Lone Fungus (2023)

I enjoyed Lone Fungus at first, but I've decided to call it quits.

Backtracking is always a tricky balance in a Metroidvania, but Lone Fungus just absolutely misses the mark for my money. Teleporters are few and far between, and many of the rooms are absolutely sprawling. Lone Fungus gives you a lot of movement options, so this could be ok. Unfortunately, there's not much space to use those movement options, since every room is full of enemies and traps, making the fastest movement abilities a bit too risky to use repeatedly. This could still work out, but, unlike the movement systems, combat is extremely basic and not particularly engaging. To add further insult to injury, killing enemies provides you with no progression, so avoiding enemies is generally the better option. As a final cherry on top, the secrets have subtle enough tells that almost any wall looks like it could be a secret. So now you're wandering giant corridors slashing at every wall so you don't miss a secret when you're not actively backtracking.

I honestly find the movement systems fun, if over-complicated. Unfortunately, I don't even fully enjoy this since the movement challenge rooms start to become quite long in addition to requiring very high precision with sometimes counterintuitive setups. I have the technical skill for these types of challenges. Unfortunately, I only have the patience to do them here and there, but they pop up everywhere. A small related complaint is that your hit box is oddly large for this style of game, so I found myself not really able to play as aggressively I liked. What would be close calls in other games are guaranteed hits with how chunky you are in Lone Fungus. I adjusted to it over time, but it certainly wasn't to my taste.

The coup de grâce for me is that the upgrades, outside of a few of the movement related ones, just aren't exciting. I was left feeling "I did all of this for what now?" regularly throughout my time with Lone Fungus. Offensive spells generally didn't feel particularly beneficial to use since they compete with healing and all had rather clumsy mechanics that would take more practice than they're worth to use effectively. I find the badge system a bit tired, especially since most of the benefits here are so incremental. In 10 hours, I found pieces to complete 1 health upgrade and found two base damage upgrades.

Of course, I wouldn't play the game for 10 hours if I outright disliked everything. As mentioned previously, I think the movement systems are legitimately fun, despite the frustrating challenge design. I enjoy the presentation and style. Until the backtracking really kicked in, I was actually leaning slightly positive despite the other misgivings.

Game #25/200 I feel like I have been playing so many excellent games lately. Lone Fungus is no exception. It's a Metroidvania, in the most classic sense of the term. It really seems to me like the consummate Metroidvania experience. Let me interject quickly to say that it was made by a single person. This is mind-blowing to me, as it is a very polished and carefully crafted product. Compared to something like Xeodrifter, another one-man Metroidvania, this completely blows that out of the water, makes it look like a juvenile project. The design philosophy of Lone Fungus is the most attractive aspect. Unlike Hollow Knight, the obvious object of comparison, Lone Fungus prioritizes convenience over learning through failure. Hollow Knight is an excellent game of course, but I personally found it rather frustrating for its first several hours. I feel like in Hollow Knight, you are so limited, and the backtracking is so extreme. This does work, admittedly, as you become more ingrained in the game's world and you do learn/improve, but it left a bad taste in my mouth for the game's overall experience. Lone Fungus (which I actually prefer -- it may tie SOTN as my favorite Metroidvania) instead throws a plethora of powers, abilities, tools, etc. which you use at your disposable to quickly glide through rooms. You will die a bit, but you respawn in the same room for a few attempts and then back at a monument if you die 3x times or so. This sounds like it would make the game too easy, but I found the difficulty perfectly fair/fun (you may also customize the difficulty, a feature that I don't care much for but would appeal to many people). So there are tons of power-ups and equippable charms, but also dozens of bosses with different attack patterns and appearances beyond a simple palette swap, something you might expect from a lesser one-man studio. The bosses are largely powerful and fun to fight, and all rewarding because they will "drop" a relic or something else for you. My favorite aspect of the game were the ladybug rooms and astral gates, which are essentially Super Meat Boy style rooms in which you must (optionally) conquer a platforming challenge with some restrictions to your abilities. They were all fun and well-designed, providing a sufficient (but never overly difficult) challenge. I feel that the developer must have chosen to keep the reins on the difficulty so that it never crosses the threshold of extreme frustration, as many similar titles (like HK and SMB) can engender. I also get a little bit of Maple Story from the platforming (jump quests) and simple slash-y combat.

As far as I'm concerned, Lone Fungus may be my new favorite Metroidvania. I still have to play Aeterna Noctis and some other titles, but this one looks tough to beat. Its got a charming and really pretty pixel art style (static images do NOT do the game justice, I encourage you to watch a video), fun exploration with plenty of gated areas (you will find yourself zooming or warping around the map and constantly finding items you missed, secret rooms, or paths you just did not explore, so backtracking is always a joy), great QOL features like easy teleporting and percentages related to map completion, and a tightly designed mechanical platformer experience with RPG-like customizable abilities/relics and plenty of bosses. It does everything WELL that I would want to see in a Metroidvania, and I am thrilled to see what the developer creates next.

It’s solid. I definitely had a lot more fun near the beginning, but it kinda wore on me and I ended up quitting at 80% completion (I almost always go for 100%).

The good: extremely nonlinear and let’s you just explore, intense and fun platforming, a crazy amount of upgrades, good art style, good map, lots of mechanics seem borrowed from my favorite games (hollow knight, aeterna noctis)

The bad: a couple platforming mechanics feel awkward and I never adjusted, music feels underwhelming, the overall story and atmosphere is good but just missing something (might be because it doesn’t feel very original)

So it’s a lukewarm recommendation. I ended up putting 28 hours in, and most of that was quite fun. But it’s B-tier imo.