Players control an egg that explores a vast world. Included is a multiplayer 'Heist Mode' with gameplay very similar to capture-the-flag.
Reviews View More
Couldn't quite bring myself to finish it (this seems to happen to me with metroidvanias in general lol) but I definently enjoyed what I played. Like mostly everyone else has said about this game its a unique look into Maddy Thorsons past as a developer and you can really see a lot of DNA being shared between this and Celeste through movement and level design. It's interesting how "barebones" it is as a metroidvania, with very simple and limited powerups, but I think it leads you around well with just a simple "you can't jump high enough yet" or something of the sort.
Maddy really went for the heart when creating the soundtrack for this game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPhK3YJoAd4
I may have had more difficulty playing Maddy's later more famous work (Celeste) but despite this game having much floatier movement/less options for player expression, I prefer this game over Celeste.
The visual style of the game being almost entirely composed in MSPaint with jagged lines, very bright colors with very chunky simple shading makes me feel like I'm playing through a children's book.
I also truly enjoyed the little bits of story that are in the game, starting out as an egg, hatching from the egg after climbing through various pits of platform shenanigans is a triumphant moment.
There are other birds, mostly in a little village totally isolated from the wide world map, by forces of evil overwhelming, but there is one brave little bird on the beach shoreline. It's a very cute moment to contrast the sad melancholy vibes of the bird village, where they're trapped there.
I struggle to really write about this game as it's hard to convey exactly how it resonates with me as this was one of the earliest "Online indy" games I ever played.
It's important, may not quite be in my pantheon of favorite games, but it's a game worth respect, and worth giving a try.
You may get more out of this game than you'd expect to.
I may have had more difficulty playing Maddy's later more famous work (Celeste) but despite this game having much floatier movement/less options for player expression, I prefer this game over Celeste.
The visual style of the game being almost entirely composed in MSPaint with jagged lines, very bright colors with very chunky simple shading makes me feel like I'm playing through a children's book.
I also truly enjoyed the little bits of story that are in the game, starting out as an egg, hatching from the egg after climbing through various pits of platform shenanigans is a triumphant moment.
There are other birds, mostly in a little village totally isolated from the wide world map, by forces of evil overwhelming, but there is one brave little bird on the beach shoreline. It's a very cute moment to contrast the sad melancholy vibes of the bird village, where they're trapped there.
I struggle to really write about this game as it's hard to convey exactly how it resonates with me as this was one of the earliest "Online indy" games I ever played.
It's important, may not quite be in my pantheon of favorite games, but it's a game worth respect, and worth giving a try.
You may get more out of this game than you'd expect to.
I see the main character come out of an egg and think "Oh shit that me"
Precision platforming in a Metroidvania sounds like an odd and interesting mix, but I'm not entirely sure it works out here. The platforming challenges themselves are mostly sound, but dying feels really painful in this game when the space between two save points can feel huge. Especially since there's often hard bosses far away from save points as well. And despite its nature as a Metroidvania, loads of areas can only be progressed through in a linear way anyways. Imagine if Celeste were built like a Metroidvania without each screen being its own checkpoint, and make of that what you will.
These extra-hard platforming bits also feel really lacking in terms of rewards. Sometimes you'll get something worthwhile like an entire optional power-up, but most of the time you're trying to get through Hurtbox Hell without taking a single hit of damage just for an extension of 10 max HP. By lategame, this hardly means anything when 10 HP is 1/12th of a hit. These Don't-Take-Damage challenges taking on another layer of frustration when ghosts can randomly turn up in most rooms you enter, including these platforming challenges, where they can just swiftly ruin a good run.
That said, its style is really charming and it's a game that's far from afraid of being unexplainably obtuse in terms of aesthetics. Why is there a white abstract void in the middle of the ocean? Beats me! But it's there! It's a game that feels lovingly homebrew, if nothing else. I enjoyed my time with it overall, despite the issues. And ultimately 100% is far from required for a good time, there are some things you can still use the HP system to brute-force certain challenges that don't require getting past a Full-HP gate. Just simply put, I prefer it when "Ultra-Hard" games in the same flavor of this like Meatboy or Celeste, I'd much rather have generous checkpointing to keep me from getting bored of segments I've already played.
These extra-hard platforming bits also feel really lacking in terms of rewards. Sometimes you'll get something worthwhile like an entire optional power-up, but most of the time you're trying to get through Hurtbox Hell without taking a single hit of damage just for an extension of 10 max HP. By lategame, this hardly means anything when 10 HP is 1/12th of a hit. These Don't-Take-Damage challenges taking on another layer of frustration when ghosts can randomly turn up in most rooms you enter, including these platforming challenges, where they can just swiftly ruin a good run.
That said, its style is really charming and it's a game that's far from afraid of being unexplainably obtuse in terms of aesthetics. Why is there a white abstract void in the middle of the ocean? Beats me! But it's there! It's a game that feels lovingly homebrew, if nothing else. I enjoyed my time with it overall, despite the issues. And ultimately 100% is far from required for a good time, there are some things you can still use the HP system to brute-force certain challenges that don't require getting past a Full-HP gate. Just simply put, I prefer it when "Ultra-Hard" games in the same flavor of this like Meatboy or Celeste, I'd much rather have generous checkpointing to keep me from getting bored of segments I've already played.
One of the first big and memorable indie games I ever played as a high schooler, I decided to revisit it this year.
Level design-wise it held up pretty well. It's a level of precision platforming that's emblematic of Maddy Thorson's design style, but not as tricky as earlier games like Jumper. The rooms instead have been balanced to fit into a Metroidvania map, with a health system allowing you to play rooms imperfectly, with added challenge in the form of "100% Health Gates" - which won't open unless you reach them without taking damage.
It can be a fairly demanding game: in harder sections of the game, you might go through 4-5+ challenging rooms without a checkpoint. It's an interesting style of difficulty, but one that's not my personal preference as I'm not that into the amount of redoing that occurs in that kind of level layout (... maybe I should have picked the easy difficulty!)
Still, I was surprised to the point that I managed to intuit how to control my character's jump height precisely (the variable jump height of your character is an important part of many of the levels.)
There's a little bit of interconnectivity in the game's zones, but for the most part you'll be finding a zone, playing through its 15-20 zones, encountering 2 or 3 checkpoints, and fighting a boss, while finding abilities, money, health upgrades, and Golden Orbs to open the final area.
--
I really like the atmosphere. The music is sort of plunky and simple - it can become grating at times as it's General MIDI but without much of the 'touch' that can be applied to those palettes to make them less irritating to hear over and over.
Areas are hand drawn, a simple but effective art style that lets the shape of the huge rooms breathe. I enjoyed when the game did interesting structural setpieces: a gigantic fall into a pit, a mysterious "blank" area at the bottom of the world, falling off the top of a big cliff and playing a gem-collecting minigame on the way down, a giant ice castle, at the top of the world, etc.
One notable design choice is that there's hardly any backtracking in this game (unless you want to get some completion). For the most part, as long as you manage to find the needed jump upgrades, you just need to find the next area to explore. Still, I got lost a few times due to the map not having markers or indicating room connections until you find adjacent rooms.
--
Boss fights can sometimes feel very demanding, and it's frustrating that you can't save right before most. I don't mind the style of AUS's bosses (which remind me of the difficulty of ones like Ys Oath in Felghana), but replaying stuff before the boss just to try again is a bore.
The bosses are fairly simple pattern-based bosses where you avoid obstacles and wait for an opportunity to bonk the boss. Most of them are fairly fun, there are a few stinkers which involve getting the boss's projectiles to hit the boss, or involve you playing 'tennis' with the projectiles.
--
Overall, it's a fun and unique world to explore. It wasn't as good as I remembered but it was still pretty good! I love the unique touch that a solo (or small team) dev-created metroidvania has .
Level design-wise it held up pretty well. It's a level of precision platforming that's emblematic of Maddy Thorson's design style, but not as tricky as earlier games like Jumper. The rooms instead have been balanced to fit into a Metroidvania map, with a health system allowing you to play rooms imperfectly, with added challenge in the form of "100% Health Gates" - which won't open unless you reach them without taking damage.
It can be a fairly demanding game: in harder sections of the game, you might go through 4-5+ challenging rooms without a checkpoint. It's an interesting style of difficulty, but one that's not my personal preference as I'm not that into the amount of redoing that occurs in that kind of level layout (... maybe I should have picked the easy difficulty!)
Still, I was surprised to the point that I managed to intuit how to control my character's jump height precisely (the variable jump height of your character is an important part of many of the levels.)
There's a little bit of interconnectivity in the game's zones, but for the most part you'll be finding a zone, playing through its 15-20 zones, encountering 2 or 3 checkpoints, and fighting a boss, while finding abilities, money, health upgrades, and Golden Orbs to open the final area.
--
I really like the atmosphere. The music is sort of plunky and simple - it can become grating at times as it's General MIDI but without much of the 'touch' that can be applied to those palettes to make them less irritating to hear over and over.
Areas are hand drawn, a simple but effective art style that lets the shape of the huge rooms breathe. I enjoyed when the game did interesting structural setpieces: a gigantic fall into a pit, a mysterious "blank" area at the bottom of the world, falling off the top of a big cliff and playing a gem-collecting minigame on the way down, a giant ice castle, at the top of the world, etc.
One notable design choice is that there's hardly any backtracking in this game (unless you want to get some completion). For the most part, as long as you manage to find the needed jump upgrades, you just need to find the next area to explore. Still, I got lost a few times due to the map not having markers or indicating room connections until you find adjacent rooms.
--
Boss fights can sometimes feel very demanding, and it's frustrating that you can't save right before most. I don't mind the style of AUS's bosses (which remind me of the difficulty of ones like Ys Oath in Felghana), but replaying stuff before the boss just to try again is a bore.
The bosses are fairly simple pattern-based bosses where you avoid obstacles and wait for an opportunity to bonk the boss. Most of them are fairly fun, there are a few stinkers which involve getting the boss's projectiles to hit the boss, or involve you playing 'tennis' with the projectiles.
--
Overall, it's a fun and unique world to explore. It wasn't as good as I remembered but it was still pretty good! I love the unique touch that a solo (or small team) dev-created metroidvania has .
One of Maddy Thorson's earlier freeware games. On paper, there's nothing truly exceptional about this game. It's just a very formulaic metroidvania platformer with a very simple presentation. I guess that's what I admire about it though. It's JUST the fundamentals but fairly polished. There's a lot of optional challenge and plenty of secrets to find, making for a fun time waster. One of the only metroidvanias I've ever finished, tbh.
When I first saw the trailer for Celeste, before even seeing who was making it, I KNEW it was a game from Maddy just by seeing the way the player character was moving, and how the level design looked. Even back in the mid 00's, Maddy was making the good shit.
When I first saw the trailer for Celeste, before even seeing who was making it, I KNEW it was a game from Maddy just by seeing the way the player character was moving, and how the level design looked. Even back in the mid 00's, Maddy was making the good shit.