Astropods: Starside Glaze

Kind of reminds me of the Subspace Emissary from Smash Bro's Brawl if it had the crazy depth of movement people found in Melee. I can imagine speed runners really getting into this, especially with how you can optimize the badges to go stupid fast.

Lovely, colorful pixel art game inspired by Kirby and Smash Bros. I feel right at home with the controls, which feel a lot like Smash Melee. Making combos on bosses, exploring levels, and finding secrets is so much fun! It's a steal for its current price in early access.

Played this so well my hands hurt. Can't recommend enough!!

Going through Subspace Emissary from Brawl made me think that the idea of a 2D platformer using Smash Bros style movement would be a treat. Astropods brings that to life in a short and fun package. It has a great balance between a game that is fun to just hop into a level, but also for the depth to take your time to learn and understand all the mechanics you have. The addition of a randomizer at the end was a nice option as well for repeatability.

As someone that has been a fan since this game was still in demo, I'm blown away by all of the updates and progress that have been made. What still reigns supreme as my favorite aspect of this game is the free-flowing movement of the characters that completely defies what you would expect from your everyday 2D platformer. The new levels and bosses are so much fun and finally bringing music into the mix has elevated this game's experience tremendously. If you are interested in this style at all, I would definitely recommend this game to any fellow platformer enjoyers!

It's good. Like, really good. Think kirby-style aesthetic and platforming with smash bros-level combos and top-tier schmoovement. It's fast, it's energetic, you feel like a god when you pull off a really sick combo on your own merit. This is seriously fun, you HAVE to play it if you're a fan of anything I listed above or just enjoy a good speed game! The mechanics are also really fun and have a perfect skill curve for learning. The basics will come naturally to anyone who's played a 2D platformer before, some of the novel mechanics will take a few minutes to practice and get decent at (and an hour or so to do naturally), and the highest level movement and attack combos will take a long while to master. You're always learning, and always having fun.

Really hits (and i mean HITS) a specific niche that encourages you to play at your own pace but delivers if you wanna go full gas. If you're an ex button masher or smash/fighting game fan that yearns to mash buttons but in a cozy, solo setting, this is your new player expression fix. Its simple, quick, and fun right off the bat, and you can feeeeeeeel it. and the track can hit a spectrum of vibes that oooooozes with sauce, no kanes chicken. If you really like cuties things and absolutely styling on em, DIS IS IT CHIEF!!!

this game is a button masher's dream. truly unhinged levels of freedom of speed for those who want to get good at it, and lots of fun goodies to collect casually. charming little kirby-inspired world, maybe the closest i've seen an indie come to scratching that kirby atmosphere itch? i don't think i'm going to be the person who starts really cracking this game open as a speedrun but i can't wait to see it happen. be warned that it's a little on the short side if you're one of those people who can't imagine replaying a level. there's so many fun buttons to push i don't know why you wouldn't want to though!

The game is pretty good! I've said a lot about this game somewhere else so I'll keep it simple. Good movement, good designs, good combat. Genuinely amazing game with tons of speedrun potential. I REALLY want to see what runners would do with the systems. I've logged over 23 hours in this game and that will in fact keep growing

Main Summary: I have only played for an hour and I already am in love with so much! In my opinion, the developer seems to prioritize the movement of the game in ALL the right ways. If you like the movement in Pizza Tower, Super Smash Bros. Melee, or even Rushdown Revolt, you will absolutely love it! If you're not big on face-paced movement, you will still like a lot of the other things the games has to offer. The spritework and music make the game feel homey and familiar. I do like the Paper Mario-esque badge system to make the game easier or harder, and does give reasons to search around the levels. I do like the speedrun/timer aspect as the movement perfectly pairs with it. I feel like for me, the main replayability* would be the speedrun aspect since there are only a few collectibles per level, but I do like the badge system allowing you to use hard mode badges to give yourself more expressive movement. My experience in the first hour was the first few levels and all of the challenge levels + getting gold medals on each. I found It's a decently simple setup with its tutorials (similar to Sonic Generations' or Pizza Tower's hub worlds challenges). *: I would love to see leaderboards or other additional incentives in the future as that seems to be the main aspect for me to continue playing after potentially "beating the game". I will update my review when I find time to continue playing. Pros: - Amazing movement - Comfy music - Otherworldy feeling/theme from the art - Replayable* - FAST menuing and loading for anything! (Which has a downside though) Criticisms: - Continuing from the last pro I listed: Lack of deadzone editing for analog makes menus way too sensitive. I sometimes found that diagonals didn't feel like they registered correctly because my Xbox Series controller is pretty old. I would accidentally end up in the graphics menu for example after quickly pressing start to try and reset the run for a level. Maybe implement deadzones for both gameplay and menus so they can stay different. - I do find the font a little hard to read from an accessibility standpoint. (7 looks like a 1 for example) - I figure Acro is the most optimal character in the majority of speed and combo scenarios, but I found Hemi just works for what you need her to. I basically only switch to Acro to cancel the lag of Hemi's up-attack. I am not very far in the game, but I do worry that as I continue playing, I won't have a reason to ever use Acro (aside from cheesing the challenges with his exorbitantly high up-dash jump) - Small one, but I would like to see a hidden platinum medal or something since gold medals aren't too hard to come by. Other comments: - Disabling double-tap dash was actually very helpful for me, but I figured this out when I was trying to find ways to break the game. - I found that if you mash jump and dash at the same time, sometimes the game will launch you at an incredibly fast speed. Would be great for speedruns but I am not sure what exactly causes it. It seems to happen more when you slide off of a platform. - (BUG) Dashing quickly with jump occasionally will cause you to rebound the opposite direction. I am not sure if this is like the floor being detected as a wall or something so it makes you move backwards. I will hold left but then it will send me to the right for whatever reason. You can see this more with Hemi and having the extra jump badge on. Spamming dash and jump while moving the opposite direction from the way she is facing. https://medal.tv/games/requested/clips/kzZ3EPYQfB8HXsocS