People often talk about the ways that they channel and embody their inner animals. You’ve got people giving into their lizard brain impulses, showing they’ve got that dog in them, or mum’s looking out for their kids with the fierceness of a mother bear – just with more complaining to the manager and less claws. Coridden pulls that inside-out, putting the animal on the outside and the human on the inside.
Now, Coridden is not a perfect game, but it is one I think nearly everyone should play. I’m going to get my complaints out of the way first. The camera can be unhelpful at times; there is a little bit of jank and clipping in some exploration sections; and while the art direction is lovely, it’s lacks polish in some areas. I’m now going to spend the rest of this review raving about this game.
Coridden is an action RPG in which you can shift between a human form and a beastly one. You unlock new beast forms as you go, drawing them from the creatures that you defeat in battle, and each family of beasts has its own skill tree, along with a secondary one you can give it to gain more skills.
Your human form also has four classes to choose from, each of which has three skill trees, and then a custom class that lets you mix and match as you please. This game is, quite simply, an absolute dream for anybody that likes replaying games and mucking around with different character builds.
You can also weave in any combination of melee attacks, ranged attacks, special abilities, and transformations that you want as long as you’ve got energy for it. Better yet, your human and beast forms have separate energy bars, so you’re meant to constantly shift between them in combat to never actually have to stop fighting. There’s no worrying about stamina here: just become a weird little beast with a tractor beam for a tail and keep throwing down until you need to swap back to your human form and shoot fireballs or turn invisible.
In any other game, that would be the main focus, and while it’s a big part of the game, it’s not all there is in Coridden. For a lot of people, the main appeal here is going to be the co-op. That’s because, as the name of the game suggests, you can actually ride around on your friends. Any human player can jump on the back of a beast player to roam around as one, with both players having full access to their abilities and attacks as you do so. This completely changes the level of strategy available, and also means that if you’re playing with a younger player, they can have an easier time of things in combat and through the platforming bits.
Throw in some really cool exploration puzzles, a story that ends up being pretty heartfelt, and you’ve got an indie game that exemplifies why I love indie games so much. Coridden is taking so many big swings and chances, and while not everything lands perfectly, it’s just so gloriously fun and charming that you’ll forgive those flaws.
