Recent reviews by aviivix

205 submarine X 205 boomerang

My original review was written extremely shortly after the game came out, but the developer has released an update in response to the mixed reviews that actually addressed a lot of my issues here! There were quite a few tweaks and overall it feels a lot better. Most notably, the runestones are now able to be backpacked and used in later dungeons, which is incredibly useful.

Additionally, I will confess that some of my complaints probably did come with lack of practice or familiarity. So if you are more familiar with this genre, or would be willing to dedicate time to getting used to the feel of the game, I'd say go for it. I've got 11 hours in the game now, and it may be a combination of tweaks and me getting more comfortable with the controls, but the whole thing feels a lot smoother and less frustrating.

That said, it definitely does require time to get used to. However, I think I was a bit too harsh on it my first time around. Whether it was the extra hours of practice or the new update that made it less frustrating, the point is it got less frustrating.

The developer also is clearly passionate about making the game the best it can be, as shown with such a quick update in response to the criticisms. I have to heavily commend him for that.

So overall, I'll update this review to recommend. It's a beautiful game with different ways to play for different playstyles, and a developer who clearly cares about improving it. Give it a shot, see if it appeals to you. I think it will.

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OLD REVIEW:

I backed this project on Kickstarter and got a somewhat reduced price on this, not exactly free. I played a few demo versions way back when that played the same minus some powerups and enemies, and I while I *like* the game on a personal level, I can't say I recommend it.

The controls are wonky, and it's extremely difficult to aim on a keyboard. The movement is a little frustrating, and it's extremely difficult to get combos even with the lightning feather, so the autopilot powerup is basically necessary to have any chance of getting combos, since you can only aim up, down, left and right, plus the diagonals.

This may be my lack of skill in this genre, but I found it very difficult to consistently hit diagonally. I find that I always find myself just an inch to the left of being able to hit something straight below me, or having pressed C a split second too late and throwing my bird into a wall instead of the enemy on the cliff. Which is frustrating when I would have otherwise scored an ever elusive 2-combo.

All this is coupled with enemies that are very hard to combo into in the first place. Many of them jump or fly too erratically or fast for your slow bird to catch, or they stop your bird in the middle of the attack like the cactus enemies. Your bird also doesn't fly nearly as far as it feels like he should, which makes an already borderline impossible combo even more impossible once you realize that an enemy is just barely too far away to chain into.

One of the stretch goals was a minecart minigame, but as with most minecart minigames, it's underwhelming at best, and annoying at worst. Many times enemies end up configured in such a way where you literally can't combo them without getting hit.

Oh, let's talk about getting hit for a sec. Now, my reaction time isn't that terrible, but even on casual difficulty it's so easy to just get hit randomly and die just from said random hits. I don't even want to think about what it'd be like with only 3 hearts. Especially considering the aforementioned point about it being very difficult to actually aim your shots. When you inevitably miss, the recharge is about two seconds. Meaning if you wind up in a room with a bunch of enemies and miss your shot, you'll most likely get hit at least once or twice. This is especially the case when you have to jump to hit a moving enemy below you, which of course, should be easy with your slow bird and only really being able to aim straight down or at a 45 degree angle, right?

Sorry, the controls are seriously just that frustrating, and make every other problem a million times worse. Even more frustrating is the fact that when you die, you start the entire dungeon over with no powerups or money. This gets particularly infuriating with bosses.

The visuals are stunning, the music is great, the animation and sound effects are satisfying, and everything is generally very pretty to look at. I particularly love the lighting effects and how the grass sways. The game's art style clearly had a lot of passion put into it, and it does show.

But my enjoyment mostly stops at being beautiful - the gameplay is too frustrating to justify spending $20 on unless you are very good at these kinds of games or don't mind a steep, frustrating learning curve. I'd love to write this review factoring in the levels past level 2, but I haven't been able to get past it in the 3 hours I've been playing so far, and it took me a long time to beat the demos way back when. The art style is enough for me personally, though.

If everything in this review has you scoffing and saying, "Just sounds like it takes some getting used to, that's all," or "lul git gud" then go ahead and try it out for the hour and a half that you can before you escape the refund period and see if it's just as frustrating for you as it was for me. Maybe you'll like it more than I did.


Overall, a beautiful game with extremely frustrating controls that make it very hard to play. If you're up to fighting the game on what you're trying to hit, then go ahead and buy it, or at least try it. Else, I'd save my $20 for something else.

I was really excited when I was recommended this game, but severely disappointed upon playing it.

Played for an hour with some friends, but there's really nothing to do. I'll break down my experience: I bought this game because a bunch of my friends were hosting a meetup, and I figured why not. I open the game and am instantly confused. No settings button, no character creation page, just, enter a server. Okay, whatever, maybe you have to get to the menus while in the server like in WoW, no big deal. I click connect, and am greeted by a page with a settings button, which I use to fix my resolution, and very little else useful. Friends tell me to just click Enter World. I do so, and I spawn in as... a badger?

Yeah, so as I soon found out, you're stuck as a stupid badger that walks at a snail's pace and can barely jump, and the only way to unlock this myriad of creatures flaunted in the trailers and screenshots is to find puzzle pieces. These take forever to find, and in the hour I played there was literally no other options to switch to, so it was very tedious as such a weird animal to use.

It got incredibly discouraging after an hour to find a handful of puzzle pieces and still only be under halfway there, and this is WITH a decently sized group of friends to travel with. All this on top of the fact that we had to use Discord to chat, as there's no in game chat and the buttons are confusing. I kinda get what they were going for, "You're animals, communicate without language!" but the thing is, you need to UNLOCK emotes as well, and without text there's not much to do with your new buddies besides spin around and jump at each other squid party style. The "social" factor is barely present when the only "social" thing about it is jumping in place and acknowledging someone else's existence by doing the same.

There is no tutorial, and the UI is so wonky it's insane. It turns out the symbols on the lower left are emotes, and the underlined text on the side is to toggle off the visibility of certain emotes, but it doesn't give you any indication of such, so I found myself clicking on different ones completely unsure of what clicking them even did. I also found out by complete accident that the buttons on the lower right showed you your puzzle progress and... I guess a map? Though I had no idea what the 'map' was even showing me.

I mistakenly thought the deadline for the Steam Refund was 1 hour instead of 2, so I hastily aborted the game upon realizing that it would be one of those games where you have to play 10 hours of it to even do anything. There is nothing to do besides emote to other people, which gets boring after a while when you're a badger wandering around in slow motion finding a puzzle piece maybe every 30 minutes. All this combined with the wonky camera controls that slide and overshoot all the time and a weird way of moving? It felt like the rotation was on a pivot rather than my character actually turning, which messed with the camera sometimes and made it impossible to see. Not to mention the frustrating fact that you can't jump if you're running into a wall, meaning to scale things you have to back up and jump first, probably miss, then have to angle yourself better to make it up a tiny step.

The artstyle in this game wasn't my cup of tea, but it's stylistic and I don't think it's bad. You know what you're getting from the screenshots in that regard.

TL;DR: 100% of this game is just marveling at the pretty scenery and walking. The social aspect is practically nonexistent, it's not user friendly at all, you only get one character until you suffer two hours of walking (I only found half the pieces in the hour I played) to find puzzle pieces, and that's only IF you have friends to do this with. Slow game, literally nothing to do, puzzle pieces are way harder to find then they're worth, found myself fighting with the camera and controls at every turn.

Unless you have hours to literally waste in what is essentially a walking simulator with your friends until you get the animals you want, and then a voice chat to hang out with your friends in while you play together, this will not be enjoyable at all to you.

Pros: has lemres

Cons: lemres isnt in it enough

best game ever