Arcane Assembly

Let me preface this by saying that I do not like metroidvanias or platformers in general. I came for the possibility of creating fun spells and seeing something unique. I played at a high difficulty. Don't play at a high difficulty. Unfun level design. Most of the damage I took was due to the high movement but small viewing size causing me to run into enemies I couldn't see. Pair this with small platforms high in the sky and most deaths come about because you ran into something on the other side of a big jump, and that thing pushed you off the platform and into the void. Some enemies can go through the ground. While underground they have no visual indicator of where they are. Unfun difficulty. I played on a hard difficulty. A few hits is all it takes to die. When you die, you drop all of your money. In a boss room, if you die, you likely will lose all of your money. Enemies take several seconds of concentrated fire from your most powerful weapons before they die. This means that the unfairness of enemies becomes a consistent source of death. Death takes you back quite a ways, so it may be several minutes before you have a chance to try that part again. This is especially true for bosses. Many bosses are about as far away from a respawn location as possible, so between the fights, there is usually about 2 minutes of uninterrupted traversal. If you do decide to buy this game for some strange reason, be sure to play on a casual difficulty so the everything is not so annoying. Unfun plot. No plot. At least no plot that was interesting enough to even remember if there was one. No direction. This game made me realize how important it is that a game offer helpful diegetic hints to players in order to help them find their way to the next fun thing. There were several points in the game where I was unable to figure out what the next thing to do was. I would find myself looking closely at the map trying to find what room I missed that would make it possible to continue. It isn't very clear where one room ends and another begins because the entrances and exits are neither marked nor distinguishable from another part of the map. Even in a room, the room might be so big that I cannot tell where I am in relation to anything else any more. Is there a platform beneath me? or is it just a void. The game has a terrible navigation experience, and since its a metroidvania, that is most of the game. Bad enemies. The enemies are frustrating to fight against. They often feel somewhat buggy or overpowered. Several enemies are able to shoot at you from several screens away. You don't have anything to stop, block, or dodge their shots for most of the beginning of the game. The sound design is meh. Not super noticeable, but also not very pleasant. That includes both music and sound effects. I believe that at some point I simple turned off the music because it was getting repetitive and annoying. The graphics are... bad. The individual sprites are pretty good, but they don't really feel like they all belong in the same world. I'm not an art kinda guy, but I wasn't super impressed. The worst graphical aspect is the overlay. Wherever you go, a border will cover the majority of your vision. It is not disable-able. It will make some enemies impossible to see before you step on them. The spells don't look that cool which was a letdown for me. The backgrounds are not unique nor helpful; they do not help you understand where you are. The Bosses... Are pretty cool. If this was just a game about defeating a series of unique and interesting bosses with unique and interesting spells, I'd like this game a lot. In this game you will spend 90% of your time traversing through uninteresting, sometimes frustrating, and often boring rooms 9% of your time making spells, and roughly 1% of your time fighting cool bosses. Unfun spells. The interesting spells were what made me get this game. They are disappointing at best. The only type of spell that can do much for you is a spell that creates and launches orbs of damage. This is done with 2 or three code blocks. If you want do more damage, just repeat the blocks. You want to repeat with a repeat block? Sure, just set the number of times it should repeat. There is no code branching... NO BRANCHING CODE!... With the amount of things you can do with the spell system, the dev might as well have created a collection 8 different spells for us to unlock and use throughout the game, because that is the max number of unique spells you would likely be making. Creativity in spell creation does not improve the spell. Simple is more effective in basically all cases. The spell creation UI looks approachable but is ultimately frustrating and unexciting. I would not recommend this game to anyone.

absolutely delightful little metroidvania, the only thing i could ask for is more. easily worth the price

me and my 7 year old played this. and he loves it. he actually has learned repeat is his favorite. this has helped me teach my 7 year old core programming principles . its got some rough edges. but this is perfect for what i needed it for. the jumping can be difficult but I showed him no clip and its perfect for those hard to make jumps. and the visual coding blocks mean he can drag and drop and try to piece stuff together and than ask me to help correct. i started up sandbox and i can tell the games lacking maybe 8 hours for an adult. honestly i wish there was more.

The concept is cool, but the implementation is...underwhelming. I'm fascinated by the core mechanic of spell crafting, but the game itself is short and easy, got like four hours of gameplay and does not explore it's own potential. Can not recommend in it's current state, not for this price at least.

Great concept, terrible game.

Arcane Assembly feels more like a proof of concept than a complete, polished product. The code-block magic-scripting system is absolutely amazing and with clever programming can result in some insanely overpowered spells. I only wish the rest of the game matched its quality, or even took advantage of it in any inventive way. The world is bland and mostly built out of asset packs, the enemies are as brain-dead as they come, character and camera movement is very basic and unpolished, and there is barely any story. The awesome spell-coding system is only used to deal more damage to enemies, but never in any clever or memorable way, like requiring a custom spell to solve a puzzle or to dispatch a specific tricky foe. And yet, I still recommend everyone try this, if only for its brilliant magic system.

very cool idea and realisation

it a cool concept but its ultimately ruined by the camera movement. i cant remember the last time i played a game this frustrating because of the camera. games aren't suppose to piss you off in the first 20 minutes. the camera pans up when you jump so your character is forced to the bottom of the screen. this coupled with the tutorial popup text means i cant see where i'm at. once the tutorial text pop up finally fks off and i can see my character the camera issue is a constant annoyance every time you jump in this platformer game. i would like to explore the spell coding mechanic but i cant bring myself to continue playing the game.