Recent reviews by kevin

really, really repetitive

buff revenant hp

i really struggled with the hitstop and the slowdown w/ red and blue attacks and the hammer
but aside from that i love everything else about this game
i love that its not some 200 hour slog through autogenerated caves and dungeons
i love that the characters are actually present in the world and have things to say to you that form a cohesive narrative without you having to hunt around and find them
i love the aesthetic
i love that you can give yourself a really bad build and make the game 2x as hard or just roll your face over the whole thing
i love how it looks like its going to end and then it continues on for what is an oestensible 2 small dark-souls-dlc sized areas
i love that it doesn't end on some super high note where everything is fixed
i love all the stupid little verbal stim crab noises the game implants in your head

quit the game?
no
> maybe
yes

welcome back, wario-ware

Difficulty curve all over the place, mechanics repeatedly re-introduced, a couple of absolutely gigantic builds that take gargantuan amounts of time to finish compared to the default

the main play mechanics are that one character is one block tall and cant jump as high, so they can squeeze into smaller spaces, and the taller one is both taller and jumps higher

but in the stages the platforming is often really simple and tedious/ time consuming, it usually involves one player standing stock still on a switch to let the other walk through some door to collect 1-4 parts that are needed in the main assembly area

so the height/jump difference really just revolves into incredible frustration when you both try to grab an object and move it in tandem,
the up/down and movement is forced to be synchronized except for constant buggy behavior where you will just get stuck until both players release, or the shorter player releases and regrabs with an up command

and you will be moving parts in tandem, very quickly the game evolves from 1-3 block assemblys spraypainted across the room to constant reassembly of smaller 4-7 block assemblies and your movement speed when moving >3 blocks solo is so painstakingly boring

genuinely wish the tall one had a much taller jump, and or a hover (for the numerous tall statue builds) and the short one had some kind of traction ability that let them move heavy objects reliably / at their max speed no matter the size of the object,

there is a really fun concept in this game that was absolutely not executed on and i think the key would have been more power/uniqueness to the characters, or maybe letting the players boost their stats/give themselves some kind of ability by picking the different outfits

and when i say the difficulty curve is all over the place i mean within a world and within the worlds in linear order

the first four levels of the last world are literal snooze fests, or really the first set of six on any world, and then the second row will randomly have a 20+ minute build snoozefest to rack your brain

i really enjoyed my time with what i discovered was... probably the internet's easiest air strafing game

it took me a little while to get accustomed to not smashing the guy's face on the floor every respawn and really figure out how to air strafe to accelerate 0-60 and get maximum / minimum air time and brake effectively. and then it was smooth sailing from there

some of the checkpoint sequences are a little too tight together so you spend some extended sequences repeating the same 3-5 bounces until you hit bounce 6 and checkpoint, or die instantly on 3-5 (1 and 2 are usually a set of bread and butter accelerators of which you develop a complicated repertoire)

the dev was nice enough to include some really fun large areas to hone your reflexes on and let you experience the speeds you can achieve by chaining the airstrafes properly

i think my number 1 feature id like to have was originally going to be an angle meter to stop me from smashing the bunny's face but i think id prefer some kind of cheaty golf bounce "estimate" of your next bounce or a instant drop ability or a coyote time bar because i missed a lot of cool flow state jumps by taking one too many acceleration bounces and careening off a ledge before converting my speed into speed+height or pure height

but thats just waxing philosophical, real gamers have to adapt here, and once you adapt you realize its your issue for bouncing too many times approaching a ledge, same with how i got over smashing the bunny's face on the floor

and some of the challenges have pretty claustrophobic starting sequences that locked me into making really specific jumps

about ten hours of fun and it really brought me back to what i liked about other games like bennet foddy, learning a legitimately new fair control scheme and mastering it and seeing the limits of how it could preform

this game has checkpoints on normal but it still tickled a lot of the same neurons for me

there is a jump button, only its backwards towards the camera, and no fov slider
so you're just lining up backflip jumps that you execute with no vision

visuals and "juice" are super charming and appealing but the gameplay just makes what feels like simple challenges feel frustrating and repetitive

also you can void out once you start actually jumping around which doesn't reset your coins or stars (cogs) but does reset whatever the mysterious crash bandicoot box smash number is / does

not a challenge not a puzzle just some real basic block swapping with some pretty obvious clues

more akin to a 9/12 piece jigsaw puzzle with a bit of mild educational content on what electrical circut components are

this game ♥♥♥♥♥♥ rules man
i wish the cars still twerked when you crossed the finish line though

optimization is in the trash can right now
sometimes you can boot the game up fresh and get a good frame-rate, sometimes it just won't give you a good frame rate even when set down to low 0 (potato) or low 1

but its weirdly compelling to do a little getting-over-it style challenge of jumping up a mountain with mario-esque controls that have their own quirks
visually the game is a little too overwhelming with FX like fog and rain and bloom and it becomes legitimately hard to tell if you fell down an area that you skipped past on your first trip up, (nonlinear) which way to go to keep climbing. Reducing visual quality to try and maintain a steady framerate makes the visuals more confusing in that regard

Early on the mountain (350 Y) there are a steady stream of little npcs and flourishes like sports games and mushroom people with dialogue that help you orient your path forward, later in the mountain / gemstony areas I was getting confused a lot.

i had some deadzone issues with my dualsense either because of framerate / steam input / something else, so i would swap to using MKB for the precise walking path parts (roots and thin bridges)

otherwise i had a lot of fun actually
I don't know if I'll return to the mountain to seek out the little secrets with the NPCs and plant buddies and gems, but pretty solid drop in drop out co-op with friends is a pretty big feature for an indie game, in a getting-over-it style game and in a free game at that.