Fowl Magic

I exhausted this one very quickly after losing to my first attempt at the big spider, then reaching far enough to encounter only another big spider. If there were variations beyond that point they should have been spent at that moment, since the flight down to that point was already spacious and obvious. I always appreciate different options for input, but the difference in freedom between aiming with arrow keys or the mouse is so severe that it immediately makes one more viable than the other; this is a natural consequence of optimizing the input according to the game's design, but in a higher polish the disparity would not be so readily apparent. The game is a score-based mazer that features downward travel as opposed to the usual affairs of moving laterally or upwards. Some of the power-ups which sound like they should be some of the best are actually the most pointless; invincibility in particular is effectively active with any amount of attentive gliding. My intuition tells me that this game was far more unforgiving at one point, perhaps with the similar gravity of Flappy Bird. This might have made the game unfit for Steam in the eyes of the college, but in my opinion it would have given it the reason it needs. Downwell is a nearly perfected form, in my opinion, and so to encroach upon its hallowed space of design is something that needs to be deeply evaluated for its intentions. I write that sentence and think for the first time, "What are the themes & intentions of Downwell?" Like many older games of its legacy, searching for meaning is densely obscured by the classicist forms of physics and color theory. Delving beyond that inspires a theme of committal to a task quickly becoming obligation through simple inertia and relativity; going up is not an option, and going down is always going to test your fall. Fowl Magic gets a C for Castle Crasher Flappy Bird.