I've seen a lot of negative / disappointed reviews of this game, and while I don't think the criticisms being made of it are untrue, they also seem overly harsh. I thought this was a very fun, engaging, beautiful, and rather flawed Metroidvania.
To start with probably the biggest selling point: the art is gorgeous – I love hand-drawn games when they're done well, and this one had a lot of character. The way swinging your sword, dashing, explosions, electric shocks, etc were represented were all really dynamic and nice to look at. And the sound design worked in tandem with this to help sell the immersion. I got a very Crash Bandicoot or Donkey Kong vibe from this, actually – the way your character bounced, or got electrocuted, or broke boxes or barrels apart, or the way you and your enemies both exploded into gears and bits of machinery upon dying all had this kind of charmingly goofy, cartoonish, arcade game feeling that puts it in a different lineage of platformers from many Metroidvanias.
If you're a fan of Metroidvanias in general, I think you'll find the gameplay and level design to be relatively solid, though not particularly stand-out. The balance of discovery, backtracking, non-linearity, secret areas, etc all felt pretty good to me – there was only one non-essential endgame area I had to look up a map to figure out how to access, but I also never felt like I was being handheld or forced down a single path.
One complaint I've seen is that the environments and enemies feel repetitive. While I think there's definitely a point there, I also wonder how far into the game these reviewers got. There are three areas in total, and certainly the look of each area is distinct. But it also takes waaaaayyyy too long before you get beyond the first area, and I think more could have been done to distinguish the areas through introducing new environmental challenges rather than just different backgrounds. I will say the map could be frustrating, as it didn't give a great representation of the actual spatial relationships in the rooms / actual entrance & exit locations, and doesn't give any indication of where within each room you are.
Likewise, the enemies you encounter as you progress are for the most part souped up versions of the ones you encounter at the beginning of the game, but they're not just lazy palette swaps either – I thought the designers did a good job of finding creative ways of creating variation that necessitated finding different ways of combating them. Still, a little more surprise and variation in that department would have been appreciated. One major disappointment was the lack of bosses: there's only two in the entire game, with 3 or 4 areas where it feels like bosses should be, but which instead are filled with tournament-style arenas with waves of ordinary enemies. I think this probably contributed a lot to many player's feeling of repetitiveness in level and enemy design.
Speaking of combat: here's one area where I really have to defend the game against some of the criticisms I've seen of it. I think a lot of people got frustrated that they couldn't just go running in, wailing on everything in sight and expect to survive. But this isn't that kind of game. You figure out pretty early on that you have to use an attack and retreat method in engaging enemies, learning their attack patterns and then using that to your advantage. The cool down meter that limits the amount of consecutive attacking you can do does a good job in encouraging a more strategic approach to combat. The different varieties of bombs and the different abilities you gain as you progress also add variety to the possible combat styles (though I never really figured out the usefulness of the ice or molotov bombs, and the controls for getting the electric wave/punch to work were frustratingly hit or miss).
I enjoyed the RPG elements: leveling up, a skill tree, gear with various buffs... but I do think this could have been extended further. I wish you were able to see your stat totals outright. And it would have been fun to have debuffs on certain gear and a slightly more elaborate skill tree, with slower leveling, to really force player choice and distinguish more sharply between distinct builds (as it is, I acquired every skill by the end of the game without doing any grinding, and I didn't notice a drastic difference in attempting to min-max different stats).
My main complaints with the game were mostly more subtle design flaws. There wasn't a good indication of leveling up beyond the first time it happened, so I went half the game wondering why I hadn't advanced to level 2 before realizing I'd been leveling up the entire time. It also took me halfway through the game before I realized what the teleporter pads actually were. There were many, many small little things like this – aspects where the player should have been nudged toward understanding something, but the nudge was missing – that individually weren't that big of a deal, but cumulatively made for an often frustrating or confusing experience. What's disappointing is that all of this seems like the kind of thing that could have been fixed with just a few extra months of play-testing.
But really the game's biggest flaw is it's complete and total lack of story, lore, and worldbuilding. There's basically an opening cut-scene, and then you play the game, and then there's a (somewhat anti-climactic) closing cut-scene. I'm not the type of person who plays games for story. I usually don't really care at all. But it would have helped create a sense of purpose, variety, and general color to at least have some NPCs sprinkled throughout that you can talk to. (This would have also been an opportunity to explain certain features.) There was actually some really cool environmental storytelling going on – backgrounds filled with discarded appliances, dinosaur bones, etc – which implied a certain amount of world-building which never gets elaborated on.
So yeah, long story short, this was enjoyable, but not spectacular. If you're into Metroidvanias, and it's on sale, it's worth giving a try imo. Not sure I'd pay full price.
This is supposedly the designers' first game. I think it's a pretty solid effort, and I'm looking forward to what they make next!
To start with probably the biggest selling point: the art is gorgeous – I love hand-drawn games when they're done well, and this one had a lot of character. The way swinging your sword, dashing, explosions, electric shocks, etc were represented were all really dynamic and nice to look at. And the sound design worked in tandem with this to help sell the immersion. I got a very Crash Bandicoot or Donkey Kong vibe from this, actually – the way your character bounced, or got electrocuted, or broke boxes or barrels apart, or the way you and your enemies both exploded into gears and bits of machinery upon dying all had this kind of charmingly goofy, cartoonish, arcade game feeling that puts it in a different lineage of platformers from many Metroidvanias.
If you're a fan of Metroidvanias in general, I think you'll find the gameplay and level design to be relatively solid, though not particularly stand-out. The balance of discovery, backtracking, non-linearity, secret areas, etc all felt pretty good to me – there was only one non-essential endgame area I had to look up a map to figure out how to access, but I also never felt like I was being handheld or forced down a single path.
One complaint I've seen is that the environments and enemies feel repetitive. While I think there's definitely a point there, I also wonder how far into the game these reviewers got. There are three areas in total, and certainly the look of each area is distinct. But it also takes waaaaayyyy too long before you get beyond the first area, and I think more could have been done to distinguish the areas through introducing new environmental challenges rather than just different backgrounds. I will say the map could be frustrating, as it didn't give a great representation of the actual spatial relationships in the rooms / actual entrance & exit locations, and doesn't give any indication of where within each room you are.
Likewise, the enemies you encounter as you progress are for the most part souped up versions of the ones you encounter at the beginning of the game, but they're not just lazy palette swaps either – I thought the designers did a good job of finding creative ways of creating variation that necessitated finding different ways of combating them. Still, a little more surprise and variation in that department would have been appreciated. One major disappointment was the lack of bosses: there's only two in the entire game, with 3 or 4 areas where it feels like bosses should be, but which instead are filled with tournament-style arenas with waves of ordinary enemies. I think this probably contributed a lot to many player's feeling of repetitiveness in level and enemy design.
Speaking of combat: here's one area where I really have to defend the game against some of the criticisms I've seen of it. I think a lot of people got frustrated that they couldn't just go running in, wailing on everything in sight and expect to survive. But this isn't that kind of game. You figure out pretty early on that you have to use an attack and retreat method in engaging enemies, learning their attack patterns and then using that to your advantage. The cool down meter that limits the amount of consecutive attacking you can do does a good job in encouraging a more strategic approach to combat. The different varieties of bombs and the different abilities you gain as you progress also add variety to the possible combat styles (though I never really figured out the usefulness of the ice or molotov bombs, and the controls for getting the electric wave/punch to work were frustratingly hit or miss).
I enjoyed the RPG elements: leveling up, a skill tree, gear with various buffs... but I do think this could have been extended further. I wish you were able to see your stat totals outright. And it would have been fun to have debuffs on certain gear and a slightly more elaborate skill tree, with slower leveling, to really force player choice and distinguish more sharply between distinct builds (as it is, I acquired every skill by the end of the game without doing any grinding, and I didn't notice a drastic difference in attempting to min-max different stats).
My main complaints with the game were mostly more subtle design flaws. There wasn't a good indication of leveling up beyond the first time it happened, so I went half the game wondering why I hadn't advanced to level 2 before realizing I'd been leveling up the entire time. It also took me halfway through the game before I realized what the teleporter pads actually were. There were many, many small little things like this – aspects where the player should have been nudged toward understanding something, but the nudge was missing – that individually weren't that big of a deal, but cumulatively made for an often frustrating or confusing experience. What's disappointing is that all of this seems like the kind of thing that could have been fixed with just a few extra months of play-testing.
But really the game's biggest flaw is it's complete and total lack of story, lore, and worldbuilding. There's basically an opening cut-scene, and then you play the game, and then there's a (somewhat anti-climactic) closing cut-scene. I'm not the type of person who plays games for story. I usually don't really care at all. But it would have helped create a sense of purpose, variety, and general color to at least have some NPCs sprinkled throughout that you can talk to. (This would have also been an opportunity to explain certain features.) There was actually some really cool environmental storytelling going on – backgrounds filled with discarded appliances, dinosaur bones, etc – which implied a certain amount of world-building which never gets elaborated on.
So yeah, long story short, this was enjoyable, but not spectacular. If you're into Metroidvanias, and it's on sale, it's worth giving a try imo. Not sure I'd pay full price.
This is supposedly the designers' first game. I think it's a pretty solid effort, and I'm looking forward to what they make next!