Nice graphics, music and concept, but ultimately an exercise in frustration. There are a lot of good ideas but the whole thing is mired in bad design, things that I find hard to understand how they could have gotten past the testing phase on a game with this budget.
- Confusing environments. Foreground/background elements are often mixed together and things that look normal end up hurting you.
- Confusing enemy patterns and tells. I can appreciate that each enemy has set patterns, but they are not well telegraphed and their attacks are always just a little varied. They come at you so fast that you will get hit unfairly.
- Too many effects flying around. When the enemies shoot at you, their bullets all mix together. Sometimes things that can't hurt you look a certain color, but things that can hurt you look the same. Attacks mix together and you can't tell if you're attacking or being attacked.
- Bad sound design. When there's too much crap on the screen, you would expect to be able to tell when you're getting hit, but the sounds are all so similar that you can never tell if it's you or the enemy taking damage.
- No clear rules regarding damage. Some spikes will be one-shot kills, and others will only take some life. Enemy attacks often feel the same.
- The lifebar does not provide clear indication of health. There are three colors: a light green for your health, a darker green for the health that's just been taken off, and a greyed out green for the life you don't have. When you get hit, the light green turns darker green and SLOWLY begins draining downwards. Because you look at a lifebar out of the side of your eye, you can never TELL how much life you have exactly, because of how busy the bar is. To add to the visual clutter, there is a slight animated wavy effect BEHIND it, and a lightly animated glow IN FRONT of it. Just astounding how this can't be two colors, on and off, with a quick flash to indicate what you lost instead of it slowly draining down... This is so overdesigned that it loses sight of its main function.
- The controls don't follow clear rules. For example, when you jump holding RT, the glider will come out. But if you're coming off another action while holding RT, then the glider won't come out. You'll often die because you don't have enough time to react by depressing and pressing the button. There are other confusing controls as well, such as a charge jump done with LT: When you hold it it charges, and if you depress it cancels. But when you're climbing a wall, even if you let go of LT, it will stay active if you're holding a direction. Things like this break the flow and don't allow the action of movement to feel intuitive--they require too much though and calculating.
And these are just some examples.
Ultimately, the game is designed around the idea of trial and error, but the main problem is that the error is usually induced by questionable design decisions. I just couldn't look past these problems.
- Confusing environments. Foreground/background elements are often mixed together and things that look normal end up hurting you.
- Confusing enemy patterns and tells. I can appreciate that each enemy has set patterns, but they are not well telegraphed and their attacks are always just a little varied. They come at you so fast that you will get hit unfairly.
- Too many effects flying around. When the enemies shoot at you, their bullets all mix together. Sometimes things that can't hurt you look a certain color, but things that can hurt you look the same. Attacks mix together and you can't tell if you're attacking or being attacked.
- Bad sound design. When there's too much crap on the screen, you would expect to be able to tell when you're getting hit, but the sounds are all so similar that you can never tell if it's you or the enemy taking damage.
- No clear rules regarding damage. Some spikes will be one-shot kills, and others will only take some life. Enemy attacks often feel the same.
- The lifebar does not provide clear indication of health. There are three colors: a light green for your health, a darker green for the health that's just been taken off, and a greyed out green for the life you don't have. When you get hit, the light green turns darker green and SLOWLY begins draining downwards. Because you look at a lifebar out of the side of your eye, you can never TELL how much life you have exactly, because of how busy the bar is. To add to the visual clutter, there is a slight animated wavy effect BEHIND it, and a lightly animated glow IN FRONT of it. Just astounding how this can't be two colors, on and off, with a quick flash to indicate what you lost instead of it slowly draining down... This is so overdesigned that it loses sight of its main function.
- The controls don't follow clear rules. For example, when you jump holding RT, the glider will come out. But if you're coming off another action while holding RT, then the glider won't come out. You'll often die because you don't have enough time to react by depressing and pressing the button. There are other confusing controls as well, such as a charge jump done with LT: When you hold it it charges, and if you depress it cancels. But when you're climbing a wall, even if you let go of LT, it will stay active if you're holding a direction. Things like this break the flow and don't allow the action of movement to feel intuitive--they require too much though and calculating.
And these are just some examples.
Ultimately, the game is designed around the idea of trial and error, but the main problem is that the error is usually induced by questionable design decisions. I just couldn't look past these problems.