MO:Astray is a pixelated, side-scrolling, puzzle-solving action game. Featuring the main character MO and its special abilities, the game is loaded with bizarre enemies, threatening traps and ingenious level designs.
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Completed it on a whole sitting. It definitely has all signatures of a Rayark game: SiHanatsuka with some music bangers, some quirky english dialogue and a solid experience.
very good but too long
Turgid writing that makes me think whoever put this to paper must hate Gerard Manley Hopkins. The play has an interesting conceit but fails to iterate or demand lateral thinking from the player as the verb set refuses to expand, offering rote trajectory paths and uninteresting, generic, and unoriginal environments to muddle the way through. Maybe there is a late game turn that recontextualises everything I have complaints over, but after about 2 hours, the molasses substrate the app is submerged within had me pushing my thumbsticks so hard to the right for lack of speed that I thought they might break.
This review contains spoilers
I chose to play this game on disaster mode because i like a challenge and the other difficulties seemed less fun platforming-wise. The platforming was pretty neat as i expected, same as the good bosses. Though unfortunately not all fights in this game deserve to be classified as such. Two of them are absolutely horrible.
Doula is a slow and boring boss battle against a blue worm with janky hitboxes. Its attacks can be dodged by standing still or getting favourable rng. To damage it you also need some luck, not a good fight, felt like a waiting game really.
The next fight though, oh boy what a horrible experience that was. I was understandably frustrated by Doula, but chose to keep going, because the previous bosses were pretty neat, so surely there could not possibly be a worse fight in the game, right?
There unfortunately was, it is called the Skilled Pilot. This fight does not do a single thing right. Its music(just like Doula's) is underwhelming, and that's the most positive you'll hear from me about this boss. Good god, this fight is so rng-based, that no matter who or where you ask, or even try to look up guides on how to beat it, all you'll get is "get lucky" or "this fight is won with repetition and luck, not skill". I cannot stress enough how much i hate that, but even if i chose to ignore this insanely bad game design, i still need to talk about one more thing relating to this fight - it clashes with the game's tone, it's so out of place to be piloting a war machine as a little slime in a platforming game that tries to present you as this small creature uncovering this very hostile world. This boss goes down as the worst boss fight i have had the displeasure of fighting in my whole life.
Not to say the game didn't have it's good bosses though! The two last bosses feel like redemption for the two fights i mentioned before, it's not quite enough for me though.
Ending this on a positive note though, while going for 100% completion, the story really grew on me. I realised it's actually pretty good! I also did like the art style and how cute the protagonist is.
Doula is a slow and boring boss battle against a blue worm with janky hitboxes. Its attacks can be dodged by standing still or getting favourable rng. To damage it you also need some luck, not a good fight, felt like a waiting game really.
The next fight though, oh boy what a horrible experience that was. I was understandably frustrated by Doula, but chose to keep going, because the previous bosses were pretty neat, so surely there could not possibly be a worse fight in the game, right?
There unfortunately was, it is called the Skilled Pilot. This fight does not do a single thing right. Its music(just like Doula's) is underwhelming, and that's the most positive you'll hear from me about this boss. Good god, this fight is so rng-based, that no matter who or where you ask, or even try to look up guides on how to beat it, all you'll get is "get lucky" or "this fight is won with repetition and luck, not skill". I cannot stress enough how much i hate that, but even if i chose to ignore this insanely bad game design, i still need to talk about one more thing relating to this fight - it clashes with the game's tone, it's so out of place to be piloting a war machine as a little slime in a platforming game that tries to present you as this small creature uncovering this very hostile world. This boss goes down as the worst boss fight i have had the displeasure of fighting in my whole life.
Not to say the game didn't have it's good bosses though! The two last bosses feel like redemption for the two fights i mentioned before, it's not quite enough for me though.
Ending this on a positive note though, while going for 100% completion, the story really grew on me. I realised it's actually pretty good! I also did like the art style and how cute the protagonist is.
masterpiece
A hidden gem.