I wanna start off by giving props to the developer. The game runs on a proprietary engine he coded himself and is quite smooth gameplay-wise. It’s got a great visual style, and the sound design is pretty solid, albeit imperfect.
That said, this game has many flaws. Movement is fun in open spaces, although limited by an ominous fog which I assume is there to save on rendering power, but every other level is indoors with staircases that destroy your momentum by flinging you into walls, and you lose momentum between levels while you wait for the door to open. Turning your camera too fast also seems to reduce momentum, which I think could easily be fixed by implementing a sideshift mechanic similar to the one in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, and would also add an extra step to the mastery of movement in this otherwise quite simple game.
On a base level, the sword is fine. The faster you are, the more damage it does, and it’s always active assuming you’re in mid-air. The power attack, on the other hand, is problematic. It’s meant to be used as a last resort if you’re out of shotgun ammo and don’t have any momentum, but it is by far the slowest attack in the game, the animation taking almost two full seconds to complete. You’ll rarely have an opportunity where you need to use it, and when you do, it likely won’t come in handy. Instead of a power attack, a limited-use boost ability, maybe one which recharges over time, might suit the game better. It would serve the same purpose combat-wise (I.e. attacking without momentum) and would also add another movement mechanic for the players to master.
Another weapon-based issue is that the shotgun doesn’t feel powerful at all. It can one-shot unarmored enemies without needing any momentum, but it does very little to armored enemies unless you fire multiple shots. The issue here is that unarmored enemies don’t really pose a challenge when you have no momentum. You can run down a hallway, turn back, and you’ll already have enough momentum to finish them off with the sword. It can be useful for killing ranged enemies, but one of the two ranged enemies the game has to offer is armored, so once again, you’ll be using multiple shots to finish them off. Lastly, shotgun jumping isn’t a thing in this game, which is both disappointing and unexpected given that the game is so strongly built around momentum. My opinion? Buff the shotgun so that it one-shots all enemies, make it require a large amount of kills to recharge so you only get a few uses of it per-game, and implement shotgun jumping as a traversal mechanic.
Overall, I didn’t find the combat very satisfying. Your reward for killing an enemy is a blood splatter and maybe an item of some sort, and hitting them without getting a kill just nudges them a little. Pair that with enemies who seem to aggro at random, confusing map layouts with many overlapping layers, and handful of keycard-holding enemies with no distinguishing features that you need to kill in order to progress, and you get this game. One thing it does succeed in is making me want an an HROT-style King’s Field game set in an alien megastructure.
It took about half an hour to complete, the other twelve minutes of gameplay spent stuck on the surprisingly long loading screens, and the world record speedrun is just over four minutes, of which you could probably shave off about fifteen seconds by taking an alternate route on map four. I’d say buy it for a dollar, but it’s never been that cheap, so you might be waiting awhile.
