Haak (2022)

this game's sidequest system is strangely back-loaded despite being open from the start.

like the first quest-giver you meet is like "hey collect 5 of these for 50 coins" "now kill 8 of these enemies in the second area for 100 coins" "now find this guy who is hidden in the final zone of the game and can only be reached when you have the final upgrade, for 200 coins"

Okay, yeah, no, I'm definitely not supposed to have been able to do this. I just found the Alien Spaceship right after reaching the Brain Lab for the first time. You can't approach the Alien's base at all because of these giant orbs that shoot you as soon as you're in their sight cone. But I was able to time it just right to hit the other one with my whip, then it vaporizes me, you respawn (enemies HP doesn't reset!), I hit it again etc, a bunch of times until it finally died. Then when I go and do the next cutscene, I get this:

(spoiler) https://imgur.com/1Qvv93w

because obviously the game thinks the only way you could be getting this cutscene is if you killed the robot.

This is what makes me think all my "sequence breaks" are not intentional! Hell, even in the lab above, there seemed to be a thing where you had to solve a password, but I just went in using the one-way gate on the other side, again by hitting it from the other side with my Sword Wave. It honestly feels like the Wave upgrade was added later in development and they didn't realize how many switches hidden behind walls/doors it breaks.

I still feel kinda proud that I'm finding ways to break the game but idk it feels really janky.

this game has so many things that i can't tell if i'm "supposed to" be able to do. like there are charge-attack walls that are placed on ledges that are just out of reach that you're not supposed to be able to reach with your charge attack but i just inch as far as i can and it barely makes it. or a wall behind a ledge with an electric field that you're supposed to not be able to hit through but i can land exactly on the ledge without the electricity hitting me so i can get my attack off.

i feel silly for wondering about this because like, if you can figure out cool tricks to get ahead, that's usually satisfying? but it doesn't really feel intended because this game is pretty unpolished so it makes me wonder if the devs just programmed the stuff badly.

there's also lots of switches that are behind gates, intended to be one-way gates obviously, but if you're gotten the wave upgrade to extend your sword attacks you can just hit them through the gate. i think i skipped the whole dark section of the brewery by using this to get directly to the boss. again, maybe it's planned, maybe it's cool that you can use the hidden wave ability to take shortcuts, but it's weird design to let me just skip a whole area so it doesn't... feel planned.