This does, however, charge $10 for a game with only 3-4 hours of playtime, which I found a bit steep. So it does work for providing a sense of progression, even if it could have broken up the basic strategy more. While it does make the fights very similar, the boss does gain new abilities each time, and your own abilities let you counter attacks you were helpless against in previous fights. I’m ambivalent about there only being one boss fought repeatedly throughout the game.
There also really should have been a way to toggle the Solar Flare with a single button - having to go into the menu every time made an otherwise-fun upgrade really tedious. I somehow managed to beat the game missing half the health upgrades. And there are unmarked secret passages, hooray. Movement upgrades made repeat trips quicker and easier, but the backtracking still smacked of padding. The planet-hopping was an interesting concept, but I mostly just found it frustrating because of how spread out the upgrades were - you frequently go into a planet, get an upgrade, hit a wall, and then have to trek all the way back to your ship to explore a new planet.
It has two central gimmicks: One is that it takes place over four (very tiny) planets, the other is that you can move between the background and foreground in certain areas to access different parts of levels. A wider camera might have helped prevent me from instinctively thinking there was something worthwhile just out of my sight.Ī sci-fi Metroidvania. My only criticism is that the levels did feel a bit too simple, especially in the early game, and they also felt quite empty, as there are no secrets or alternate routes despite the levels being quite expansive. The game keeps coming up with new mechanics throughout its whole span, so it never got stale for me. This creates an interesting see-saw effect where objects that can hinder you in one context can help you in another. I thought the gameplay was quite good, though! The central mechanic is that there are various energy sources in the levels that can increase either your speed or your jumping height, but if you gain too much in one direction you die.
I think it also would have benefited from proper visual novel-style text narration, as the graphics are very limited and it can be hard to tell what’s going on sometimes. (Their last-ditch plan to turn the wealthiest districts into an escape pod while leaving everyone else to die was on-point, though.) I suppose I respect that they didn’t allow a deus ex machina last minute fix ending, but it still makes the whole thing feel pretty bleak. In particular, I felt the villains weren’t accurate to their real-world counterparts - they genuinely don’t realize that they’re destroying the world, which is far too generous of a portrayal. I found the writing pretty bland, and I saw every twist and moral coming a mile off. Inside: Even the Ocean, Xenodrifter, Gato Roboto, RONIN.Ī story-heavy puzzle platformer about an environmental crisis. Some Metroidvanias and some more standard platformers.