FIREWORK

[i]STATUS: Finished the game with 10 spheres. Maybe I'll try to get them in another run... I'm not sure where I missed 2 secret rooms. I got the game for free through one of the developer's giveaways on Twitter. (Please, read the edit at the end too.)[/i] Don't you love waiting two years before playing the game you got for free after saying you've wanted to play it for a long while? Yeah... same I knew the game went way more under the radar than what was expected, but only ~30 reviews?! This is kinda why I felt like I had to do a review, especially since I liked it. This is gonna be a long one, but I do feel like it deserves it. Maybe a long review is all you'll need... who knows! This was way nicer than I expected it to be! (Not that I expected it to be bad, but you get what I mean, right?) I didn't think I'd get into it that much but I did, a lot. While the art obviously isn't Sea of Stars or Loop Hero levels of quality, the character designs are really nice, even the simple little spheres. The areas you go in look nice too and the enemies look really cool. I absolutely love characters with a huge smile and/or no eyes and/or (again) being made of fire or something, so I loved these characters so much. Yan (the main character) and the bad guys also looked really cool. The gameplay is very fun! Yan feels great to control and if you're using a controller it feels very nice. There are things I didn't quite understand especially with the fire, sometimes it felt like it was basically impossible to get rid of all of it cause enemies would respawn and stuff... Weird. I ended up not burning the whole place down though, so that's gotta be good. I have no idea what the point of the first boss item is though. It doesn't seem to damage enemies more when shooting through it, it doesn't seem to hurt them when slamming it on the ground, it protects you a little bit yeah but you can't move and it spawns 3 little fires. Never really used it other than to have fun creating huge fires, cause that was really fun. Seeing it actually grow and spread triggered something in me that made me feel like I was 10 playing with a physics simulation game... The story is also pretty nice, although I'm not quite sure why [spoiler]the bad guys who just showed up, burnt everything and insulted you end up actually being nice[/spoiler] but it didn't take me out of it, so alright. The fact that each sphere talks in a different way was cute too! The music is... not too bad? Some of the songs are a bit weird but most of them are nice. Nothing that really stood out to me other than the main menu music sadly, but it's okay. You might have noticed we went from my favorite things to things I didn't like. Here's something I really didn't like at all. The difficulty gets pretty harsh at the end, especially for the final boss. I get that it's the end of the game but [spoiler]the miniboss-but-not-really enemy felt like it had more HP than most of the bosses and only really felt fun once (sadly the last time you actually got to fight it)[/spoiler] and that final boss... ugh. [spoiler]You think you've discovered a pattern but then you realize he'll do that unbelievably fast move almost randomly.[/spoiler] Maybe I'm just bad...? But it didn't feel that way when everything up until the final area and that final boss felt nearly perfect. The game even managed to still feel fair inside a completely dark area, so I wonder what happened (...if I'm not just bad.) Looking at the price right now for me (4,99€) I don't think I would've felt like I wasted my money whatsoever if I actually bought it. Feels like it's just at the right price. All in all, FIREWORK isn't perfect, far from it... but it is a very nice game and the love put into it helps outweigh the negatives and I feel like people should at least try it out, even if they never finish it. ...Like most players, if we use the achievements as statistics. (I can't tell if this game would be better or worse if you're a huge fan of the Mega Man games though...) [b]7/10[/b] [hr][/hr] EDIT - July 2024: So! Put in 30 more hours or so since then. Finished the game fully, getting EVERY achievement... and I cannot believe how harsh I was on this game. It's a REALLY neat little underrated gem, when you don't play it like a dummy. Go save these spheres! Grab those boss items! Fight strategically, figure out what items do and how they can help you in each fight! Trust me, it makes the game so much more fun. That final boss isn't a wild jump in difficulty at all when you actually try playing instead of rushing and going full offense on bosses. With all this, it turns into an actually really nice and fun challenge... and there's harder challenges as achievements for those that dare try them out, so that's great! Also I'm not sure what I was on when talking about the OST being "okay". Aside from one or two songs, it's a really neat soundtrack. Anyways, if I were to rate it now I'd probably give it a 9/10. It's still not absolutely perfect but it's REALLY good, especially for its low price. Give it a shot if you like platformers!