Ok, it's the inevitable cross between Bike Racing games and QWOP, I think?

I love the concept, and I love that it's a mobile game with no ads or popups! It's pure game! Why is that rare nowadays?

However, the QWOPification of its bike physics makes it unfortunately, just as horribly frustrating as QWOP when you are trying to actually get somewhere. Getting through the levels is one thing, trying to beat the "Super Nice!" time limit is insane for some levels, and requires you to master these weird controls that never seem to cooperate just right. I wanted to tilt my phone so bad. Why didn't this game take advantage of the accelerometer?

This game made me want to download Bike Race again.

(So I downloaded Bike Race again, and no surprise, it feels so much better, makes me want to play more because I can actually see what's coming ahead and can land jumps. But it's filled with microtransactions and ads. Ugh.)

The time has finally come to talk about this game. I’ve spent more than 60 hours and completed the game 3 times with a failed 4th+ run trying to get the last achievement. Feelings are mixed and tensions are high.

Firstly, the game is described as a dungeon crawler but it’s more of a dungeon crawler/puzzle game. It’s not a traditional dungeon crawler. It places more emphasis on puzzles and there are many notes to flesh out the story. There are also many secrets hidden (chests) that offer you better equipment or stat boosts. You control one character instead of a party. There are 4 classes, different weapons and magic (called gadgets here) to use. Your stats increase when you level up and you get one skill point to improve a skill from a list. The skill tree usually improves the effectiveness of a chosen class but you’re still given some room to experiment as well. There are 12 levels to clear with no fast travel. It took me over 20 hours to fully explore the areas and read all notes the first time. You can save anywhere whether quick, manual or even auto. The game has one unique gameplay mechanic, pausing everything with real-time gameplay. Normally you use the attack button and you see your hits carried out. Enemies also attack you and will kill you if you don’t do anything. Pausing at any moment gives you the time to think properly. Pausing is also used with certain puzzles to great effect.

This game is incredibly polished. There are no bugs I’ve experienced. It feels like a lot of thought went into creating and balancing it. It looks incredibly atmospheric and just plain gorgeous. Lighting and shadow is so impressive here. I love the steampunk style. The gameplay is very satisfying whether it’s the puzzles, fights or exploration. It is viable to try out different classes. I was also impressed by some of the notes, some are fully voiced with different characters. The devs basically executed the game perfectly in terms of implementing what they wanted to do.

The problems arise with certain design decisions, mainly the achievements and secrets. Some of the worst achievements involve grinding heavily, beating the game without a map, without saving manually/quickly and speedrunning the game within 90 minutes. Even though I managed to beat the game without a map & save, I don’t think it should have been an achievement. Beating the game on the highest difficulty (brutal) and in combination with receiving less than 3000 damage should have been enough. But the absolute worst one is the speedrunning achievement. Putting this in games designed specifically around speedrunning is one thing, short games that can work well like certain platformers is also a possibility, but putting it in a long game that’s best enjoyed by taking your time is just inconceivable. Not only that, speedrunning is incredibly niche. That audience doesn’t need an achievement to speedrun a game. What you’ve done is dragging the completionist community into it and ruining the game for them. I’ve wasted so many hours starting a new run multiple times. I always made it to level 8 and was always around 2 minutes behind compared to others. As for secrets, I normally love secrets as part of finding collectibles, but the way this game does it is mostly horrible. It’s turned into an extreme version of spot the difference. Often times you’re supposed to spot a tiny dot that could have been a dirt or part of the detailed environment. I would waste lots of time examining every wall and I’d still miss secrets. I lost my patience near the end and just decided to look them up. I also have minor issues with the last 2 puzzles (getting lost in the dark and getting out of a teleport maze). The puzzles are generally without obvious hints. You have to figure them out yourself by trying things and it worked for the most part. It just went too far here even with the hints provided. The hints for the teleport maze were too well hidden and could only be viewed from one angle.

It’s hard to recommend the game outright. I got it on sale for €3 and I got tons of hours out of it. There are moments where I absolutely enjoyed the game. But there are moments where I feel like the game is too punishing and it ruined the experience. The speedrunning achievement will haunt me for not getting it. The only reason I’m not giving a personal negative is because the sequel/prequel clearly has better achievements. I’ve also read the secrets are telegraphed better. It seems some of the feedback is already implemented. It shows growth and improvement. So I’m willing to let it slide once. I still caution completionists from playing this game though. Get it only if the issues mentioned don’t bother you.