Review zachbrownies 2/5 · Feb 14, 2019
I thought the game was fun, but not particularly compelling.
The level design feels a bit haphazard - there aren't many notable design choices, and many rooms feel a bit random. When things split into multiple paths, it often feels aimless. And the layout of rooms with lots of jumping and scattered blocks can feel a bit random.
The enemies …
I thought the game was fun, but not particularly compelling.
The level design feels a bit haphazard - there aren't many notable design choices, and many rooms feel a bit random. When things split into multiple paths, it often feels aimless. And the layout of rooms with lots of jumping and scattered blocks can feel a bit random.
The enemies seem to range from too simple, to frustrating. The ground-based enemies will often just stand in front of you and let you hit them without any strategy needed. But there are flying enemies which were much harder to hit, and more annoying to deal with.
The boss fights are also strangely simple. I was never at risk of dying in them. If you fight with your sword, they're sort of challenging, but spells work really well, and I never came close to running out of mana.
The item system wasn't particularly interesting. I never had to buy any bombs or mana, but I never ran out. You can buy the various weapon types, but I just chose my favourite and stuck to that. They were all very similar anyway. There are upgrades you can buy, but it never felt satisfying to get new ones. The sub-weapon system is nice, but I almost always stuck with the same spell once I figured out my favourite. You don't really need to use sub-weapons for most enemies anyway.
The soundtrack is really cool. It does some very unique stuff for chiptune music, and the progressions in each track are really complex. I do feel it may be a bit of a case of quantity over quality though, as I felt the directions some tracks went in started to be a bit unsatisfying. But there are lots of good ideas here and I commend the originality.
The story is simple, but I appreciate that it didn't fall into many familiar tropes. The idea of the tech elf civilization and the composition of your 4-man "party" and family history feels fresh compared to many other games.
From what I wrote, it sounds like I am heavily criticizing the game, but I ultimately still enjoyed it and think it was a good effort. I still love Minor Key Games and will continue to play any 2D platformers they release!