Atlyss
I have a lot of feelings about Atlyss, including feeling obliged to acknowledge that they let you make a fursona with wild proportions in this one. It's such a conspicuous thing that if I didn't mention it, maybe you'd look at the Steam page and wonder why I didn't, and I lack the poker face needed to play it cool for the duration of these few paragraphs. Sorry, or you're welcome.
For me it's not about that, but also it kind of is? In my pitch to some friends I joked that Atlyss made me a furry, but the fact is I like some furry art to begin with, particularly when it trends toward cute rather than whatever you'd call that style where everybody's doing sex eyes at all times. I mean, no judgment, this is just my preference. But yeah, I do in fact like the game's character aesthetic. And regardless of what people choose to do in multiplayer (in this as in literally any game with a chat window), the setting itself is pretty wholesome, apocalypse scenario aside. You could imagine a farming sim happening here, populated by these characters.
Thank jackalope Jesus that Atlyss isn't a farming sim, though. The notable thing about the character creator isn't so much that it dovetails with any one preference of mine, it's that it represents the dev's pursuit of specific interests. I imagine it's this same pursuit that resulted in a game that's, like, Phantasy Star Online with fast movement and platforming, or a loot shooter with an Everquest hotbar, or something. Like if the Animal Crossing team made a Diablo-like instead and were perverts. Perverts for ARPGs and MMOs, I mean. What did you think I meant? The point is the more specific the stuff, the harder it hits when it does hit. And for me, in this case, a lot of the stuff hits.
Basically this game is fuckin fun as hell. Through bespoke combinations of dodging, double-jumping, and air attacks, you can all but fly through the environments, and it's important to master the skill of fidgeting around so you can manage packs of enemies with enormous attack ranges. Same with timed blocking, which you might at first assume is a niche tank move, but in fact everybody needs to be doing it at all times. The frantic combat is the main challenge of the dungeons, though they also feature some Zelda-like elements, locked doors and things, that make the shapes of the spaces a little more interesting. It's not that complicated a thing, a gear grind game that mostly doesn't feel grindy, but the charm of the 1999 platformer visuals combined with how it's an RPG in which it feels great to do anything at all will completely win over a certain kind of person, and I guess what I'm here to tell you is I am that kind of person.
But I'm not here to tell you it's frictionless. When the store page says it's tuned for multiplayer, it's not lying, and if you plan to play mostly alone or if your friends refuse to join you in the furry ass slider game, the experience can be brutal. Enemy difficulty does seem to scale based on the number of players, but for solo play you may find that you need a few extra levels or better build-appropriate gear to cope with swarms of enemies that can three-shot you at most. Or at least don't neglect vitality on a solo character. It must also be said that Atlyss is an early access game, and when I'm writing this it won't take you that long to run out of quests, unless you want to make a bunch of alts. Which I did. But maybe you don't want to do that.
For $10, though, or less on sale, it's both a hell of a game and a decent amount of one, and this will only become more true as the updates roll out. And the fact is, however regularly you engage with furry stuff, it's just fun to make a little rabbit person or whatever. Don't lie to yourself.