Alruna and the Necro-Industrialists

Mild spoilers for the game: >you reach the final boss' door >you find an important character next to it >he says to not fight the boss, there is another way >I trust him and go do the thing >I do the thing >While I was doing the thing, a cutscene starts, then the credits roll, and I CANNOT ACCESS THE SAVE FILE ANYMORE! I don't know what the devs were thinking, honestly. It's not a lengthy metroidvania, sure, and there aren't any achievements, sure... but not even a warning? Hell not even a boss fight? I bet that the normal ending at least had a boss fight... But I will never know because of this insane design decision lol. I already wasn't really vibing with the story and the preachy "I'm 14 and this is deep" type of dialogue, but I was willing to leave a positive review, as the power ups were used in interesting ways, it had some very cool looking bosses and it had a very fun character: [spoiler] the nemesis robot simping hard for some plantussy [/spoiler], but this final thing completely ruined my experience with the game. I really hate to leave a negative review on an indie game, and I'm willing to change this review to a positive one if the devs ever go back to this game and change this thing.

I don't write reviews as often as I should, but this time it's more to warn people of something that really caught me off guard and knocked this game down a few pegs for me. First, the good: this is a real solid, fun Metroidvania with an anti-capitalist message. I loved the rock and metal music references/lyrics in dialogue, the game's colorful for what it is (most of the game being brown, dead, and drab is kind of the point where Alruna and the characters you encounter contrast greatly to it). Abilities are fun, exploring is rewarding, music is cool and catchy. Then I got to the final boss. I planned on 100%ing the game, but wanted to beat the boss first and see what happened. After credits rolled, my save file was locked and I couldn't select it to continue from my last save point and keep going. If you play and want to complete EVERYTHING, please do so before fighting the final boss. If I'm missing something and could possibly fix this, let me know, but it seems like nothing can be done besides starting a new file which isn't appealing to me in this moment even though I liked it a lot. A big buzzkill to an otherwise fun game that I ultimately do recommend. Looking forward to the sequel.

*Spoilers below, but important for deciding if you want to purchase* [spoiler] There are multiple endings, but once you get one, your save file is locked and you can't access it anymore. From a narrative standpoint it is cool, but as a player it is extremely disappointing. [/spoiler]

I really liked the game a lot but my run got cut short cuz I accidentally jumped on a spring ;_; if you ever end up releasing another game please don't lock the save file afterwards waaghhh annoying Still a recommendation because the game is definitely good but please, if you play this BE CAREFUL YOU DONT TRIGGER THE ENDING! IT WILL LOCK YOUR SAVE FILE! EDIT: Apparently you can go to the save file in AppData and change around a setting to be able to continue on the save file again... so its all good

I need to stop getting baited by these mid-80% positive reviews. This may be one of the worst metroidvanias I've ever played, and it's pretty much entirely due to the incredibly poor controls. You can't remap any of them, so you're left wondering why, in the name of God and in the year of our Lord 2024 (when this game came out - I can forgive no patch in the year of our Lord 2026), would anyone attempt to save on buttons by binding the super jump to holding down, then jumping? Why do we need a useless map key instead of a dedicated key to your seeds/subweapons? Why can't we use literally any of our other spare shoulder or trigger buttons to do a slide instead of requiring a crouch input while dashing at a speed that needs almost frame-perfect timing for some platforming? And what foul mood seized the developer that they decided you can get stunlocked inside an enemy and die with depressing frequency? I do mean depressing. If you jump and attack at the right(?) time, you'll slide forward. The basic mook takes two hits to kill, so if you hit him once, you'll slide into him, get trapped in his body, and die since you don't suffer any knockback when you take damage, and don't have any mercy invulnerability after being released from the damage animation. I wrote this review after having this happen for the third time in a row. It's frustrating since goofy slide mechanics aside, the platforming is genuinely good and the seeds are a fun means of exploration, utility, and combat. The metroidvania genre is flooded with good titles. You don't need to injure yourself playing this game, with controls demonically crafted to maximize your pain, both physically and mentally. Skip this even if it's on sale. Learn from my mistakes.

As pointed out already over half a year ago: There is a possibility to cheese your way to the/an ending without ever fighting the final boss, locking your save file stuck at 98% completion. The game is very fun, but this bug (or actually "feature"?) is terrible, Just let me play from the last save point. If this is will be fixed, I'll change to positive immediatly, because beside this ultra frustrating thing, the game is very nice. EDIT: I just rechecked, this is known for over a year and most negative reviews are for this exact reason.... Just quickly fix this and the game might reach over 95% positive reviews :/

Not enough health not enough upgrades no variety and way too preachy play another game

Alruna reminds me quite a bit of Astalon (one of my top 3 metroidvanias of all time). It has super dense level design, tons of secrets, great flow, great puzzles, and solid chunky pixel art. At the same time, it doesn't quite have the same enjoyability as Astalon, due to its wonky controls and underwhelming abilities. Instead of the standard abilities like double jump, you will find 4 seeds that have multiple purposes - some help you traverse, some solve puzzle elements, some will damage enemies, and some will do a combination of these. You start off the game with a high jump and a dash/slide. You soon learn that all of these abilities have secret secondary functions, like finding hidden passages or collecting items from a distance. So, they are highly creative and unique, but at the same time feel a bit more like Animal Well type abilities that don't have the same classic excitement (for me) as the Metroid-style abilities. It is a solid ~3-4 hour metroidvania that largely works because of its intricate and fun-to-unlock level design. I appreciate the creativity and uniqueness of the gameplay mechanics, but I definitely prefer the more standard and simple traversal types of abilities in 99% of metroidvanias. I definitely still recommend it though, and I appreciate that the game is somewhat doable to 100% 6.7/10 for me

The whole game is locked when i stumble into an ending i didn't know was there? that alone gain it a bad result. seriously? you expect me to repeat the game multiple times for multiple endings? also, Boss battles. which i got to fight were not really that good. exploration was nice but controls were poor.

短流程类恶魔城。在工业废土区收集水滴，收集50个水滴可以上天堂，但我只弄到49个也没攻略也没提示懒得找了。挺好玩的，四滴血勇闯恶魔城，真四滴血从头到尾没血量提升，但boss挺好打不用担心，后期区域多给一条命。主角alruna是个花妖，蹲和跳脚下会长小花花，可爱…，环保主题。玩起来和alwa类似，主角机动性不会提升➡打boss获得改造地形的技能➡探索新区域