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.

I have played other magic spell-crafting games such as noita, magic-maker, spell-mason, etc. and this game makes the spell-crafting too-advanced and with too many features. not in the sense of "this is too hard", but in the sense that there is too much that is provided too early/fast. also, the crafting doesn't have enough limitations, you get full loop-generation and list-manipulation ---and 99% of the time its a complete waste...just shooting the enemy is good enough. meanwhile, look at noita with its wand-system which adds intrinsic limits to the game and the spell-components are discrete things which you only get a very limited amount which forces you to be creative to squeese out capabilities out of spells that don't look powerful.

Игруха прикольная, но слишком простая для такого жанра и короткая :(

I wish I could recommend it but I really can't. The game doesn't have anything going for it aside from the spellcrafting mechanic, but even that one's lackluster, you can only really spawn "orbs" and manipulate them in relatively basic way in a very limited editor. If you really really think the spellcrafting mechanic looks really, and I mean really fun, then get it but don't expect too much. Else I really cannot recommend it.

Really cool idea, but severely lacking in content and polish. It has all the workings of a fully functional game, but it does not go even a single step beyond that. The level design is especially bland. The difficulty comes almost entirely from blind jumps requiring quick reactions to figure out where you are trying to go before falling in lava/spikes/traps, and bosses that spam attacks to the point of it becoming a bullet hell. Also, if you don't already have some programming experience, you might struggle in coding any decent spells too, as the tutorial is very bare bones as well. Once you get enough code blocks and come up with a powerful spell, however, bosses become a breeze as you spam attacks right back at them. The art is decent, music is pretty good, I just wish they would have taken a good bit more time to really flesh out and polish these ideas before deciding it was ready for public release.

Really, really fun! Visuals: I'd say they fall cleanly in the functional and pleasant zone. Everything is very nice to look at, and the particle effects on the spells are especially satisfying. Tho with certain spells, the screen gets so full of stuff that it's hard to see enemies. Can't really blame that on the dev tho, since I was the one making the spells. Sound: The sound effects are so satisfying! everything has this sense of weight to it that makes you feel very powerful. The boss theme was also a major highlight. The level themes tend to loop in a weird way, but they're all very nice to listen to. Gameplay: The Metroidvania elements are well done, if a bit simplistic. The movement is great, every time I failed at platforming, I knew it was my own fault. The regular combat was very reminiscent of old NES games, with waves of enemies that can pretty quickly do you in by pushing you into a spike pit if you're not paying attention. The boss fights, though, they are absolutely great. Bullet hell-esque cage fights where you get to really show off the spells you've programmed. it gives such a sense of accomplishment seeing your 15 if statements become a demon melting death ray lol. The programming aspect of this is definitely the highlight. I knew next to nothing about programming going into this, but the way the game walks you through each concept, lets you get used to that idea, only to then add an even cooler commands is genuinely so natural that you don't even notice that you learned something. Overall: This is a great game for people want to try out coding in a less intimidating environment, and it's a really unique experience. For the price it's plenty long, though I think the concept begs for a larger game. I absolutely recommend Arcane Assembly, The dev did an awesome job!

If you lose to a boss you just encountered, it takes your coins until you can retrieve them and defeat the boss. So, you can't spend the coin to buy upgrades to help defeat said boss.

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.

Its short but very fun core mechanic, and solid platforming throughout

Good game but incomplete. Less than 4 hour play time, and not enough items deigned to buy stores items (aspect enhancement).