Legends of Venari

Overview

Legends of Venari is a creature capture game that runs in your browser. You explore the world laying bait and traps in an attempt to capture the creatures hiding in the wild. The art of the creatures and world is in a geometric neon style that really pops in the browser.

Gameplay

You start with a limited area of the world to explore, you have your basic trap and some supplies. Once you lay your trap you then have to wait for a creature to appear. Depending on the bait this can take anywhere from 15 mins to a few hours. These timers make Legends of Venari very much an “always checking” style of a game rather than a game you sit down to actively play. This is important to understand when considering if you’d enjoy the game.

After some creatures appear, you pick which one you want to try and capture. The creatures have 40+ styles each of which can come in one of eight different elements. This does increase the amount needed to be caught to say you’ve caught one of everything. However, it is only a minimal differentiator. The real differentiators come in terms of numbers akin to serial numbers or Venari that are only released for events.

Capturing the creature in Legends of Venari is in the form of a mini-game similar to a combo lock. You have a choice of feed, play or fight. Picking these actions in the correct order increased your chance of catching the creature. Every creature of the same type and elements has the same combination lock. This means you slowly build up the code from failed attempts until you succeed. Even with the correct combination, there is a possibility that you won't catch the creature, so don’t count your eggs before they hatch.

One downside is once you've played Legends of Venari long enough you have all the codes deciphered and the game remembers them for you. This means there is a very little actual challenge left. The team has introduced quests to try and increase your sense of a “goal”. This is limited and obviously mainly focuses on catching more of the creatures. This brings us to another of the current issues - what to do with the creatures? Right now they just sit in your inventory, which can make the whole thing feel a little pointless, however, there are plans for using the creatures in the future.

As capture the Venari you get XP and coins. The XP unlocks new rigs and areas for you to explore. As you unlock more areas you can have more traps set at once so there is more for you to do in the game. These actions are limited though, by the energy which you have to spend on each attempt, this regenerates over time. The areas also introduce new shops in which you can spend the gold to get more equipment and bait.

Review

Overall if you like collecting and are keen on timer simulation games, you will probably enjoy Legends of Venari. How long depends on your desire to catch everything. However, if you are looking for an active game to play, this isn’t it currently. Some of the plans for the future might changes this though.