A game with a decent gimmick but lacks any polish and balancing.

I'm really conflicted with one. I want to like this game. Half of the time I did. The boss fights killed my enjoyment though.

Let's start with the good. This game is beautiful. The sprite work is really nice. Everything just looks good. It's a very colorful game. The elevator scenes are very well done as well. Although beautiful, the backgrounds can be a bit busy.

The music is also fantastic. It's very low-fi inspired. It's mostly a lot of bangers.

Now onto the core mechanic and what makes the game unbalanced misery near the end. In short, your health and ranged attack are the same. If you want to use your range you use your health. Simple enough. Crystal enemies can only be damaged with ranged attacks.

When your health depletes, you get a few hits before you die. So you either have the choice to keep attacking and risk losing a last chance or heal. The only way your last chances heal is at a save point. Healing is simply holding the heal button. But it heals most of it, not all. There is also a Gears of War quick heal mechanic. It sucks. It's simply is too quick to be reliable.

The healing mechanic makes most areas laughable. There is no risk when you can waste your health and then heal to near full. It's unbalanced. There is no limit to this exploit.

There is also a weakness mechanic. The different armors you find will do different elemental damage. Some enemies have an outline showing their weakness.

Okay, now here is where the unbalanced gameplay takes a turn and causes the game to be a frustrating endeavor. At first boss fights are fun and fair. They give you time to heal. You die, it's your fault. But then, they game starts not letting you heal. You gotta rely on the terrible quick heal with as I said earlier, it sucks and is way too fast. Not to mention, there is too much going on to know where your health is and when the quick heal will trigger.

The game has terrible ai and hitboxes. Bosses have massive contact damage hitboxes. The damage things do are insane. Upgrades don't seem to do much to help. Some enemies clearly stop at certain lines in a room and cannot go any further. Thus you can exploit that. Sometimes huge enemies are at an entrance to a room so you have no choice but to take damage or get knocked back into the previous room. You can be limited to certain armors in areas but the enemies clearly have a weakness you cannot exploit.

There are some cool ideas for bosses that could simply have been fun if you changed one thing. Like not telling the boss teleport on top of you. Not letting them teleport and contact damage you for your entire health bar. Slowing down their attacks. Or not allowing them to spam the same unavoidable attacks over and over. And, I don't know why we could not just have a boss health bar. They show health by changing color. They problem is that the last part of their health is represented by the boss being dark red. Usually on a black background. It makes them so hard to see.

The traversal is really neat. Each armor has a different ability. They are all neat and flow well into each other. Secrets are shown on the map which is nice. Everything is also color coded. The story is fine.

This game is really impressive at first. I really wanted to beat it. I may go back to it at some point. I'm really close to the end. I just cannot deal with how unbalanced and how unpolished it is all. I know it's their first game. But come on. You were 3/4 of the way to an amazing game. I can see how much love that went into it. It's just too bad they didn't put that extra 1/4 of work into the game to make it a fun experience.

Sadly this is another Metroidvania that forces difficulty. I blame Hollow Knight for this. So many Metroidvanias have turned into HK clones. Trying to be way more difficult than needed. This only works if you have a fair and balanced game. Hollow Knight works because it is fair and balanced most of the time. Dark Souls works for the same reason. So many Metroidvanias fail to understand this. I rather them just try do their own thing and not be brutally hard like HK. Difficult for Difficult sake rarely works.

A game with a decent gimmick but lacks any polish and balancing.

I'm really conflicted with one. I want to like this game. Half of the time I did. The boss fights killed my enjoyment though.

Let's start with the good. This game is beautiful. The sprite work is really nice. Everything just looks good. It's a very colorful game. The elevator scenes are very well done as well. Although beautiful, the backgrounds can be a bit busy.

The music is also fantastic. It's very low-fi inspired. It's mostly a lot of bangers.

Now onto the core mechanic and what makes the game unbalanced misery near the end. In short, your health and ranged attack are the same. If you want to use your range you use your health. Simple enough. Crystal enemies can only be damaged with ranged attacks.

When your health depletes, you get a few hits before you die. So you either have the choice to keep attacking and risk losing a last chance or heal. The only way your last chances heal is at a save point. Healing is simply holding the heal button. But it heals most of it, not all. There is also a Gears of War quick heal mechanic. It sucks. It's simply is too quick to be reliable.

The healing mechanic makes most areas laughable. There is no risk when you can waste your health and then heal to near full. It's unbalanced. There is no limit to this exploit.

There is also a weakness mechanic. The different armors you find will do different elemental damage. Some enemies have an outline showing their weakness.

Okay, now here is where the unbalanced gameplay takes a turn and causes the game to be a frustrating endeavor. At first boss fights are fun and fair. They give you time to heal. You die, it's your fault. But then, they game starts not letting you heal. You gotta rely on the terrible quick heal with as I said earlier, it sucks and is way too fast. Not to mention, there is too much going on to know where your health is and when the quick heal will trigger.

The game has terrible ai and hitboxes. Bosses have massive contact damage hitboxes. The damage things do are insane. Upgrades don't seem to do much to help. Some enemies clearly stop at certain lines in a room and cannot go any further. Thus you can exploit that. Sometimes huge enemies are at an entrance to a room so you have no choice but to take damage or get knocked back into the previous room. You can be limited to certain armors in areas but the enemies clearly have a weakness you cannot exploit.

There are some cool ideas for bosses that could simply have been fun if you changed one thing. Like not telling the boss teleport on top of you. Not letting them teleport and contact damage you for your entire health bar. Slowing down their attacks. Or not allowing them to spam the same unavoidable attacks over and over. And, I don't know why we could not just have a boss health bar. They show health by changing color. They problem is that the last part of their health is represented by the boss being dark red. Usually on a black background. It makes them so hard to see.

The traversal is really neat. Each armor has a different ability. They are all neat and flow well into each other. Secrets are shown on the map which is nice. Everything is also color coded. The story is fine.

This game is really impressive at first. I really wanted to beat it. I may go back to it at some point. I'm really close to the end. I just cannot deal with how unbalanced and how unpolished it is all. I know it's their first game. But come on. You were 3/4 of the way to an amazing game. I can see how much love that went into it. It's just too bad they didn't put that extra 1/4 of work into the game to make it a fun experience.

Sadly this is another Metroidvania that forces difficulty. I blame Hollow Knight for this. So many Metroidvanias have turned into HK clones. Trying to be way more difficult than needed. This only works if you have a fair and balanced game. Hollow Knight works because it is fair and balanced most of the time. Dark Souls works for the same reason. So many Metroidvanias fail to understand this. I rather them just try do their own thing and not be brutally hard like HK. Difficult for Difficult sake rarely works.