Forgotten Blood

Forgotten Blood released in full on Steam on June 29, 2026, a solo-developed first-person action RPG that wears its King's Field inspiration openly, right down to the slow movement, bleak dark-fantasy environments, and deliberately obtuse design. Its 25-review English pool sits at Mixed (16 up, 9 down, 64%), and the reviews split cleanly between players who found a genuinely atmospheric, lore-rich homage worth pushing through, and players who found a barely functional mess that soured them within their first twenty minutes.

Atmosphere and world design draw the pool's most consistent praise, crossing the positive-negative divide more than almost any other topic. One reviewer, evidently a King's Field veteran, called it "one of the games that best captures the atmosphere, vibes, and overall tone of the classic King's Field games," describing the setting of Gravenstone as giving "a sense of mystery and wonder that I hadn't felt in a long time." Even a largely critical reviewer who ultimately couldn't recommend the game conceded "cool atmosphere" as the review's sole listed pro, and another negative reviewer opened by admitting they'd been excited for weeks because "the art style looks absolutely gorgeous in the trailer and screenshots, and it looks great in game too." That's a rare thing: a game whose critics and fans largely agree on what it gets right, even while diverging sharply on whether that's enough.

The inventory system is where that agreement breaks down entirely, into what is easily the pool's single most corroborated complaint. One detailed negative review walked through the process step by step: items appear as floating orbs that must be looked at from a precise angle, then manually navigated to and dragged into inventory slots that "don't align properly," sometimes leaving "a row of non-aligned items that are in fact the same item." A separate reviewer described nearly the same ordeal independently, calling it "dogwater inventory management, like truly abysmal," while a third, more sympathetic reviewer who ultimately recommended the game still listed "the extremely clunky inventory and item pickup system" as its clearest downside. Multiple reviewers, including some who otherwise liked the game a great deal, separately reported items vanishing outright after being picked up or failing to stack for no discernible reason.

Combat draws similarly corroborated criticism, though with a more technical bent. One reviewer described discovering that the starting weapon "could be swung as fast as you can click the mouse," trivializing early encounters, before finding that its effective range was "very short" and consistently misaligned with where they were actually aiming. A second reviewer independently reported enemies that "glided through me with no animation and dealt damage," instantly re-damaging them on respawn. A third called the hit feedback inconsistent enough that fights against skeletons became "a war of attrition where I would run up to things, hammer the attack and hope something contacted before I took damage." Three reviewers converging independently on inconsistent hitboxes and unreliable attack feedback, rather than simply disliking the combat's difficulty, points at a real technical problem rather than a matter of taste.

Progression-blocking bugs form a third, more alarming cluster of complaints. One reviewer described being stuck at roughly 20 hours in, unable to locate an item required by the game's own late-game objective, with "no guides or even a discord to look to for help," and reported enemies that "remain as invisible objects" after death. Another reported a specific soft lock after lighting a candle failed to trigger progression, requiring a manual return to an earlier checkpoint via the escape menu rather than any in-world fix. A third reviewer, playing on a controller, described unopenable chests found with no indication of what was needed to open them, alongside switches and other interactive objects that simply didn't respond. These aren't vague impressions; each is a specific, reproducible-sounding failure independently reported by a different player, which is a meaningfully different category of problem than ordinary indie jank.

Not every reviewer treated the jank as disqualifying, and it's worth taking that camp seriously rather than dismissing it. One reviewer argued the negative reviews were largely a case of players being "blindsided" by exactly the kind of game the store page advertises, and pointed to a free demo as proof that "no need to get a game with an available sample and give it a bad review after walking around the opening room." Another noted that "over 56% of players did not make it out of the tutorial area," framing that statistic less as evidence of broken design and more as evidence that the game is doing exactly what deliberately punishing demakes are supposed to do: filter out players who don't want that specific experience. Several reviewers who finished the story, including one who reported multiple endings across repeated playthroughs, described the clunkiness as a real but survivable cost of admission for a genre they already loved.

Taken together, Forgotten Blood is a game of real, specific strengths let down by problems that go well beyond stylistic jank, an inventory system disliked by nearly its entire review pool, combat with corroborated hit-detection issues, and a scattering of progression-blocking bugs serious enough to strand committed players for hours. Its atmosphere, lore, and King's Field devotion are genuine and clearly resonate with the audience it's built for, but this is a title to approach only with the demo tried first and patience for a solo developer still actively working through a long list of real problems.