Astropods: Starside Glaze

No way I stumbled upon this game at random, it's so good! It's beautiful, controls pretty well and I really like the customization via badges and how heavy the hammer feels! I love Kirby games so this is really up my alley! Y'all def should check it out!

I’ve been following this project for quite some time, and seeing it finally fully release was so cool. Gameplay is what interested me the most, as there really aren’t many Kirby inspired indie games on the whole. While this game is an amalgamation of more than just Kirby, definitely having some Megaman zero influences, I can definitely see the design philosophy having some Kirby roots. Having tougher areas being more cramped and claustrophobic. Generally the game is not too challenging, and goes at a pretty brisk pace that can be easy to lose yourself in, which can lead to damage stacking up and inevitably losing a life. Combat with basic enemies isn’t too out there, usually dealing enough damage to kill them quickly or blast right through. The combat was seemingly a huge focus for this game, with it having some Kirby/Smash brothers inputs and tech. This was definite evidently a focus given the games rather large selection of boss battles to enjoy. As said before, there is a lot of tech the game has to offer, and you can make your own combo routes to really deal heavy damage thanks to the “stagger” mechanic. Each stage ranks you based on your time, and it’s great to play through multiple stages to get that perfect run. Once you get the hang of the characters movements, going for gold is very satisfying, especially with the main collectable being badges. The badge system does a lot to make this game more flexible and interesting. I played a majority of my play-through with simple speed enhancing badges to make getting the gold metals easier. It was fun to experiment, and going out of my way to collect the badges was not only fun, but rewarding as well. Sometimes, you just gotta change your load out when dealing with a difficult boss. During my playtime I gave atleast 5 different sets of Badges a try for different situations. There was also this secret POWERFUL badge I actually stumbled upon which was really cool to see! Worth the effort as well ofcourse. The presentation was overall great, being really well polished and really carrying that Kirby aesthetic I mentioned earlier. Great sprite work that paints a charming world with great use of colors. Character sprites and animations are really cute and make great use of smear frames to sell speed and power. The music is great, having some super chill vibe songs, and others that get me excited to speedrun a stage. They are really fitting of the environments. Good stuff to the composer Bread! I would probably say my favorite tracks in the game are “Cheese satellite” and “Velvet Ridges”! As for cons, there aren’t many that come to mind; a small nitpick I have with the presentation is how far the camera is pulled back. The sprites are so cute, yet so small, it’s just a shame I could only really get a good look at the bosses larger sprites. It makes appreciating all the cute animations harder. I feel I really gotta squint to see what’s going on. As stated, this is a nitpick more than anything. Game still looks great, and I can see the advantages in the design having a pulled back camera. In a game as fast paced as this, being able to see more of the surroundings is helpful, and it clearly plays into the vertical design of all the stages. However, I just feel like I’m missing that more personal connection with the characters themselves without putting my face on the screen. And, ofcourse, like any game, it has a bug or two. I tried starting the post game, but soft locked the game upon entering a door. All things I’m sure the dev will work on fixing up in a patch, but that’s was the only real standout bug I ran into during my average play. The BIGGEST con for the game is the structure of the combat and bosses. While combat was overall enjoyable, and some badges even aided in that, I will say that it felt kinda button mashy at points. I hadn’t taken the time to learn most of the boss patterns, but they all fall the same. Usually I wouldn’t find myself just going in and attacking the boss to get the stagger state, then continue to wail on them as much as possible. Bosses don’t tend to have a great way of telegraphing certain attacks, which aided in the game feeling a bit button mashy. Now, it’s no easy feat making a boss, so I still give mad props to CheesiMoon for the variety of enemies you fight, but for a game that felt more focused on combat, I can say I was satisfied, but not blown away. The characters aren’t the issue imo, but the bosses don’t really lend themselves as well as I’d like. This was a bit more evident when I threw myself into this game “arena” or boss rush. I didn’t bother learning any patters, I just kept throwing myself at it for about 15 minutes, and I won. This was thanks to certain badge combos, so that’s was fun to build. The love and effort put into this project is evident by the overall polish that this game has. This game is a product of high quality that really is an achievement for an indie devs first major project. Hope to see more from CheesiMoon 8/10 from be, great work all around!

This game is absolutely amazing every part of it feels so full and fun to do like the platforming or the combat or even the little secrets in the levels. It feels like all my favorite parts of kirby games but made better. The only downside is with the time requirements to get the gold awards because it feels like that you have to ignore all combat and anything in the stage and just focus on getting to the end which i think is super sad if there was a way to add fighting that maybe slows the time down so there is incentive on fighting. Other than that this game is perfect

Fantastic action platformer! I love how there's a big focus on speed, there's a lot you can do to maximize how fast you go, whether that be literally or just by doing more damage. You can lose a gold medal clear time pretty easily if you struggle on a boss, which every platformer stage ends with, and that ends up making the badge system (think paper mario) pretty fun and engaging! Absolute recommendation from me, the platforming here is something I'll be coming back for a lot, it's so unique and I just love how it feels. This game rocks!

This is a really fun game would really recommend it. It sucks that this game doesnt have more people that know about it cause its really cool I wish there were a few more levels but as someone who likes to speedrun I dont fully mind all that much cause I can keep on practicing the levels that I am playing currently but overall would really recommend this game if you are into stuff like celeste pizza tower or like kirby

This game is so good, it was absolutely worth the wait! It feels so good to zip around levels and smash everything in your way to the boss! The stages feel like they have just the right length that they don't overstay their welcome, and there's plenty of optional secrets to find! I liked the colorful aesthetics, cute characters, and energetic soundtrack; they gave an awesome vibe of fun all the way through! The bosses were fun to fight, especially the final boss putting your skills to the test! Oh, and you get to wield a giant hammer. What more could you want?

really cool 2D platformer. don't skip this one