Candy Rangers

I’m fairly mixed on Candy Rangers here but I’ll have to lean more towards the negative given the severity of some issues. To give credit where it is due, the visuals are very charming and simple, appealing to the nostalgia from games back during the height of the DS era. The end cards do a lot to add character to the rangers and are often lighthearted and cute. I enjoyed the way the game incorporated the varying face buttons into the gameplay loop, and you also get a fair bit of skill expression in having boost/slow mechanics, jumps, and melee attacks. It’s not terribly complex on paper but the way the levels demand you to juggle multiple different mechanics helps keep them hectic and exciting. As simple as it is, I do like the level design and how the environment looks as you progress through a level. Most levels have alternate pathing so it's neat to be able to access these paths, and see how they crisscross with the main levels normal pathing. Some decisions around the rail shooter experience do detract from it a bit. [list] [*]I enjoyed the novelty of using different face buttons for different enemies, but with the way some enemies are positioned you quite frequently clip an enemy with the wrong attack. Enemies can die in just a hit so it can immediately disqualify you from a 5 star run which left me frustrated enough to abandon any effort to 5 star all the levels. [*]Another occasional issue surrounds the bullet pathing from your Candy Ranger to the reticle. Most of the time this is fine, but in cases where you’re on a different elevation than an enemy it can lead to annoying moments where you’re aiming on target but bullets are all hitting a cliff or a ditch. A few times it has felt extremely unfair that the game wants you to hit the enemy at a very specific angle, and if you miss the chance you spend several seconds blasting a wall until you run into the enemy. [*]Lastly, some levels' enemy spawn points are fairly imbalanced, essentially spawning on top of your characters for an instant hit. I understand the game has a boost/slow mechanic but it shouldn't be expected that you memorize exactly where you have to use these in order to avoid instant hits. For a real shooter it's normal to have to eventually memorize enemy positions to maximize score, but for casual experience having enemies spawn on you in an unreactable manner leaves bitter experience. [*]There’s also the issue of visual clutter when various enemies of different types start appearing at once. Combined with the bombastic visual effect from your weapons it can be hard to distinguish various elements from each other. It doesn’t help that the button assigned to each enemy isn’t terribly distinctive. Would have been appreciated if the enemies themselves were more strongly color coded, or if certain enemy types corresponded to the buttons instead like all bird enemies to the A button or something similar. [/list] Outside of gameplay, unfortunately I’d say there aren't enough music tracks in the game to carry it all the way through, some tracks losing their charm from all the reuse. A game like this with more simplistic visual design would have greatly benefitted from having a more varied soundtrack. The audio balancing is a little off as well with some sfx being ear splittingly louder than anything else in the game. The story is fairly basic and while I won’t begrudge the game for it I think it could’ve used a bit more charm or polish to construct a basic narrative. Instead it’s not only forgettable, but sometimes distracting from the gameplay. I do want to like Candy Rangers more but there quite isn’t enough here to make it an easy recommendation from me.

Solid indie game with interesting takes on the rail shooter genre. I ended up beating the game in about a little over 2 hours but I wouldn't say I'm a master of it. For replayability there's hard mode, arcade, and medals to collect so there's still quite a bit I plan to go through. Pros: [list] [*]Music is great and the reason I actually considered buying the game at all. Gives me old Bomberman and Mario 3D world vibes. Absolutely the best part about the game. [*]The game is quite pretty to look at and the environments are all very unique and interesting. As you go through the worlds they throw quite a lot of different things at you. [*]Stages are fast paced and things constantly fly at you to keep it interesting. I never felt like the game was a chore to sit through despite it being on rails. [*]The mechanics are all very simple but get way more complicated when combined. My favorite was when they would disable certain characters and force you to improvise in some situations. I'm sure there are many solutions to the limitations that I haven't even considered. For such a limited set of control options, especially for a rail shooter, they really managed to keep things interesting. [*] Lot of replayability with different routes, medal collecting, challenge modes. [/list] There are a couple of cons but outside of the freezes I would say they're most nitpicks Cons: [list] [*]The game will occasionally freeze loading into a stage. I never had freezes while actually in the middle of a stage which is good. [*]Sometimes the characters will get desynced which causes you to take damage when 1 of the 4 somehow gets hit or falls into something. [*]Controller movement seems somewhat slow and I didn't see a sensitivity adjustment so I switched to mouse (Turns out you can adjust it in Controls>Stick Sensibility). Sometimes it's difficult to hit targets despite your reticle being right on top of the target. Some of the times your shot is actually hitting the environment on the way to the target but other times it feels like it just isn't registering. [*]It's very difficult to see what will force you onto a certain path. I assume it's a bit like Star Fox where your performance impacts the path you take but there are a couple that I have no idea how to get to. [*]Enemies have unintuitive death effects. Some will leave behind ground hazards, explode, or do other things which you really can't tell will happen until you've gone through the incident once leading to a few cheap deaths. Also the environment occasionally covers up the floor due to the camera going behind objects so you just get hit without knowing what was on the floor. This is very noticeable if you spam dash or brake a lot. [*]Translations need a bit of touch up but nothing really egregious. [/list] Overall, I was a big fan of the game and definitely plan to play way more of it. There are some issues with the game but not impactful enough during gameplay to really leave a bad taste. The story is minimal but serviceable. I'm sure as updates happen the quality of life will improve and even if they don't it's solid enough to get by.

[h2]プラムの髪どうなってんの？[/h2] 4人横並びで自動進行し、キャラごとに倒せる敵を見極めて撃つシューティングゲーム。ライフ無しのかわりにダメージを受けると残りタイムが減少するアーケードスタイルな作り。 日本語翻訳あり。操作や舞台設定を把握するうえでは役立ちますが、会話は機械翻訳が強くてあまり魅力はないかも。 パッド操作だとABXYが各キャラの射撃、LRがアクションを担当。敵の色分けを判断しつつ、照準を合わせて撃ち、さらにアクションもこなすという具合に考えることが多めで、ワールド2からリトライしまくりな難しさ。たまに二手に分かれて進む場面もあり、片方が射撃しもう片方がジャンプするなど広い視野も求められます。マルチタスク上等なゲームですが、その分上手く切り抜けられたときが楽しい。 各ステージにはメダルがいくつか隠されており、先へ進むために一定数必要になります。入手するには特定の敵を連続で倒したり、缶蹴りしたり、隠された分岐路を進んだり。敵を倒したカウントや必要なアクションの表示など画面にヒントは示されているので、テクニックこそ求められますが取り逃すことは少なめです。 ちょっと不満なのは星5評価でクリアするのが厳しすぎるところ。「ダメージを受ける」か「間違ったキャラでザコ敵を撃つ」と星4に転落するので、通常ステージでは色の違うザコが重なって誤射するケースが多く、ラスボス戦も地形との兼ね合いで攻撃が回避不能になることもあるのでノーダメージが困難です。ただし通常ステージに関してはエンディング後に楽に達成できる救済措置があります。 好きなところは、ステージごとに一定スコア達成で追加されるアルバム絵がかわいい。そしてプラムの髪の毛が気になってしょうがない。カットシーンのたびに主張してくる航空力学の体現めいたヘアスタイルが面白すぎて、これだけで買った価値はあるくらい。

One of my favorite demos from last year and it absolutely delivered on that promise from the core gameplay to the stellar OST to the wonderful low-poly visuals. A genuinely fresh take on rail shooters that clearly comes from a place of love for what came before, with tons of little tricks to its levels that make the most of its simple mechanics. It's somewhat breezy to hit credits during on lazy Sunday (like I did) but there's still plenty to go for if you love arcade-style mastery (especially the score thresholds, every art piece they unlock is adorable). There's a few small bugs and visual issues (the final boss has attacks that can be hard to see at times) but the dev seems very receptive. Highly recommended as one of the best indies of this year, and that Treasure-likes Bundle it comes in is a great deal too, since the other game in it is one of its only rivals for that throne.

Un simpático shooter on-rails de envoltorio encantador y con una propuesta jugable muy original en la que manejamos simultáneamente a un grupo de cuatro chicas, a las que tenemos que ayudar a recorrer vistosos escenarios de avance automático mientras derribamos enemigos con el tipo de disparo correspondiente, esquivamos obstáculos y tratamos de mejorar nuestra puntuación al ritmo de una música sorprendentemente agradable y generalmente relajante : ) Las primeras tomas de contacto pueden resultar algo confusas mientras interiorizas sus múltiples mecánicas (cuando se junta mucho obstáculo en pantalla es fácil bloquearse y hay que estar pendiente de varias cosas al mismo tiempo), pero con un mínimo de paciencia no tarda en hacer "click" y es entonces cuando pasa a disfrutarse mucho más y se puede apreciar lo que busca ofrecer :P Quizás sus mayores pegas son la existencia de algunos momentos poco intuitivos, una legibilidad visual algo mejorable a ratos y casos puntuales en los que la coreografía jugable se rompe, haciendo que algunos elementos se comporten de forma impredecible, pero son cosas que solo se sufren temporalmente y a medida que rejuegas las fases (algo básico en un juego de este estilo) se aprende a sortear la mayoría de esas pequeñas irregularidades ; ) Por lo demás se trata de un juego ligero pero divertido, con un marcado carácter tanto en lo jugable como en lo artístico y que puede invitar a dominar sus mecánicas si se casascon la propuesta. Pero, ante todo, es un juego hecho con ilusión y que busca ofrecer algo fresco dentro del panorama indie ^^

I know that I don't have a ton of time in this game just yet, but I wanted to get a review out there to help visibility for the game as soon as possible. I found this little gem via a YouTube trailer that bubbled to the top of my feed (with a meager ~500 views at the time). As soon as I saw it I fell in love with the pseudo old-school Pokemon Gameboy classic key art style, the wonderful music, and the overall premise—Link to the Past and Four Swords meets Gunstar Heroes with a dash of rhythm-ish game and all controlled by a single player??? Holy hell, sign me up! I immediately raced to the store, since I saw the trailer was only a day old, sadly noticed a lack of reviews (less than a dozen), and felt the pull to support and help spread the word. So, in short, I was biased as hell going into it. And... it owns, dude. It's tough as nails, really pushes you to replay levels, has a bunch of secret levels in the first two hours, and supports so much system mastery. If you're a fan of the weirdo experimental era of the PS1 and PS2, if you're a fan of the more out there Sega console titles, and if you dig the deep cut stuff like Canon Spike, I think this is right up your alley. With the game being a gumbo of niche references, I do worry that it might not pierce the veil of the mainstream enough to get a nice bump in sales, but this thing deserves more attention and more players. And, if you're reading this and you already own the game, please leave a review and spread the word. I swear, I don't know the devs, never heard of 'em, and this thing caught me completely by surprise. If you're on Steam Deck and want to know if this thing runs well, the short answer is: yes, it runs very well. I also want to mention that even out of the box on the LCD model, you can get ~3-4 hours off of a full charge, likely more with some tweaking (I ran this at 60hz with all the default settings both on the game side and the SteamOS side). I'd say that the only thing I've experienced so far that's a bit of a bummer is that the variety in tunes has yet to open up too terribly much, so I've been hearing the same songs quite a lot, but that's hardly worth major criticism. Can't wait to sink my teeth into more of the game. Best of luck Mechano!

This is a beautiful, good-vibes game that tests how much coordination your brain has to shoot and navigate your way through enemies and obstacles within each level. The upbeat charm of the game's aesthetic and music coupled with the challenge of mastering how each level plays makes this game shine in my eyes. I'm looking forward to playing this game for a long while. (Fast forward in time.) I just beat the game, and I overall believe this game was a wonderful game to have experienced. I noticed a couple of oddities in the late-game and credits, but nothing too irregular that it breaks the overall game experience. The boss levels are fun, like the rest of the levels, and I really really really enjoyed the final boss fight. There is a lot to this game that warrants playing it again and again, and for a shooter that plays differently from many other shooters at this time, I still highly recommend checking this game out! :D

Well worth playing, one of a kind game. Fun exploration of ideas, with a cool theme and gorgeous artstyle in the little vignettes ending each level. The music is also lovely. Pretty quickly ramps up to an interesting difficulty, has a good pace, as always one would be interested if it could have been expanded even more so, but it strikes a good balance with shooting as well as movement options. My only gripe with the game is the lack of explanation on both the arcade level as well as user experience. There could be a manual included with the game explaining certain aspects. From more mundane stuff of how scoring works, star rating works, what is the difference between hard and normal difficulty level (the level select could indicate also which levels you completed on hard difficulty). How much can you hit the can, behaviours of certain enemies, getting medals in boss encounters etc. Fair enough if you are more arcade-centric than you can experiment around, but because of the auto scrolling nature of the game that experimentation is not rapid nor can you be full assured of certain effects. Edit: The majority of this information is written on the shop's page, but not in the game at least to my knowledge. Last bit of brilliance of the game and a bit of a misdirection because of the art direction is the fact that colors play a secondary role to the positioning of the enemies, color coding just being there to help you. This makes engaging certain groups of enemies more interesting due to specific timings you have to grasp. A instruction manual accentuating that aspect could than quickly make away with the notion that you could have a co-op in this game or that it is brain-dead "simon says". All in all, well worth your time if you are looking for something unique, the arcade experience is nice, there could be more chaos at times to shoot at, but it doesn't the direction the developers were going for.

Very polished and fun for a first studio project. Very reminiscent of the Wii era of gaming.

Incredibly charming and challenging on-rails shooter, has the beautiful spirit of arcade gaming that I hope to see more and more of in indie games. The four main characters are so cute that getting cute drawings of them at the end of every level is an effective reward. My only gripe is that I feel like things get a little too complicated too fast, the learning curve is kind of steep but I was able to acclimate to it (also had to change some of the control scheme and switch to keyboard and mouse because it got a bit too overwhelming on controller.) Otherwise this is a really cool game and I had a good time with it!