Entropoly wisely distinguishes itself from the many Super Smash Bros. Melee-inspired platform fighters of the past decade by not being a platform fighter. Instead, it abandons the combat and lifts Melee's beloved movement system to create a platformer that is a thoughtful application rather than a pale imitation of Melee's mechanics. The bite-sized Break the Targets style levels are well-crafted and the aforementioned movement will feel right at home if you've played Melee beyond the casual level. Although Entropoly is very much on the shorter side lengthwise, there's no fat here and there are numerous custom levels to play (which unfortunately cannot be browsed or downloaded in-game afaik). Excited to eventually come back to this to improve my times and try out some community levels.

A great game that is seriously held back by what is genuinely one of the worst final levels and boss fights I've ever played in my nearly 21 years on this earth.

Starting with the positives, the ordinary platforming levels are great! It's like a full game's worth of "Break the Targets" stages from Super Smash Bros. paired with a Celeste airdash, what isn't to love? The controls are weird and take some getting used to, since they're based on Melee's controls (eugh), but unlike the last Willis Blackett game I played, the alpha for Recursor, he seems to have done a better job making the controls less shit.

Aesthetically the game is fine. It's pretty cool visually, taking the cool abstract look from Recursor and juicing it with some much needed color, and it has a weird, almost Kirby-esque vibe to the storytelling. I guess the music is my other main fault aside from the aforementioned endgame. It's not necessarily bad, some tracks are pretty solid like the Air and Mind themes, but most of it is either too generic or too short, particularly that last one. Several songs sound like they;'re only about a 15-20 second long loop, which gets incredibly distracting.

So, yeah. About that endgame.

I'll try to be at least a little concise. Once you beat all the worlds, you get a little penultimate world that ends in an very long, brutally punishing final level. It's long, it's got some horseshit platforming with the fire bumper mechanics which is cheap as hell, but it's manageable. But the final boss?
It's just a slog, 5 phases where you have to destroy 8 targets and platform like it's a Celeste C-Side, while he fills the screen with projectiles that you have little to no means of defending yourself against, and then in phase 5 they home in and you can't see them coming from off screen when you're trying to go in for the killing blow and then you have to start the phase all over again and again and again...long story short, don't bother with the final boss/level. From what I can tell they were added in an update, and it shows. The polish and funfactor of the main game just vanishes.

I still think it's overall a good game, and worth buying. Just know that you've been warned.

Has a lot of great ideas and concepts at its core but kind of fails to fully execute/develop them. I think mixing the mechanics and ideas of Celeste and Melee is a really neat idea, but Celeste's mechanics thrive in a tightly constructed, finely tuned area, whereas Melee's mechanics thrive in an open environment where you can move as you see fit. Mixing these together and giving the player both kinds of levels makes sense but it also makes the game a little bit overwhelming. I made the mistake of playing with rumble on and it hurt my hands quite a bit more than any other game has. It's a neat game with great-feeling movement though and I'm excited to see what else Blackett does in the future.

Short and sweet! Cool game which might be neat for speedrunners.

The build mode does not feel very.. easy to use, so you might just be playing a 3 hour game if you never pick it back up again.

Not sure how to get Polyball to work, really, so I can only judge from the campaign.