Since I hadn’t played the first game, and the sequel throws you straight into the action without much context or background, I ended up checking the Steam page just to figure out what was going on. You play as one of the dryads, the last living beings in a world drained dry by greed and reduced to a wasteland filled with ruins and mindless skeleton-like machines.
The dryad, Alruna, starts with quite a few abilities already unlocked, but the game introduces them gradually so you don’t feel overwhelmed. Usually, a move is explained the first time you encounter an obstacle that requires it. Alongside a standard jump, you can perform a high jump by crouching for a few seconds to charge it, or execute a ground smash while airborne.
You also have a slide, an air dash, and a ranged attack with fairly limited reach. Your shots only travel about a third of a screen. Thankfully, enemies are generally easy to deal with and rarely require much effort. Most simply patrol back and forth while firing different projectiles. In many cases, it’s easier to ignore them entirely since they don’t drop anything useful when defeated, apart from the occasional heart when your health is running low.
Enemies respawn whenever you move between screens, making it easy to fully restore your health. This is especially true because hearts placed throughout the environment also reappear when you switch screens. In fact, almost everything respawns. The main exception is a set of blocks that appear or disappear when you activate paired switches, with the effect carrying across multiple screens. Of course, this also works for doors that require keys and other shortcuts.
Progression takes place through a series of single screen rooms connected into one large, interconnected world. Most rooms contain a mix of platforming challenges, enemies, and obstacles that either require your current abilities or encourage you to return later with new ones. In addition to the block switches, you can temporarily enhance your weapon with a fire effect. This allows you to melt ice blocking your path and light braziers. The upgrade only lasts for a limited time, though, so you need to act quickly before it wears off. Fortunately, it always respawns, allowing you to try again as many times as necessary.
As expected from a metroidvania, there’s a map to fill out and plenty of secrets to discover. The map is fairly standard, consisting of squares that become visible the first time you enter a room. Each square represents a single room, and different colors help distinguish the various environments and biomes. Save points and healing spots appear as flowers and red dots, while the main collectibles are Drops, which are marked in blue.
Drops are converted into currency in the upgrade room, which is accessed through iron maidens. Here, you spend your collected resources to remove barriers that lead to additional upgrades, many of which also require payment before they become available. These upgrades include stronger attacks, increased weapon range, extra health, and a few more unusual bonuses, such as reducing boss health.
If you haven’t noticed it by then, the upgrade room is also where you’re likely to discover your first fake wall. These look exactly like ordinary walls, and the only way to identify them is by shooting at them and noticing your projectiles pass straight through. After some experimentation, I realized the upgrade room is packed with fake walls that let you bypass obstacles you would otherwise need to pay to remove. Some even provide access to major upgrades much earlier than intended. There is an upgrade that allows your shots to pass through walls, which ironically makes fake walls impossible to detect afterward, but thankfully there’s also a way to reset your upgrades.
Fake walls appear throughout the world, although many are subtly hinted at by a certain type of breakable block that can be destroyed with your weapon. What makes these secrets particularly interesting is how often they allow access to areas you clearly weren’t intended to reach yet. Exploration is heavily encouraged, especially once your growing collection of abilities comes into play. Early on, you gain a seed that can be thrown onto walls or ceilings to create climbable vines and temporary platforms, opening up even more possibilities.
Most progression is still gated behind the correct abilities, which mostly take the form of different seed types, so you can’t simply rely on fake walls and hidden passages to bypass everything. Later abilities include explosive pumpkins to destroy rocks, the power to walk on water, and even the ability to transform yourself into a cube. Still, the world itself isn’t particularly large, and it’s possible to finish the game in roughly three to four hours. You could probably do it even faster if you ignore optional collectibles, especially since there are no achievements that reward completionists for going the extra mile.
