated pelvic thrust motion. As potentially annoying as that excessively long animation is, your bigger problem is that it has likely got you stuck in the environment now. The collision in this title is terrible. So terrible in fact that I somehow got myself stuck on the two steps leading up to the first tutorial message while walking. Jumping for any reason is a gamble you should never take unless you absolutely have to. If you find yourself stuck, simply pausing the game will have your character boost up into the air for some reason. I never had to reload a save due to bad collision, yet it never ceases to be a problem.
Well, that is a promising start, but let’s not write it off just yet. Once we dig out the bow in the starting chest, we are off to find something to sacrifice. Our only available path is to the south which leads to a small forested area. It is the most exploration this title offers. You can go off the beaten path on other occasions, but all you’ll find are a few vases that may contain arrows or health potions. If you do explore instead of following the deliberate path, you’ll find how poor the level design is and be able to get past the locked gate or other areas in manners clearly not intended. You can skip large portions of this game, though given it is around 40 minutes long, I wouldn’t suggest that. For all intents and purposes, this is a linear adventure.
Given all that, it’s time to get to your first order of business. Find something to kill. With how tiny the world in this game is, you’ll soon come across your target. There are three deers here and you need to slay at least one. I chose a deer that was running backwards through the forest at mach-10 speeds. It was a pretty entertaining sight, but one born out of the instability of this title and not an intentional addition. Luckily for me, it eventually stopped to eat grass as it ignored the fact that I am repeatedly shooting arrows into it. There is no location-based damage, every shot will inflict the same pain wherever it may land.
Collect the vial that pops out of the disintegrating deer corpse and the path leading to the dungeon will finally be open to you. The visual design is a bit misleading as there is a statue with other vials laying in front of it. It is solely for decoration, you need to click the gate directly for it to accept the blood and open. Most of what I talked about so far had to do with the technical side of things or poor implementation of ideas. This tutorial area will take a few minutes max. It gets you ready for what to expect in more ways than one. Flare and the Dungeon of Courage is not a well-made or polished game, though it is functional. It feels like someone’s first Unity project rather than a cynical asset flip. They did however release a similar-looking title to this back in 2019, so I’m left really unsure what to think about this.
In any case, upon passing through that gate, you’ll come across a zombie. Your bow should make short work of it and as you crawl through the rock formation located behind it, there you will find a club. It looks overly cartoony to the point that it wouldn’t look out of place in the Flintstones. While everything appears to be free Unity assets, this club is the most out-of-place looking thing in the game. Everything else does have a sense of believably of its belonging in this world. Eh, it is the least of its worries in a moment though. Nearby is a zombie you can test it on which will reveal how melee works here. Whoever hits first will stunlock their foe and be able to wail on his now defenseless opponent until defeated.
As long as you get the first hit in, anything short of a boss is good as dead. Neither its health bar, its attacks, or damage it deals out matters. There is no challenge or joy in the combat. It was a really wise decision to periodically unlock the H-scenes as you progress since activating them requires an enemy to defeat you. I’m sorry to be the bearer of more bad news, but the hentai aspect does not save it in any way. A few of the seven overall monster-specific sex scenes have good character model placement, but most don’t. In the worst of cases, there isn’t even any contact with the penis during the act. In slightly better situations, what is supposed to be a blowjob has a monster lightly poking its knob on her forehead due to poor placement.
Their ejaculation just flies right through her body as if she wasn’t even there and these H scenes are just as glitchy as the rest of the game. As you can see from that pic above, there are two duplicate models of my character for some reason. I wish I could show you a better picture than that to illustrate how its hentai looks when functioning properly, but I can’t. You see, if you complete the game and start a new save, it will reset all your gallery progress as if you just started. My old save is still there, yet it won’t allow you to load it up again if you completed the campaign in order to fix this oversight. My soul can’t take going through this entire thing once more.
My favorite part of this title had to be the spider cave. You go through a set of labyrinthine tunnels and must carry around a torch to light ancient bonfires found within. You do so since your torch doesn’t burn for very long and will need fire to get past the thick webs impeding your path. The long-burning bonfires let you relight your torch to once again rush through the caves as time ticks down. Visually, it does look terrible since there are no shadows or changes in lighting with your torch equipped. Darkness isn’t a problem either since it is surprisingly bright underground. While far from a perfect implementation of the idea, I take enjoyment where I can.
Another highlight was the actual dungeon itself. It does have some slight puzzle elements in some areas, like shooting out the energy crystal to stop spinning blades. I haven’t noticed how off-center the cursor is to where you actually shoot until then. Trying to shoot a small object revealed that, but it is still simple to do with some aim adjustments. There was another area further in where they went for a physics-based puzzle. That was a brave decision given how borderline broken collision and gravity are in this game. Attempting to push those crates into the required death pit was a real struggle for all the wrong reasons. I still ended up dying as I jumped in to cross as the physics freaked out. Eventually, my character did violently fly out of there at just the right angle to narrowly allow me to land on the other side.
That accursed pit was the first time I died and revealed another flaw. Dying will reset your config settings. You can’t rebind keys, but you can tweak your audio sliders and change some camera settings. The game defaults to its original inverted vertical view, meaning you look down while pressing up and vice versa. I had to go into the menus to change it every time I died. It’s not the end of the world yet it is an annoying problem among a sea of other annoying problems. With how easy this title is, you are unlikely to die elsewhere, making it mostly an issue contained to this brief section. I’ll also take this time to say there is no way to remove the fps counter on the top left of the screen if you’re wondering why I left that there.
There are two bosses to face throughout this journey. It is mostly the same ordeal as any other common foes. You just need to get the first hit in and wail away. The devs were clearly aware of the issue with their combat system as they gave the bosses a periodically occurring outburst of aura that damages and pushes you off. It does ineligible damage, though it does allow the boss to attack back before you land another hit. I’ll give them props for trying, but all you need to do is take a few steps back and get back to swinging until it happens again. If you do get low on health, just pop some of the many health potions that nearly every enemy drops when defeated.
I never go into a game with the intention of tearing into it. Being so hard with an indie game is by far my least favorite thing to do when it comes time to put my thoughts into words for a review. It looked intriguing at first glance, but I’m afraid that at the end of the day this is a product and is being sold to people. Flare and the Dungeon of Courage does have a few bright spots, yet is much too drowned out by the negatives to give it a pass with its price of 1430 Yen. The technical instability can cause some entertaining moments like some deer running backward or your character randomly shooting into the stratosphere when you step on an object at the wrong angle, but far more often than not, it will detract from your enjoyment. With some much-needed polish, it may eventually be a reasonable way to kill 40 minutes of your time. In its current state, I simply can not recommend it.
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