This game just majorly disappointed me. I was excited about the idea of a randomly-generated Metroidvania as I have been itching for new MV content for the longest time. This game seemed appealing, so I snagged it. Immediately, I was slapped in the face with stacks of issues.
First off, I was earraped. The music itself is decent at best, but there's no option to turn it or the sounds down, only completely off. I ended up spending my time playing in complete silence. Even if I turned my volume down, I honestly couldn't stand to listen to this.
The character (badly-designed and not memorable in the slightest) controls like you're perpetually on ice, which can be a major problem if you're trying to jump up the one-wide platforms the game sprinkles into the pre-made, uninteresting, and boring to look at rooms. While I understand the control scheme is trying to replicate the feel of an NES controller, it doesn't mesh well with all the additional controls stacked on top of it. That mixed with the fact that you can't customize the controls at all gave me no incentive to aim diagonally and my wrist began to hurt after constantly swapping between running and jumping and pumping energy cells into my health and ammo.
The energy cell system, while fine on paper, is completely flawed. Energy cells replenish themselves overtime, but you can speed up the process by killing enemies and collecting their floating pickups. Full cells can be used to (and are the only way to) replenish your health and ammo. However, the game slaps you with so many enemies in every single room that I found the system not presenting any sort of challenge. I never dropped below one cell of health and thus never died, and not once did I run out of ammo. An ammo system on your first weapon in a Metroidvania is not a good choice anyway.
Additional pickups are placed randomly throughout the map. The game, however, gives absolutely no indication that a pickup is near. A spare energy cell (a horrible pickup in the grand scheme of things) could be lying in the middle of a room that look exactly like the one before it and no indication in-game or on the map would tell you that it's there.
The visuals immediately grew boring. I only ever saw the same three enemies in every room and the same spike traps. These spikes, by the way, have damage hitboxes that are way too big and can hit you when you're half a unit away, which can make navigation and just trying to get rid of the stupid things an unnecessary hassle. Now pair that with the complete lack of invincibility frames and you can find yourself being endlessly juggled into a wall or ceiling by an enemy who ends up running off with half a cell of health (of course, with the flawed energy system, this isn't a problem).
Room transitions give absolutely no room to react to the room you're entering. I found myself falling out of a room as I enter from the bottom as soon as I enter it because I had no idea which side of the path the ledge to stand on would be on. This only grew more infuriating with play time.
The map itself and the random generation is complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. My map on my first (and only) playthrough ended up looking like [url=https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/603401174800007172/693258183938015293/unknown.png] this [/url] before I finally found the first boss. You can get so lost trying to find where to go that you find yourself wandering a hallway that ends in a literal dead end with nothing to offer for your wasted time. If you're lucky, though, you may find a new beam. Not like you're ever going to use it, though. With the combination of the uncomfortable control scheme and the complete uselessness and situational nature of the beams, I never found myself using any of the beams once against enemies. By the end of my playthrough I had the cog, the sword, and the missile, but never used any of them.
I only found myself playing about forty-five minutes, just after the first boss (who was complete garbage. You could cheese them and just spam with the basic beam and be done with it. Not engaging at all) before I was too bored to continue. I had absolutely no drive to press onward and put the key I collected to use. My wrist thanked me for stopping so that it could type this review out and feel better about itself.
In conclusion, this game was a disappointment, delivering false promises, locked and uncomfortable control schemes, boring, repetitive, and infuriating gameplay, and no incentive to keep playing longer than an hour. I'm surprised I even went for that long. If you want a good indie Metroidvania, go play Hollow Knight instead. It may be difficult at times, but at least it's good.
