Worldless will probably either grab you immediately or repulse you immediately. The otherworldly, open-space aesthetic along with relaxing platforming mixes strangely with its intense combat system.

It starts simple, banal even; But it pushes the concept further and further. Unfortunately, the things that push it the best are off the beaten path. Could maybe be a bit less oblique on some things, but I do adore the 'visual' hints the game gives for its collectibles and puzzles.

Probably the main complaint from me is I wish there was a bit more... 'real' platforming, with hazards and whatnot. It's nice to relax along the ether, flying around in endless space in a way that's reminiscent of Ori and the Blind Forest, but sometimes it can feel like you're waiting for the next battle to happen to chew into the combat, where all the mechanical density is.

Either way, an unexpected but wonderful find.

You'll either bounce off it in the first couple hours or stay and fall in love. The early part of the game feels shallow and wrong, up until a certain moment when the entire game is recontextualized, so much so that that shallowness might actually be intentional? If it is intentional, it's 1) a completely inadvisable way to make a game and 2) a great moment of ludonarrative resonance.

From that point on the game reveals its true depth, a fantastic mélange of genres and influences and an impressive number of unique and challenging enemies.

This game isn't really envisioned as a metroidvania, but as a character action 2d adventure, according to the devs. I found out about this game after listening to a few interviews with the devs in the past, and everything i would hear from them about this game made me feel very fascinated with it.

The visuals go for this minimalistic, clean look, with a sort of approach of what i'd describe as a cosmic horror setting with these avatars of fallen gods and creatures. You might see some similarities with Gris, which in fact, lead animator and game designer Joel Roset is a relative of the creative director of that game, which he also worked on as an animator. A clear inspiration of the visuals and music of this game would be Fez, which can be observed in how the world is designed, the UI and the great ambience-droney soundtrack, which would switch up to these emotional and intense orchestra themes in some of the boss fights

As i was describing before, this is a very combat focused side-scroller game, the combats are played out in this unique idea of what is a turn based fight, when it's the player's turn, they will have to figure out what is the best combo they can do. There are many different skills and weapons the enemies may be weak to, the player can do things like focusing on breaking any guards so that way they can gain extra time to fit more movements in their turn. In the enemy’s turn all the player can do is block or parry, the game incentivizes a lot going for perfect guards and parries since they will also increase the time of the next turn and deal a good chunk of damage to the enemy.

What I really appreciate about this game is how you can see that the developers have a lot of passion for these kind of games, and just how much care and love has been put into this game, every single move has its reason to exist, most if not every single encounter offers very clever challenges for the player to think about and use all aspects of their moveset. You can notice that there is a great fascination with videogames of this kind could it be third strike, could it be bayonetta, dmc, and their fanaticism and studies for these games culminates into what is one of the best action games of the year.

Easily one of the most well done Metrodvanias since Hollow Knight and Ori 2... If is it better? I don't Know...

But all my 15 hours to complete 100% and fight the secret boss were pretty good.

This game is exactly what The Last case Of Benedict Fox was supposed to be...