Praey for the Gods is an Action-Adventure game, developed and published by an experienced team of three named No Matter Studios. It is heavily inspired by Shadow of the Colossus, and blends its signature boss-slaying with survival elements in a more developed Nordic-style open-world. It was released on PC through Steam on January 31st, 2019. The full game is also slated for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
The world is on it's last leg. An Endless Winter has assaulted the world, killing off most of the crops and vegitation. Only a scat few humans remain alive.
The heroine wakes up on a snow-covered island after their ship crashes on its shores. With limited resources, they soon stumble upon one of the Gods that inhabit the land. Despite the odds, they manage to slay it. Soon afterward they are dragged unconscious by a wolf to a temple, where they discover the Norns. The three tell the heroine that there may be a chance to save this world yet; but not without a great cost.
Pillars of light directing them towards more of the Gods of the land, and with no way to escape the island, the heroine has no choice but to continue her God-slaying, trying to decipher the scant few hieroglyphs from the land's precursors, and a previous expedition crew, along the way.
The game was originally officially titled Prey For The Gods, and it was funded
on Kickstarter under that name. However, Bethesda soon sued them, claiming that their name was a copyright infringement on the Prey trademark, and would interfere with the upcoming game. They settled by changing the name to its current form, but keeping the old logo on the cover.
Tropes present in this game:
- Abusive Precursors: It's very clear that despite the fact that the beings who lived on the land previously worshipped the giants as Gods, this did not stop them from attempting to enslave/kill them so they could take their power as their own.
- Action Girl: The protagonist is one.
- Arrows on Fire: Passing an arrow through a torch or other flame source will set in on fire. Doing this is necessary to bring down the flying god.
- Boring, but Practical: Of the various coats and garments the Heroine can find and upgrade, the two things that are the highest priority are her satchel and the sailcloth. The former gives her more inventory space, while the latter cuts down on how much the direction of the wind affects gliding.
- Bottomless Magazines: Averted, as there's only a limited number of arrows you can carry. However, they don't disappear after being fired either, and you can find them and pull them out.
- Braving the Blizzard: Blizzards are one of the many hazards the Heroine has to deal with when it comes to the overworld, as they have to manage their core temperature or else they'll die from exposure. The more Gods she kills, the more frequent blizzards become in the overworld.
- Breakable Weapons: All of the melee weapons can break.
- Bullfight Boss: The way to get onto the boar involves having it charge at you and slam into the walls of the arena.
- Colossus Climb: This is a Shadow of the Colossus-inspired game, so this element is in full play.
- Crapsack World: The world's been plunged into an unending winter, and the heroine suspects the gods are behind it.
- Degraded Boss: In addition to the giants, there are much smaller (comparatively) humanoid giants that resemble the undead soldiers that plague you throughout the land. They're not required to progress the game, but do drop some nice items if you manage to kill one.
- Dem Bones: There are heavily armored skeletal warriors that'll claw their way out of the ground to get you. They can also perform a powerful jumping attack.
- Difficulty Levels: The game has two sets that can be adjusted. One is the conventional one, which increases the damage the Gods and overworld enemies can do. The second adjusts how difficult it is to survive using the survival mechanics, with the hardest difficulty making it so you're constantly losing heat, and completely running out of hunger and/or sleep can kill the player.
- Endless Winter: The world had been stuck in one for some time prior to the events of the game. It's heavily implied that the precursors enslaving the Gods had something to do with it.
- Energy Ball: The flying "god" can spit black hole-like orbs after a charge-up time. They will instantly kill the heroine: however, it is also uniquely vulnerable at that time, and shooting a flaming arrow at the mouth will bring it down for a while, and let you climb it.
- The tower "god" fires large blue orbs from its eye, which are powerful enough to break up the rocks around the place.
- Everything Fades: Zig-zagged. On one hand, footprints will stay in the snow for a long time, and following them is if you got lost in an important element. On the other hand, the bodies of the undead warriors will almost immediately flash yellow and burn up without a trace once defeated.
- The rocks shattered by the tower "god's" energy attack will arc through the air in many pieces, but these will also instantly disappear upon hitting the ground.
- Flash of Pain: The screen edges will be regularly flashing red if you are at low health.
- Foreshadowing: It's possible to spot some of the Gods in the overworld long before you actually find them in their arenas. The Crogon is the easy to stumble upon due to it flying overhead. In earlier builds it was possible to also spot the Yeti outside of its arena, but this was changed due to not making sense with how it's encountered in its arena. note
- Giant Flyer: One of the "gods" is a huge feathered "bird", though with a body structure closer to the ptaerodactyls.
- Glowing Eyes: The undead warriors have unearthly greenish glow emanating from their eyesockets.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: Bare-handed battle is possible, though mostly as an emergency in case the proper weapons broke.
- Golem: One of the gods is a really large and roughly-hewn one, with a lot of growth on it that allows the heroine to climb it.
- Grappling-Hook Pistol: The heroine has a glove that shoots out a hook on a rope.
- Healing Potion: One of the craftable items.
- In-Universe Game Clock: Dynamic weather and day-night cycle are fully present here.
- Item Crafting: One of the mechanics, used to create or upgrade weapons.
- Just Before the End: The game takes place during what is heavily implied to be the beginning stages of Ragnarok from Norse mythology.
- Laser Sight: The tower "god" will first have a floodbeam emanate from its eye before it'll be able to fire its insta-kill orb, which gives you the time to dodge it.
- Monster-Shaped Mountain: There are lots of immense figures fused into the mountainous terrain, mainly crude faces and outstretched arms. Those with visible torsos exhibit inhumanly-recessed chest areas, suggesting they are either sculptures of additional gods or the petrified remains of those destroyed by prior giant-slayers.
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Nintendo Hard: Legendary Difficulty. You're constantly losing heat even outside of blizzards, which running out causes the protagonist to die. Restfulness and Hunger play a much larger role, as running out of either can also kill you instead of just affecting regen and stamina. When combined with the standard difficulty levels, it becomes an absolute nightmare to beat the game. Naturally, there is an achievement for beating the game with both difficulty levels set to max. - Not the Intended Use:
- Sleeping bags are intended to give the Heroine a way to sleep and replenish their restfulness when they can't find a cave that has a camping setup already prepared. Many, however, save them for when blizzards start up, as sleeping is one of the only ways to end a blizzard early.
- The Soul Bow, the best bow in the game dropped by one of the Champions, is largely intended to be used for combat. However, many people strictly use it as a hunting bow due to having the best accuracy of the bows in the game, making head shotting animals and hitting birds much, much easier.
- Puzzle Boss: The tower-like "god" cannot be attacked at the start at all. Instead, you need to push the pressure plates to produce several columns that'll absorb its energy instead of shattering, and trick it into hitting them. This'll break the stones around it, and reveal it to have a fleshy worm-like body underneath it, which you can climb afterwards.
- In a sense, all of the "gods" are this, as they are similar to a Greek legend of a brass giant who could only die if the magma inside it was drained through a vent. Thus, they all have several runed plates around their body that flash when the heroine approaches and need to be triggered three times each. Once all are triggered at once, the "god" gets fully drained of their life force and ends up as a chunk of solid stone.
- Restraining Bolt: The glowing rods roped onto the giants, if the hieroglyphics are anything to go by, were deliberately put on the giants by the precursors as a way to try and control/enslave them. Evidently, it didn't work well enough.
- Savage Wolves: Zig Zagged. On the one hand, the one wolf in the game that drags the player to the shrine upon beating the first boss doesn't take the opportunity to make a meal out of them while they're unconscious. On the other hand, there's a cutscene where the player character tries to pet the wolf only to be attacked, albeit not in a way that leaves any wounds. Given that the wolf gets progressively bigger by drinking from the pool of glowing water that grows in size with each giant the player kills, it probably has its own motivations for keeping the player character alive. As of the end of the alpha builds, the wolf can be seen sleeping in the shrine and seems more annoyed by the player's presence than anything.
- Skull for a Head: The golem god, the bison god and the flying god all have these.
- Spiritual Antithesis: Despite largely being a successor to Shadow of the Colossus, the story is different in that it is a Reconstruction of a Boss Game. SotC heavily implied that Wander's quest to slay the Colossi was self destructive to everyone in the long run, and tried hard to make you feel unsettled at actually slaying the Colossi. Praey, on the other hand, makes it clear from the get go that what the Heroine is doing is for the good of all of mankind, and heavily implies that slaying the gods isn't just good for humans, but for the gods themselves as well. Lore notes and hieroglyphics in the game heavily implied that the Gods were enslaved into these forms against their will, and the Norns outright refer to killing a god's physical form as the act of 'freeing' them.
- Sucking-In Lines: The charge-up for the flying god's orb attack is rendered in this manner.
- Taken for Granite: All of the "gods" turn to stone after their lifeforce is drained. Often, they die in positions that make the resultant chunk of lifeless rock look almost natural, and only barely resemble what they were like at their peak.
- Unnecessary Combat Roll: A way of evading attacks.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: While the shrine will usually prompt you towards what boss it suggests you do next, there's nothing outright saying you have to do that boss next. You can very much stumble upon any boss out of order; which is rather easy, considering it's possible to spot them wandering outside of their arenas.
- Wizard Needs Food Badly: Taking care of your food and drink levels is one of the important aspects here.
- You Wake Up on a Beach: A rare frigid example. Multiple damaged longships lie wrecked offshore where the heroine awakens, suggesting she's only the latest of many to capsize there.
