Trench Tales

A striking premise from a solo developer

Trench Tales, which entered Early Access on 6 May 2025, is the work of Talking Drums, a solo developer, published by Crytivo and partly funded through community crowdfunding. Its premise is genuinely distinctive: a third-person action game set in a strange, war-torn world drawing on early 20th-century trench-warfare imagery, but layering in supernatural horror elements and open-ended exploration rather than presenting a straightforward historical shooter. The idea of blending WWI trench aesthetics with cosmic-horror dread is not one the market is saturated with, and the review sample makes clear that this premise, on its own, is enough to earn the game real goodwill from a meaningful slice of its early audience, goodwill it will need, because almost every review, positive or negative, agrees on what state the game actually shipped in.

Atmosphere strong enough to carry real goodwill

Where the review sample is genuinely unanimous is on the strength of the game's atmosphere and visual direction. Reviewers repeatedly single out the art style and mood as standout qualities even when writing otherwise harsh reviews, with one describing the atmosphere and art style as "great" in the same breath as warning that the game "feels more like a demo at this point." Another reviewer, explicitly asking other players to be less harsh in their judgment, argues that even in its current rough state the game is "actually more polished than some 'finished' games from big publishers," crediting the visuals and tension of the world for making that case, while separately conceding the game "probably should not have entered e.a. THIS early."

That tension, real admiration for the concept and setting paired with an acknowledgment the game is not ready, recurs constantly. One long-time player calls it "a labor of love for sure," with real potential, while a reviewer specifically impressed by what a solo developer accomplished alone writes there is "clearly a lot of talent here," praising the world and art direction as "really strong" even while cataloguing performance hiccups and rough combat handling in the same review. A notably detailed review from a player with over 4,000 minutes logged goes further, calculating their enjoyment at "66 cents per hour" and encouraging others to buy in specifically to support ongoing development, treating the purchase less as a transaction for a finished product and more as patronage for a project they believe in.

"Too early to Early Access": an overwhelming, specific complaint

Set against that goodwill is a complaint repeated with striking consistency and specificity across the negative half of the review sample, and it is worth taking seriously precisely because it comes not from players hostile to the concept but from players who otherwise like it. The core argument, stated almost verbatim by multiple independent reviewers, is that Trench Tales entered Early Access in a state closer to a tech demo or pitch reel than a purchasable, playable game. One reviewer states it in the starkest possible terms: "too early to early access," directly criticising the decision to charge full price for the current build. Another agrees almost word for word, calling it "more WIP than Early Access" and explicitly advising other players to "wait on it" rather than buy now.

The specific technical complaints back up that broader argument rather than standing apart from it. Multiple reviewers report that basic settings, including individual sound volume sliders and granular graphics options, simply do not exist, with only broad graphics presets available, an unusually basic omission for a paid release. One reviewer's account of this issue took an alarming turn: they report being permanently banned from the game's official forums after pointing out publicly that the graphics settings had no actual effect, a claim that, if representative, raises real concerns about how the developer is receiving and processing critical feedback during Early Access, precisely the period when that feedback matters most. Combat and control issues compound the picture, with one reviewer reporting that an in-game control-remapping option "flat out does not work" and that dodge and melee are bound to the same button by default, while another describes their playthrough less as playing a game and more as "beta testing quest triggers, broken interactions, questionable AI, and progression" with no clear sense of whether they were stuck due to a missed objective or a broken one.

Verdict

Trench Tales is a genuinely hard game to score fairly, because the thing its supporters love, the atmosphere, the ambition, the sense of a distinctive vision being pursued by one committed developer, is real and consistently corroborated. But so is the overwhelming complaint that it entered Early Access before it was ready to be sold, not played for free as a demo, but sold at a premium price with settings that do not work, controls that conflict with each other, and systems reviewers describe in terms closer to a bug report than a game. The forum-permaban account, if accurate, is a serious red flag for how sustainably this Early Access period will actually function as a feedback loop rather than a one-way funding mechanism. There is a good game here in outline, and reviewers who bought in specifically to support that vision are not wrong to see it. But anyone weighing whether to buy in now, rather than fund the vision on faith, should treat the volume and specificity of the "too early" complaints as the single most important piece of information in this review, and wait for a build that matches the ambition of its premise before committing money to it.