Glyde The Dragon: Kickstarter Announcement and Demo Impressions

I’ve been on a Spyro kick lately. I just picked up the Reignited Trilogy again and have been playing games 2 and 3, and I’ve also recently played through two and a half games of the PS2-era Legend of Spyro series (thoughts on these to come once I finish #3). All this is convenient timing for the public release of the Glyde the Dragon demo, which launched June 10^th alongside the Kickstarter for the full game’s development. In all fairness, I get the impression that Glyde developer Valefor Games have tried to put some distance between their game and the famous purple dragon, but we all knew the comparison was inevitable.

I first talked about Glyde the Dragon back in early 2022 when this blog launched. That post included mention of the demo launching that year, so imagine my surprise when, two years later, the public demo (meaning, not restricted to Patreon subscribers) finally emerged! The demo has ended up with an impressively long 8-10 hour playtime and at this point seems to be more of an extended tech demo for the final game, as opposed to a small segment extracted directly from the full build. The most recent dev log on Steam describes it as “a standalone-mini game which will link to the full game.” I’m going to avoid poisoning this post right off the bat with my less-than-positive thoughts about this approach, so let’s jump into my thoughts on the demo!

(I’ll start with a quick disclaimer: I’ve only played about 1.5 hours of the demo so far, so I definitely haven’t explored it to its fullest extent. But I wanted to at least get some initial impressions ASAP, especially while the Kickstarter is live.)

Everything Changed When the Shadow Nation Attacked?

The demo kicks off with a decent little hand-drawn animated cutscene that quickly gets us right into the plot. Some sort of shadowy attack knocks the titular Glyde (as well as all the other dragons in the area) out of the sky, and we soon learn this “Corruption” has stifled all the dragons’ magic and ability to fly. Every dragon you meet is some kind of elemental breed, while Glyde is apparently some sort of anomalous element-less dragon. And for some reason, this instead has allowed him to have more access to the elements in this time of crisis, and throughout the course of the demo he’s able to harness each individual elemental power in a very Avatar: The Last Airbender fashion.

Most other dragons are a little wary of Glyde’s elemental-less appearance at first, but overall the NPCs I encountered end up being friendly and helpful. And there’s quite a lot of them, with more dialog than expected. In my short time with the demo, I’ve gotten the impression that there is some well-developed lore lurking deeper. There are hints of each elemental world’s culture being quite varied; for example, the earth dragons have some sort of strict military-based system, and it’s only legal for them to live outside the Earth Kingdom (I may just make Avatar allusions for this whole article) if they’re contracted mercenaries. But you also meet an Earth dragon who researches the undead enemies of the world early on, so there’s obviously an appreciated degree of variance even within these cultures.

So, it quickly becomes apparent that, as the only dragon around that’s capable of magic usage, Glyde is going to have to do what he can to save the rest of dragon civilization from this corruption. The plot is nothing mind-blowingly new, but it feels more like a backdrop for exploring this world Valefor has developed. Out of everything I’ve seen so far, the world’s lore is probably what has piqued my interest the most.

Visuals

I won’t spend too much time here, as it is a demo and I’m not certain what assets are placeholders or not (for example, the devs have said that the enemies are all currently premade assets that will be changed for the final game). Even so, the world does look pretty good. It’s vibrant and colorful, without being overwhelming, although maybe a bit visually cluttered at times.

The main focus right now is obviously the dragons. I personally quite like Glyde’s design. Interestingly, he has probably the most simple design of all the dragons you meet, at least in his default state (his appearance changes to match whatever element you have selected), which I feel is somewhat unusual. A lot of care has obviously been put into the design of all of the elemental dragons; even within each element, there’s a good bit of visual variance for each individual. I’m not a fan of the little spirits that accompany each dragon. They look rather goofy: a little ball of light with wings and a tail jutting out, but I feel like these may hopefully be placeholders as well.

As far as animations go, there’s some good groundwork, and some rough spots. I quite like that Glyde’s movement animation goes through several cycles as he speeds up. I do hope his jerky jumping animation gets an update; I see what they’re going for, but he kind of levitates off the ground a bit instead of actually jumping, and his wings feel like they struggle in an unnatural way.

Gameplay

Coming off of the Legend of Spyro series, which sought to send Spyro into the modern age as a God of War-style action adventure game, I was left pretty disappointed with the execution there. The combat in that Spyro era ended up feeling pretty samey all the way through, with way less flair and finesse than was advertised. Glyde, however, seems to be correcting those wrongs. While still nothing super complex in the way of combos, the combat is much, much more akin to most other action games. You’ve got basic melee and breath attacks, but the game obviously steers you towards using your elemental abilities as much as possible in combat. Each element has three flashier, more powerful skills, as well as an explosive special attack. Minus some finicky-ness of input timing, fighting does feel satisfying, and it’s pretty easy to chain attacks together once you get the hang of it. That’s not saying it’s easy overall, though. There’s definitely a difficulty curve to learning the system (at least when I’ve been playing Spyro games where I’ve just mashed the same attack button the entire time…), and enemies hit you pretty hard. I died more than once during my short playtime.

With such a focus on these elemental attacks, I hope the devs make the mana/energy consumption system a little clearer. You’ve got a segmented energy bar that depletes with every elemental attack, and each attack icon has a number beneath it (presumably how much energy it consumes?). But it’s not obvious how these two things correlate. I found myself trying to execute certain more powerful attacks and never really knowing if I actually had the required amount of energy to use them. Couple this with the fact that the game didn’t always seem to register that I was holding LB (necessary to use the elemental attacks), and things sometimes got confusing and unresponsive mid-combat. My final combat complaint is that some attacks seem entirely overpowered. For example, the fire meteor can take out most enemies in a single hit. While this was great for quickly wiping out enemies I didn’t want to deal with, I could see relying on it too much.

The other main thing I want to highlight is how Glyde controls when moving about the world. One of my favorite things in the Spyro: Reignited Trilogy is the momentum and weight Spyro has, like the way he leans into turns, or how he propels himself forward when going into a glide. It adds a lot of character, realism, and just pure fun to running around as a little dragon. Glyde, on the other hand, currently moves quite jerkily, and controlling him feels a bit quick and floaty. It isn’t terrible, but the production value feels much more like the small indie game that it is.

Spyro banks and leans into turns, while Glyde currently just kind of turns his whole body at once.

My biggest complaint so far, and why I’ve stopped where I am in the demo, is that I hit a point after the first cave system where the world opened up more, and I very quickly became lost without any real clue of what to do next. The level design could be a little tighter, with clear lines of sight to objects of interest, especially from higher vantage points. And a map of some kind would do wonders. Right now, I’m currently wandering around a bit of a maze of rocks and trees.

Honestly though, I was overall a bit scared going into this after the Legend of Spyro, fearing that it would be more of that same stale combat. But I’m liking Glyde‘s fighting system much more than expected! With some fine-tuning, I think Valefor have a potentially solid game on their hands.

Kickstarter

Alright, here’s where things may turn a little more sour. But I’ll start posi: Valefor Games launched their Kickstarter for the full Glyde the Dragon game alongside the public demo release, and you can go back it right here. Give the demo a try, see if you want more, and help a small team reach their goal (which is a little over halfway funded already at this point). I do think the full game has the potential to be a very solid entry in the action adventure dragon game genre, and it’s obviously a product with a ton of care and love put into it.

My negativity comes from one big glaring thing that I can’t not mention here: the Kickstarter has an estimated fulfillment date of December 2028. Four and a half years from now. Obviously, again, this is a small team working a very ambitious project, but that is what concerns me. I definitely think this game will eventually be finished; Glyde will one day see the light of day. But from the way the Kickstarter stretch goals are set up, how complete will that eventual game end up being?

Each stretch goal says they will be fleshing out more of each of the games 8 worlds, but what concerns me is the way they have these goals worded. They say “the extra funding dedicated to each goal will allow us to expand the corresponding region with new biomes and inhabitants.” Are the first few worlds going to end up feeling way more complete and fleshed out, while the game slowly loses momentum, becoming more barren the closer you get to the end? That doesn’t get me feeling very excited.

Let’s also talk scope-creep real quick. As I mentioned earlier, the demo was originally set to release in 2022 and was meant to be a 3-4 hour experience (as discussed in this interview with Escapist). It instead ballooned into an entirely separate 8-10 hour experience, where you can access every single ability that Glyde will eventually get. I wonder if Valefor Games would have been better off releasing this demo as a paid Early Access title, or as a true standalone experience, with plans for the full game to come based off the funding received there. I do think this shorter experience has enough to stand on its own with just a bit of polishing and some more self-contained story beats.

When I see a 4.5 year development time and some questionably devised stretch goals, I personally don’t have a ton of confidence going and backing this Kickstarter, which is a shame because I would really really like to see this game in its complete state. But I personally feel that’s too long to ask most people to wait (just look at where Hollow Knight backers are with Silksong these days…). Especially when the first dev log for the game was posted 5 years ago, so we’re looking at nearly a decade of development time. Again, this is a small team working a passion project, and extended development times are to be expected. And if you’re happy backing Glyde‘s development, please go for it and don’t let me discourage you! I think my feelings mostly stem from some disappointment that we aren’t closer to the full game with the release of this demo, which is where my expectations laid.

I really am excited about Glyde The Dragon and think it could be something special if Valefor Games end up being able to deliver on this ambitious project. I highly recommend heading over to their Steam page and downloading the free demo. Check out the Kickstarter as well and see if you want to support the game’s development and secure your copy now before the campaign ends on July 10th, 2024. Best of luck to Valefor during their crowdfunding campaign and as they work to finish this promising game!