This game is my jam, through and through.

A Tower Defense and Time/Resource Management Game that doesn't fall into all the annoying pitfalls that can happen with either genre. You control the defenses for the Dome, you control how long you want to spend down in the mining area to get resources, you control whether you want to focus on your defenses or yourself to improve things with your resources. There is no, "Did I place the right tower in the right place?" There is a hypothetical, "Did I make the right upgrade?"

But that's the thing -- when you lose, it's 100% on you and you generally know exactly why. There's no replaying the same level over and over and trying a different permutation of weapons or placements to see which ones give you success -- the permutations in this game are decided by you prior to the start of the game and the mining resources are RNG'd down below for the run and you roll with what you get and the order in which building should happen becomes quickly realized (at least with the Engineer, I can't speak on the Assessor yet because I've played all my games as an Engineer so far). You WANT that drill upgrade first while things are easy so you can mine resources faster, you WANT that series of movement upgrades for getting back and forth from the mine to the dome (and potentially with cargo) faster. You WANT gun movement as soon as possible for your laser cannon defenses. And these are things you realize within losing your first game -- or at least, they seemed apparent to me. New worlds didn't feel like places where I needed to lose again in order to win -- it was the same structure with slightly different rules, even when the enemies were different and the relics found were different!

Speaking of, that was a surprise. After my first loss, I went through another run and had the same enemy sets and I thought I knew how all the enemy behaviors worked by the end of Game 2. Then I upscaled to a Medium-sized map and suddenly, I'm 80% of the enemies I'm fighting are completely new ones I haven't seen before.

Upgrades feel distinctly noticeable -- you're very aware of movement increases, damage increases, drilling power increases. All of it feels tangible. I think sound is a major reason that some of these things are noticeable. Resources clink against each other and the ground when you're dragging them around while mining, every laser cannon upgrade sounds angrier instead of just being a wider beam, divebombing enemies screech as they fling themselves down at your shield, and a little buddy that assists you with digging in the mines sometimes can be audibly noticed when actually digging or potentially about to sleep if you're in reasonable proximity to him.

The music is largely relaxing when mining and my brain wasn't really focused on it during combat. Visually, it's nothing remarkable, but I'm here for a Tower Defense-type game, so I'm not exactly begging for quality visuals.

I'd say my only gripes are that (as far as I know) there isn't another character type beyond the Engineer and Assessor, so your permutations are always a bit limited in that regard. I haven't messed around with Prestige Mode yet because I've been unlocking other stuff to play around with in Relic Hunt Mode (the default mode). Also, there's a minor glitch that happens sometimes when you first exit the battle console, where your character will occasionally get stuck in the bottom-right corner of the dome for no particular reason for a second or two. I haven't been able to figure out what elicits that particular behavior, but as soon as you notice it, you just stop trying to move and then start moving again and it's fine.

This review is possibly a bit premature, but given that I'm about to go jump back in for another game right after I finish writing this, I feel confident in what I've experienced so far being a very polished experience. Get it, full price or whenever works for you. Help a dev out, they're still working on updates for the game.

I picked this up because it was tagged as a Metroidvania, and I guess, to an extent, it is.

Area gating definitely happens, but the monster holding the power-ups at least in the first four hours I played happened to be the merchant that wanted to sell you your double jump, triple jump, force cube, and such. I did eventually pick up a few other power-ups on my own through puzzle solving, but a number of them felt extremely optional.

For what it's worth, the puzzles are pretty fun to figure out, but because they're the meat of what this game is, the game really feels more like a puzzle sandbox than anything else. There's combat as well, but combat is pointlessly awful. Sure, it's briefly fun to drop your Force Cube power-up on an enemy or blow them up by spawning it inside of them, but that's like 30 seconds of enjoyment amidst A LOT OF TIME in which you just slash-slash-slash-slash-slash-slash-slash until an enemy is dead because they're in the way of the next puzzle you're heading for...or worse, shooting at you or launching themselves at you to distract you from the puzzle you're working on.

Exploration is simultaneously fun and frustrating because the game is happy to push a triple jump on you fairly early on along with the Force Cube you see in the title image for the game -- basically another free jump that you can spawn beneath you. Exploration is thoroughly encouraged...until it isn't. Sometimes, you can find yourself getting up to places you don't belong and the only real signal is when your body no longer touches the ground you're standing on and proceeds to slide around in a spastic manner. Sometimes, you can get another jump or two out despite this happening, and sometimes you can't. It shouldn't sound like a big deal, but the game also will let you into areas you shouldn't be in at all in certain instances.

I definitely softlocked myself twice by making it onto seemingly easy ledges with my jumps and the cube, only to think I found a secret cave because you could crouch and sneak into the cave like all the other previous crouchy-sneaky caves, but I ended up finding dead ends and could not crouch my way back out of the area I ended up in. Of course, I also used space like this to reach chest loots (usually some attack or regeneration stat power-ups) I shouldn't have been able to access from where I was. The end result is that it's fun when things work and occasionally rather annoying when they don't.

The game seems very reward heavy -- it reminds me a bit of Lootbox Lyfe in that regard, but I had a lot more fun with the power-ups from Lootbox Lyfe, even if it felt a little more linear in terms of exploration at times. I guess the difference between the two for me is that I finished Lootbox Lyfe and this one is going back into the backlog. All the positive reviews I saw on Steam make sense, but this game isn't grabbing me like it grabbed so many other people. If there's a demo, check it out. If you're hard-up for a Metroidvania, this feels like it fits the mold, even if it also feels strongly like nothing more than a puzzle game with monsters that get in the way.

Two things I don't care about: Circuses and the late 1800's. And yet, this game is golden, at least for me.

Bear in mind that I'm terrible about resource management games -- I've never beaten Darkest Dungeon, because I'm really good at being really bad at planning ahead of time. Circus Electrique mostly eschews that, though it's not necessarily apparent at first.

You've got a number of classes, but they generally become available either during the progression of the story or when you've leveled up the Train Station (the location where you hire your new performers). Character classes are interesting enough, but since you can't rework what moves your characters have like you can in Darkest Dungeon, what you see is what you get. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, as this game tends to try and keep things simple.

And on simple, prepping items for your journey is just a matter of having the resources (earned from encounters in the wild on your map paths) and then assigning them right before a battle. Your map for each given district is a sprawling path with multiple options, with each district having more options than before. If you fight a battle, your day ends and reports happen and you get your resources right afterwards and get to go back to the circus to upgrade or unlock or create any stuffs if you're capable of it. Going back out into the wild just puts you right back where you were on the map, so you're free to explore without losing your progress. It's nice in theory, but having the days end right after a battle can get a little tiresome by endgame, because you're often just having one random non-combat encounter in between each encounter and days passing means needing to deal with circus upkeep.

Not that circus upkeep is particularly bad -- you use a certain number of resources each day, and the only dire one is food supply, which you'll inevitably extend as long as you keep fighting things and exploring. You can also trade for food, but the cost mostly isn't worth it. Beyond that, you're putting on shows for people based on whatever open acts you have available. Your characters each have attributes to contribute to the act and if you meet the necessary requirements, those characters you've thrown into the act are off-limits for a day (or 2-4, depending on where you are in the game) and will be earning you rewards by participating. There's no reason not to run an act if you have extra characters available, because it's always extra resources and potential growth of your circus to the next level for more unlocks.

The bosses are probably my favorite part of this game, though they do suffer from being mostly easy compared to some of the random mixed parties you can fight along the way to them. Some bosses are one fixed unit that takes up all four spaces, and some bosses are unique singular units that have three other hench-things in tow to occupy the usual four slots, a la your Darkest Dungeon combat.

Gripes? Although I like the aesthetic, I wish more had been done with the music -- it's pleasant enough, but you're going to be hearing the same three or four tracks over and over and over and they're not long enough to warrant how much you're exposed to them.

Also, some of the control behaviors are a little weird -- I was playing on a gamepad and moving on the map between locations requires using the right analog stick to move because the left one is dedicated to setting your party and items up on the fly. But there's nothing really stopping just using a button to tab between the two menus, so it's a little cumbersome.

Finally, you've got a lot going on with positive and negative mental states and various kinds of buffs and debuffs and although the Information button is useful, it's a bit of a hassle to move through everything and some things aren't even explained -- I spent part of a run wondering if I was dealing with a bug because my characters were blazing through combat. Turned out that I had accidentally activated x2 speed on the gamepad and never realized it because I heard a sound that blended in with the rest of the action in the game and dismissed it as such.

Finally, the story's a bit of a nothingburger. It's not necessarily bad, but it's spread out through interviews throughout each district in the game and the portioning leaves something to be desired, because it's more of just "another thing in-between combats to deal with" instead of a particularly interesting investment of attention.

I engaged in a few of the side-fights that were available and one wave-based fight, and my total time from start to completion was roughly 21 hours. Repetition of fights aside, it's probably one of the more enjoyable purchases I've made in the last few years, so I'd say it's worth it at 19.99 new. Worst case scenario, wait for a sale on your preferred platform and get it at a steal. If you like these kinds of games, you'll definitely get some mileage on it and of course, there's postgame.

First, this game is still in Early Access on Steam.

Second, there are mobile versions of this game for free, but they're built around paying your way to getting a faster accruing of wealth and experience to unlock more things.

With that out of the way, I really dig this game. As Roguelike Deckbuilders go, it just somehow finds a way to be exactly my jam. Deckbuilding feels truly thematic and independent of the characters you play as, though you can use their abilities to help break open your own deck ideas pretty easily.

The game is very particular about making sure you have an understanding of what's going on by piecing out each aspect of the game. Your first several runs will only be one area in length, as the game gives you a chance to learn its environment and unlock a few extra goodies to help make the real trips more fruitful. This is both a blessing and a curse, because anyone who wants to take their time and see all that the game has to offer is in for a treat, but anyone that wants to dive deep into the meat of the game to try and unlock postgame stuffs is going to be disappointed by having to take Guild Hall quests over and over to unlock each major area of the game and the Depth challenges that come with them.

If you're looking for challenge as deckbuilders go, you might have to self-impose when building your initial deck or save up wealth in the game to unlock the postgame content that alters some aspects of gameplay.

Gaining various types of wealth to unlock stuff is a bit of a slog, and is clearly a product of the mobile version, though the Steam version that I played does significantly raise the amount gained in runs to try and make up for this. But between characters, postgame modifiers, general upgrades for future runs, and even unlocking "packs" of cards, there's a lot available, of which you gain little after even the most successful of runs.

I don't mind doing a single run now and then to just make a little more progress because the deckbuilding just really feels right. There's a bug involving some achievements not unlocking until the next time you start up the game, but that's not exactly the worst thing in the world. I do also wish that it was a bit easier to tell the rarity of cards just by looking at them (it wasn't apparent to me) and that the mechanic for "Sort By" for your deck editor had a memory function to it so that it didn't always default back to a sort option you have no interest in using. There's also no controller support currently, and I don't know what the intentions are of the devs on potentially porting it to consoles to justify controller additions. Hopefully, it happens.

The final update for the game that will include more content for the official release is supposed to be coming up in the next few months, so if you're hard up on deckbuilders and want to really mess around with something fun, maybe consider giving it a go if you're on Steam. 15 bucks feels like it's in just the right price range for this game.

Short answer: It's a mixed bag of a game, with an open world that could feel fantastic but mostly just feels like sparsely populated locales with the same rotational stuff from one location transposed over another.

I'll try and avoid significant spoilers and mark where they are as necessary.

The game definitely has its moments -- there's a huge charm to Hogwarts (and to Hogsmeade, to a lesser extent), with lots of things that feel right at home in the HP universe making themselves known in both brazen and subtle ways.

I think that once I got to Hogwarts, I spent probably near four hours just wandering around and searching out all the experiences there are to find -- some of which come courtesy of a guidebook that's supposed to help your character out with their time in Hogwarts for this particular school year. The charm hits hard in the school and the promise of learning some really slick spells and putting them into practical application (read as: getting rid of baddies and solving puzzles) becomes tantalizing.

Once you've chosen to undertake the quests necessary to get yourself out of the school and gradually begin arming yourself with spells, combat seems like it might be an enterprising challenge that could make for a grand experience. Some enemies protect themselves with certain barriers, and you need to use spells relative to that barrier type to null the barrier in order to damage them, which complicates an enemy duel in an interesting way, as you need to be properly prepared to dispatch your enemy. But that's where the fun ends at with combat.

Spells do enough different stuff that they warrant being their own spell identity, but the damage spells definitely feel like damage spells and the "status" spells (for a lack of a better name for stuff that impedes your enemies) feel like more cleverly usable damage spells. But when you're fighting a number of enemies, some of which might have different barriers up, you're going to largely be focused on just casting the right color-grouped spell to disable an enemy and try and wail on that enemy while dodging other enemies before the one you're working on throws a barrier back up again. It's serviceable, if not a little annoying because the game seems to love throwing numerous enemies at you at once (this was on Normal difficulty for me, I don't know if enemy presence is more or less on Hard or the easier difficulties), so you're just committed to doing maintenance in battle instead of really engaging in experimenting with spells in fun ways. Or maybe that's just me!

Enemies scale with your level in all encounters I've had with the exception of one of the earliest main story quests, so there's no grinding levels to overpower your enemies as far as I can tell. Levels are basically HP and Talent Points, the latter of which can be used to mostly bolster spells and their effects, though one of those talent branches is quite busted.

Equipment loots can be acquired by searching locales or by defeating enemies, and loot has its own level to it and is nearly always found at the same level as you or one level higher, with stats generally around the same stats as what you already have, though maybe slightly higher or lower. You're always going to be roughly where you should be with encounters you happen upon, even without upgrading your equipment, unless you travel to certain parts of the world earlier, as enemies in certain parts of the world seem to have higher levels in order to discourage exploration before you're ready to go to said areas.

The worst thing about enemies is something that I think shouldn't be spoilered because people should know this -- there are very few enemy types, so with the meat of the game being focused on combat or just uncovering puzzles in tombs or Hogwarts or anywhere else, you're going to see a lot of repetition in short order once you get your freedom. Yes, the enemy typings come in multiple flavors, but they're not nearly diverse enough to overcome the fact that they really are just...more of the same thing. Even with specialized enemies you're treated to, you get a little profile notice that they're a unique enemy, but they look just like everyone else and might have a minor quirk about their combat tactics, but it's really just the same fight as everything else you've done, with one extra flourish involved, generally.

I encountered several bosses and I may have cheesed some of them with a very brutal one-shot tactic, but the major ones where I couldn't do that with were mostly just larger versions of enemies you've already seen with 1-2 extra moves based on the progression of the boss fight.

If you're searching for side-objectives just to complete, the game has you covered with so many options, but that's the main reason you're incentivized to wander the countryside. Because once you really travel around, you start noticing how insignificant other hamlets are as you discover them -- my favorite point to this is my character making the same "it's right out of a storybook" comment each time I enter one and in the case of a particular quest that had me traveling to each hamlet to acquire a particular item, I realized that some of them had VERY similar plots for how the hamlets were laid out.

Speaking of characters and their commentary, people are personable enough when you're introduced to them, but there are a couple lamentable overlaps -- first, you get to meet some seemingly unique characters in different hamlets or other locations, but they're almost always the exact same merchant types, so you get little variety in what you're purchasing from them, which makes them a bit less interesting beyond just asking them about what's going on in the local areas. Second, there's a weird issue with character models when talking, where between each sentence, their face reverts to the base character model "neutral" expression, which can lead to some very hilarious facial changes in conversations, which can really take you out of the moments.

High points for me?

Customizing the Room of Requirement whenever you unlock that is fun -- I went with a look that reminded me of Raya Lucaria from Elden Ring.

Also, I had a character at one point go, "There's something strange going on around here," and as she did, she rose about one foot off the ground and the table she was leaned against, which made her statement both hilarious and factual in the moment.

Exploring Hogwarts and its general grounds is a grand time and unlocking fast travel points (Floo Flames) makes the exploration feel extremely rewarding, especially given the the number of side quests you're thrown later on in the game as it finds ample opportunity to go, "Hey, have one more spell that may or may not have any impact on puzzles but will definitely be a separate option to ruin your same seven or eight enemy groups!"

Someone said it felt like an Ubisoft open-world game, and I kinda get that. For me, it's that Ubisoft level of open-worldness, but with a weaker WB-oriented combat system than Middle Earth or the Batman games. It feels very much like a game that belongs in the WB portfolio and if those games are your jam and you like the Harry Potter universe, it's probably a good fit for you and worth your time to check out. A friend gifted me this game and I was initially super-stoked to check it out, but I can't imagine buying it at full price with what I know now, as it just never felt like it kept my interest beyond that initial exploration of Hogwarts. I wasn't nearly as excited when I first left the grounds because it became very apparent that there just wasn't much variety in what you'd find when you started trying to dig deep into the exploratory side of the game. It's just a big world with some points that exist that you need to visit for reasons, and a lot of those points already reside in the two major areas of the game and the ones that don't, often have similar areas that feel somewhat copy-pasted, from hamlets to tombs.

How's that one spell go? Caveatus emptorum? I'm sure it's something like that.

Wow, what a mess of a game. Where to even start?

I'll take the blame on not changing my control scheme after realizing how weird it was that Aim was L1 or L2, Fire was Square, and Reload was R2 on a DS4 controller.

There's no map, so everything's largely off memory, but the structure design for at least the first chapter is so very linear -- when there are multiple branching paths, there's really only one way to go.

The puzzles for the game amount to "find item or log book with code, use item or code to proceed".

Enemies that I encountered were...bad. Zombies don't care until you're within three feet of them (except for when they respawn later on the second floor of a building for no reason and suddenly run despite being the same models), the Short Hunters (they quite literally look like Hunters that are half your height) behave in a similar fashion. You can largely stunlock enemies with your weapons, leaving them defenseless while you knock them back out of your range just slightly while unloading 7-8 bullets to kill them (headshots don't matter).

The real charmer moment is when you realize that if you're within about a 60 degree angle of an enemy, you can hit them with the Fire button without ever turning toward them. Why, yes, I did shoot at one uncaring zombie that was on my left and then kept shooting to my left to hit a zombie at the bottom of the screen that didn't care about its zombie friend being hit.

Item usage is clunky, with everything requiring you to select it from your inventory, even if it could just auto-use a key item in the correct place or give you a save prompt if you have a Floppy Disk in your inventory. Safe rooms are safe rooms, with the usual chest full of your previous items present, as from the Resident Evil games this episodic dumpster fire attempts to emulate.

I mostly gave up when I died because the situation was laughable -- with your meager inventory space, you're expected to know which guns are worth bringing with you based on ammo you're expected to get. The problem is, without knowing what's ahead of you, it's easy to keep getting weapons and have no actual ammo for them.

I had a handgun, I STORED a shotgun because of lack of ammo, I had an Assault Rifle-of-sorts that I never saw rounds for, and I picked up a Grenade Launcher. I was carrying some extra handgun ammo because I didn't have any extra spares (other than some grenade rounds before I got the Grenade Launcher). I also brought one healing item just in case.

I work my way a couple rooms down with one spare slot in my inventory after taking a few hits and using a painkiller for one of the rare times where an enemy was able to connect on me. I go in, level the big monster (that doesn't do anything just like the not-Hunters and zombies), pick up painkillers...and discover that without inventory slots, I can't pick up the key (or the Magnum) in the room.

And this is where the game is really brilliant -- you cannot use healing items on yourself at full health, nor you cannot drop items if they have no use for you. In order to pick up the key, I have to unload the remaining eight spare bullets I have in my regular gun so I can reload my last bit of ammo and free up a slot. I skip on the Magnum because I have no room, head back two rooms...and am trapped in a room where I'm required to beat another big enemy, but I'm out of Grenade Launcher ammo, so I'm just firing my handgun until I'm empty. The doors just "jammed", so I'm forced to eat a death because I don't have a close-combat weapon or precognition to not bring the Assault Rifle and bring the Grenade Launcher rounds instead. Whoops.

The Magnum's probably good for this instance too, but I'm already frustrated that in order to die to the enemy that killed me, I had to wait about a minute because it kept running away, crouching down like it forgot what it was doing, then finally running back again just to swat me once before repeating the process.

You get achievements for dying -- four of them, one for each time you die. So, I reloaded and just went over to the not-Hunter room nearby and died three more times. Fun fact: you find anti-poison items throughout the game, but even when the not-Hunters spit poison on you or the not-poison-zombies do the same (yes, they exist, they just look like zombies with weird green particle effects surrounding them and behave like a combination of zombies and not-Hunters)...you never get poisoned. NEVER. ZERO TIMES.

So, I died three more times, got those trophies, and already have 70% of the trophies for the game, with two of them just being about killing enough enemies, one asking you to heal ten times (good luck with that), and one asking you to complete Battle Mode, something I didn't even want to bother with.

And...that's Outbreak in a nutshell. I easily could have continued from where I was and finished the first chapter in the episodic set that may or may not relate the chapters at all, but it was such a mess that I didn't want to waste more time on it. Other fun fact: the Volume button does allow you to adjust the volume, but doesn't actually do anything for how the volume sounds. It's always the same, no matter how high or low you go.

Skip it. Please, skip it. It uses standard controls that are relative to where the camera's facing, but aiming controls relative to where the player is facing and will invert movement automatically on camera changes. What a dumpster fire. I'm hard-pressed to give it even one star, but at least the environments looked okayish.

There's nothing to see here, just move on. You deserve better.

It's fine. All the Portal and Talos Principle comparisons feel apt, along with Q.U.B.E. if anyone wanted to go there while we're at it. It doesn't do anything new, it doesn't do anything specifically stand-out -- it's like a C-student equivalent that's just here to get credits and move on from gaming college, with hopes to be something greater someday. Don't we all desire to be a greater game than we are?

Also, shout-outs to getting softlocked in one of the side-puzzle rooms because I solved the camera puzzle but when I came back out to the room, the door would not stay open long enough for me to get into the room so I could head back to the main area because the game shifted the blocks I dropped so they were only partially obscuring the camera. At least it was a quick effort to restart the area outside of the puzzle room after already getting the trophy for it.

The game's a bit of a mess, but in a mostly positive way. I found this game because I was searching for Metroidvanias, but let me be absolutely clear -- THIS IS NOT A METROIDVANIA, NOT EVEN SLIGHTLY.

Exploration of areas involves some really shoddy level design concepts in which some particular rooms are stitched together, but have no real identity to them and it seems like their presence is simply based on randomization for the given area. In those rooms, you'll usually have to defeat a bunch of enemies to move to the next room, and occasionally there's a hidden location you can check out to get some more free weapons and such.

You work your way through all those rooms and eventually you get to a boss and then you complete the chapter. Repeat four more times, more or less.

There's an upgrade system, but it's fairly rudimentary and some abilities are so much more apparent as useful than others.

Weapons and equipment vary drastically and are found in a loot system concept similar to most Diablo clones. The good news is that the weapons have a healthy variety to them in terms of gameplay and you can find yourself experimenting with a lot of stuff (with a limited inventory space) to try and find the piece of equipment that works best for you in each slot. Synthesis exists for trying to get more stuff you might want, but it's randomized, and crafting requires you to store items you might want to use for crafting ingredients later because your inventory space is just too shallow to hold onto them actively.

Bosses are a fun time and if you can do a little searching in a few levels, you might find some particularly difficult bosses in some side areas. It looks like I missed one of the areas, which is a shame, because this really is the high point of the game.

The story's okay, but falls apart if you start thinking about it too much. When your game is self-aware enough to refer to someone's speech as "just the villain's monologue", you probably shouldn't be expecting too much.

Soundtrack is strangely both solid and forgettable -- I remember liking certain tracks a lot when I was in some particular areas, but now that I try to recall what they sounded like and even which areas they were, it's eluding me.

There is a NG+ (and an achievement for beating NG+ twice), but I don't know anything about what's in NG+ beyond keeping whatever upgrades and equipment you already have.

The game's probably good for a dozen hours of time and at 15 bucks, you could definitely do worse. If the level design had actual connectivity (you can revisit chapter areas, but there's very little reason to unless you're going for collectibles or more resource grinding), the game would be an absolute recommendation but as it stands, it's a gameloaf that doesn't have a particularly strong identity in any direction, other than that it's good at providing some fun bosses to tackle. If that's what you're looking for, then maybe consider investing in the game to get some substantial experience. If not, definitely look elsewhere for better mash-ups of genres/subgenres.

I'm not going to really speak on glitch/bug issues I had with the game, as I think most of them were attributed to me using an HDD instead of an SSD to play it and a number of things didn't load in quickly (or in some rare cases, at all). It was specified in the requirements that playing on an HDD might yield some quirky things. If anything, I'd rather praise the dev team for making a game that my potato rig can run on Medium for settings without much in the way of framerate drops.

As for the game itself -- well, I didn't think much of the original, and although there are improvements to this iteration, they just weren't enough to really make me feel fulfilled.

I think that I have a monkey brain and a lizard brain. When I'm playing Silent Hill games and a puzzle comes up, monkey brain comes along and tries to figure out how the pieces fit into the holes and I'm fine with this because it's a slow survival horror game and the tension and creep are supposed to build on you over time. When I'm playing an action-based horror game like Dead Space, my lizard brain kicks in and goes, "Me want shooty things" and I...shooty things. When you interrupt my shooty things moments with obtuse puzzles that kill the pacing, lizard brain just goes, "why am not doing the shooty things?" And I just go shrug-emote. Neither of us are satisfied, but we both do the puzzle so we can get back to shootying things.

Is it scary? Well, according to some friends that have been playing it, it's terrifying to them. I wouldn't take my opinion on it because when stuff jumps out, I just aim for the area and spray with no hesitation or concern. I'm not cool, calm, and collected -- I just don't seem to have that proper switch for fear unless it's spiders because spiders are awful.

Spoiler alert: There are no spiders in Dead Space. GOOD.

Everyone else seems to like it, so I'd say that if you want to play an action-horror game, you may as well jump on it. NG+ is supposed to have a new ending, so that's also a thing for previous players who are on the fence. That's all I've got.

It's...fine. For like eight bucks, you get a decent amount of gameplay that's mediocre platforming in a Zelda 2 styling. The biggest issue is that it's just way too easy to just not know where to find a vital component you're looking for or to miss a trigger of some sort.

At one point, I went through a palace and saw a passage I couldn't reach with platforming, but decided to see if I could use one of my abilities to sneak around up to it. I failed, but I found an invisible platform to stand on. A couple jumps later and I'm up to the passage. I go in, drop down, do one of the standard dream sequence deals the game has when you find books, and then leave.

It's only later when I'm stuck on an area and forced to watch a speedrun to figure out why I can't progress that I discover that I wasn't supposed to go to that location until after I picked up a different item and essentially caused a sequence break, so the individual that was supposed to give me an item hadn't shown up yet.

Yeah, that's the kind of stuff that can happen in here. The game has its moments, but it's mostly just an okay experience that pads its time out based on your inability to know exactly where to go next without visiting a fortune teller. I logged ten hours, but I imagine that someone with a guide could do the game in a couple or so. I'd just wait for a sale if you're going to pick it up unless you're really hard up on Metroidvanias. You can do better.

There's potential here, but the game design is just a mess of concepts that essentially amount to "let's be different for the sake of being different" without regard for how the design impedes fun or potential fun.

Observations:

-- Like walking/running and aiming? Not in this game. Hold a button to stand still and aim and hope you're not shaky with your analog stick, because weak spots receive more damage.

-- If you use your gun for too long, it overheats and your range and amount of damage output decrease. The tradeoff is that whatever melee weapon you have deals extra damage during this time. This will last for a limited time before the weapon cools down and you're back to firing your gun for damage again. What about enemies that excel at ranged attacks or proximity attacks? What about enemies that are strong against one type of attack and not the other? Answer: if they exist, too bad, suck it up and waste time using the other weapon form.

-- On one hand, I want to praise the exploration that the game allows for, since there's a lot of winding paths that loop back on each other but plenty of nooks and crannies to go for. On the other, the map doesn't even list legitimate passages in a number of places and gating is based on abilities you find in random places that aren't necessarily obvious.

-- Although I don't care much about signposting, this game is terrible about it outside of when you first accept the main quest of the game and are given five general directions to go in. You are advised to take on a certain one first, but you can theoretically reach each of the other ones if you just wander around aimlessly and find all the necessary gated abilities for a given area.

-- I don't mind that the Souls system is present (they even define your level as "SL #" after the Souls system) and I don't mind the modules that essentially feel like the charm system from Hollow Knight. If something works, why not borrow it and find a way to logically incorporate it into your game. We don't ask car manufacturers to find alternatives for wheels or side-view mirrors, so I don't see the problem in devs working with something that's a functional system.

-- The missile subweapon is just so much more appealing than any other one I found, especially once you're used to miserably standing still while aiming. It's also considered a gated ability needed for progression, so it feels like it's mandatory to have it at the ready anyway.

-- The real sadness for this game is in the main quest to retrieve some stuff and bring it back to a base. For what I can only assume are story-based reasons, you cannot fast travel from the location where you acquire one of the vital parts. You have to trudge back a good 20-30 minutes to the base because...because. You also can't opt to go hunt down another part because the game explicitly tells you as much -- if you beat a boss and grab a part, you're stuck with the part and the long walk back and you just have to shrug your shoulders and suck up doing a pointlessly long walk for...reasons.

The lattermost point I listed above REALLY took me out of the game. I don't want to spend an extra 2-3 hours of walking back to base just to satisfy some random dev need. It doesn't bring me joy, it doesn't keep me invested -- I'd just rather be doing anything else. It's great that you added in some new monsters on the way back; still not interested.

I found two bosses before giving up and the second one seemed like it could be fun to try and figure out, but after getting through the first boss on the first try, my interest in knowing I'm stuck with four more walks back is zero, I'm done. At least the MC has an appealing personality I can get behind.

Although it's an improvement over the original in a number of ways (and the hookshot is glorious fun), exploration largely being tied to just a vertical downward path with some minor branches now and then keeps it from ever really feeling like my kind of Metroidvania.

It's fun enough, it's short (and definitely skimps on the boss fights), and the City Theme is some of the most chill music ever and I could just have it on for hours if I wanted to just lay back and relax.

It's 20 bucks, and I can't really justify recommending it at that price, but the good news is that there's sales fairly often for it (Steam's Winter Sale has it at 75% off right now, or 5 bucks). For 5-10 bucks, it's a fun time, especially just for the minor sequence breaking you can do if you get creative, and if you're a completionist that really wants to do all the challenge caves just to take on the Ultimate Trial (I didn't enjoy the game THAT MUCH).

I know there's a lot going on in this game beyond my experience with it because I had to look at some guides and see just how much I missed.

The most important thing to state about this game is that it's hard. Very hard. You could mitigate this by messing with the Accessibility options to give yourself invincibility and/or infinite jumps to pad the difficulty, but I'd recommend at least trying to get through areas until you're feeling absolutely stuck by some of the platforming/Castlevania-ish feel before considering messing with these things, because I feel like the devs really went out of their way to try and ease you into each ability learned or hazard presented as naturally as possible.

There's a morality system that's mostly interesting, albeit minorly frustrating because it's sometimes less than obvious as to which choice you should make if you're trying to play good or evil with your character. This can be a problem if you're like me because you thought that sparing a particular character might have been a good thing, but it ended up being a negative action further down the line that locked me out of further quests in order to get the best Good-Aligned ending. Whoops!

Bosses were mostly a great time (including some of the optionals I got to fight), though I could do without Alastor, The Hopeless -- and the infinite platforming while VERY SLOWLY whittling my way through that fight.

Money gains feel more grindy than experience gains, but maybe that's just me. All items feel like they're worth the grind in the end, though -- every bit of power or magic or healing slots or whatnot feels like it counts.

MINOR SPOILER NOTE START
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Music's solid, the obvious nods to the games that inspired it are wonderful, the secret endings are a fun time to get (consider sleeping five times in a row in the first inn when you unlock the ability to do so), and there's even alternate / secret characters to play as (try the Konami code on the title screen when you're done playing the regular game).
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MINOR SPOILER NOTE END

20 bucks on Steam feels like a reasonable price for the content I haven't even gotten to touch in the game yet, though I feel like a guide is mandatory if you're intending to unlock some of the endings, because it really is that easy to get locked into a mistake, especially once you unlock this game's equivalent of Fast Travel and discover some particular quests that you must decide on the spot to undertake or not.

On sale, the game would be a steal for anyone looking for a challenging platformer throwback with creative boss fights and that massive nostalgia creep. If you don't mind slamming your head against some brick wall difficulty moments, this is a gem that should not be overlooked. I might have to revise my nominees for 2022 games on here.

Can a Metroidvania be a little too simple? For me, that's the case with Transiruby.

I really enjoy the graphics -- color choices contrast well so there's a lot of eye candy going on and pixelated art feels crisp.

The music is catchy enough, but very limited in tracks. I'm particularly fond of the music from the second area of the game, as it reminds me a bit of Wonderboy in Monster World's opening music that's a reprisal of Mecha Dragon's Castle.

In theory, there's a lot of exploration, but also...there's actually not. Progression in the game is made by collecting these mini-chips -- and when you have enough, you can open a door to another area...with more chips. But also, there's a lot of one-shot gating items located here and there between worlds, so a lot of time is spent going back and forth between worlds with your one new item, just so you can open up one more door or start one more platform to progress to the next mini-area full of chips in the major area before one of those checkpoint doors.

On controls in general, they're extremely precise and movement feels absolutely golden when traversing platforms.

Combat is way too easy -- it's just swinging your blade by repeatedly pressing the Sword button, occasionally choosing to down-swing if you want to plunge onto enemies. You can also fire shots at smaller enemies -- you use this a lot for freezing enemies so you can either get life back occasionally from kills or to have them function as stepping stones for climbing. Enemies die REALLY easily to the downward plunge attack.

Bosses are a joke. The patterns are especially simple, and inevitably you get an obvious opening where you take a huge chunk of their health with an appropriate stab. Most damage you deal when their weaknesses aren't exposed is insignificant and just used to charge your gun, which you can't normally use on bosses anyway.

The thing is, even with the bosses and enemies being fairly pedestrian, you might occasionally die (especially if you discover how very much you can't swim as a robot-girl). But it's not really a big deal, as the game is very proactive in maintaining your progress to the best of its ability -- you die, you spawn at either the last key item you picked up, the last save point, or even the last optional item you picked up. Save points are practically irrelevant unless you're trying to be extra careful. Die to a boss? Get dropped outside the boss room with full health. In fact, the save points don't heal you, so it's generally more useful to just take a death after the game autosaves your progress because you get full health and full EP for your gun on respawn.

The game is just a continuous treading and retreading of the same ground while picking up chips to make progress and if that's your jam (the retreading -- everyone loves chips), then you'll probably dig it. But without a sense of challenge, it's hard to really appreciate the game beyond the fact that it's short and sweet -- I can't see it taking more than eight hours for a first-time player.

One weird thing worth noting -- in order to quit the game, you have to go to the option menu while in-game, choose to return to the title screen, then go to the option menu in the title screen, then choose to quit the game. What a strange place to allow the user to exit the game from.

I believe it's priced at 14.99 on Steam. I can't recommend it at that price, but if you see it on sale for 50% off, you could definitely do worse than to kill a few very easy hours with some catchy music. I'd rate it higher, but it just didn't do anything for me.

Let me get the gripes out of the way before I gush, because they're bothersome enough that I feel like they're worth mentioning.

-- I'm not a fan of tying the Horizontal and Vertical Dash upgrades to the same button, because it's very easy to accidentally tilt slightly up while in movement and V-Dash when you totally meant to H-Dash, and consequently end up falling flat on your face or eating boss damage like it's candy. Maybe that's a controller-only issue, I don't know. I just know it happened to me enough times that it was significantly noticeable.

-- Despite the game sometimes holding your hand about the general idea of where to go, there are some subsections of the station that can be a bit of a pain to navigate or to be certain where you need to go to get there. Hard to really complain here, since I love exploration, but if I know I'm in the right area and I'm still having trouble figuring out how to progress, maybe the pathing could be a little better.

-- Putting a kill-plane right below a boss for an area you're expected to drop down to is just garbo. Especially if you haven't gotten the "Cheat My Face Off" power-up to make your movement nice and easy.

-- The woodland biome had a couple branches that felt like actual ledges when they weren't. Minor frustration, but it happened enough times that I felt like noting it.

With that out of the way, let's talk about why this game is some solid gold.

The boss design is pretty good in most cases (assuming you're playing on Normal -- on Easy, you can probably tank most of the bosses in a run without much grief). There's some optional bosses in the main game that will also be more than happy to take you to task if you can reach them.

Power-ups feel significant and it's very easy to see how they impact your movement through the world. The hookshot is a little cumbersome at first, but once you get a handle on your angles, it's amazing fun to just launch yourself into the air off a well-timed use of it. The game also does an excellent job of really getting you used to using these abilities, because you'll absolutely need them by the end of the game.

General world design is clever, with lots of hidden passages for you to wander into -- some are obvious, some are not, and some will leave you scratching your head as to what the point of them is, at first.

And that leads us to where the real shine of this game is -- the postgame. The postgame asks you to beat those main game optional bosses and make sure you've got all the power-ups you need, then gives you the opportunity to use them to navigate some hellish area designs that result in even more optional boss encounters and several additional endings. Clues are scattered all over the station while you're playing the main game -- veritable hints to let you know that something more significant is going on. Frankly, I'd recommend a guide for the postgame because it's just that overwhelming of a level of exploration.

Beyond that, the music's pleasant, the graphics are rough but work well enough that you're largely able to appreciate everything that's going on without having to squint to figure out what's what in a retro-looking game.

In short, the game has a few drawbacks that keep it from being in my personal pantheon of the best of Metroidvanias, but if you're looking for a solid one, it's well worth it to pick this up at full price -- a whopping eight bucks. You could always keep an eye out for a sale, though -- as I write this, the Steam Winter Sale is going on and the game has been discounted 60%, down to $3.19 USD. If you're a fan of Metroidvanias, do this dev a solid and support them because they definitely earned it with ESA.