Demon's Crystals

Some of the criticism for this game is entirely valid. Some elements of game design here are just flat bad. In the first few levels there are 'grasping hands' which are very difficult to see and you have to sorta memorize where they are for example. Though I'd say things get better at they go that some of the hazards become more visible. The level design is also pretty cluttered, but I do really love all the colors. There is something about the visuals that I very much enjoy. I do find the fact the on screen indicators for stuff (press A or B button) is annoying since I played mouse and keyboard, but the game does, in fact, work just fine with M&K. For anyone curious, A is enter and B is escape I guess? No rebindable controls but really you only have left click, aim and then AWDS keys. I suppose someone might be annoyed by this though especially if you have a weird or foreign keyboard. As far as the gameplay itself, it's a pretty simple gameplay loop with some minor additional things like leveling. As you level up, you gain more hp and damage I guess but it's not really a visible thing since it feels like the monsters steadily get more difficult too. So a lot of the time the 'levels' are kind of meaningless. Though strangely I think it's a decently good system since it's kind of 'under the hood' in that if you keep failing, you'll still be leveling up and slowly overcome the difficulty naturally. So the difficulty curve in this game is probably one of the best I've ever seen in a game. Of course, difficulty curve doesn't really matter all that much in face of just having fun gameplay. Here It's pretty basic. The destructible environments just don't serve any purpose. Which confuses me. The devs could have easily made it so there are these buildings that you can slowly destroy and once they're gone you have more room to maneuver. And that would feel good game design. Sadly that's not the case. The destructible elements are purely visual which means it's style over substance. But ehn, it's still decently fun I'd say. The price is only 3 bucks too so it's actually very hard to hate this game in my eyes. Plus I haven't played a twin stick shooter in a while so it was just some good fun for me. Sound design is on the side of good. I really like some of the music tracks and the sfx never felt overpowering, but there are some parts that kind of suck making the game feel rushed. The final boss, for example roars at the start and no sound comes out. That's uh, kind of terrible. Again though, it's 3 bucks. And I'd say the variety of powerups are sufficient enough to be adequate. Really that's what you should think before buying. If you really like the visuals and you want a game that doesn't require a lot of dedication to it, I'd say this might be good for an evening or two. And 3 bucks feels worth it I'd say. It does make me feel sad thinking about it though because this does feel like it has some very good ground work that could've gone somewhere. There is definitely some measure of love here, but I guess just not enough.