Fragrance Point

deeply characterful chat-and-explore adventure on a colourful, syncopated space station. feels super refreshing to see such alien aliens

I'm saying yes because I don't want to punish someone who is clearly extremely creative and interesting, but between you and me, no, I cannot recommend this game at all... which is a real shame because I want to. This game is so interesting and cool, the music is crazy and wild, the art direction is obviously why you are here and you're right to be drawn to it... Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, the dev decided to make a platformer with a terrible jump. This is, by far, the worst jump in recent memory for me from any game from any level of developer. Firstly, the jump button doesn't make you jump. Immediate sin. You need to hold it down to charge the jump, then jump. If it was like shallow (but useful!) jump with a press, bigger and only sometimes necessary jump from holding the button down, sure. I could see that. But this just does NOTHING unless you hold it down, and secondly, you really have to hold it down. I'll probably exaggerate if I try to specifically say how many seconds you have to hold the button, but I can say this for sure: it's longer than any game I'm familiar with, longer than feels necessary. I can't tell you how many times I pressed, held and released the button only to not jump, get frustrated, and then hold it down for just longer than feels necessary/natural, then longer still to make sure it would work, THEN jump. The problem here is that there's very little "game" here, the "game" is basically exploring a trippy world, running around, and jumping. After my first hour I only just got my second "power" or tool after stumbling into the only directed quest I'd seen so far after exploring many rooms, and the wheel had many more open slots, so potentially it gets more complex later but unfortunately I'll never know. My desire to explore the game world was utterly destroyed by dealing with this jump for an hour. It doesn't feel particularly great to run either, not bad, just not great (although there are some speedy slidey sections that are fun), so if half of what I'm doing to explore feels awful, and the rest feels ok, I can't justify exploring. Basically, if your game only really has three "verbs", them being "run", "jump", and "use power/item", you can't have 33% or more of your game be awful right from the start with no reason for the player to believe it will ever get better. It doesn't help that the game gives you literally no direction at all, so you're stumbling around wondering what to do and while, for a while, the sheer insanity of it all does carry the experience (again, I really want to love this game, especially for the art direction and music which is so original and interesting)... ultimately it's a game, not a cartoon, I have to play it and playing it needs to feel good... or at least neutral enough for me to focus on the exploration and art. When simply trying to clear a ledge or exit a bowl/pool shape in the ground is maddening, and when climbing absolutely is part of exploring, and you can't walk over there and simply jump, it's just not worth it. For my 1.3hrs played, easily 20min or more was spent trying to just get up one level of geometry and either not jumping when I wanted to, or finally jumping and he's not high enough in the air to clear the ledge, or finally getting where I wanted to go and not even enjoying the success of that because simply jumping shouldn't be a process to succeed at. Sorry for the negativity if the dev reads this but I'm baffled, and annoyed. No play testers, or they were all too close friends to mention how bad it felt, or...? I bought this game to play with my friend cus I loved the aesthetic and we both like trippy stuff (as you can tell from my account picture) and we both just hated it. Not the game itself, but the experience of playing the game. We both agreed that we really wanted to see the rest of the game but just couldn't motivate ourselves to explore when the movement was so lacklustre. So, if anyone sees this on sale, grab it. Support the art. Hopefully the next game feels better to play. I'll probably just skip through some YouTube videos of this to see areas I missed and never come back. TL;DR: Incredible vibes, worst jump of all-time, hard to enjoy the vibes when the movement is so frustrating.

This game is incredibly fun to look at but the lack of polish in gameplay and the way the soundtrack sounds makes it super exhausting to play.

Such a dope game. Some of the coolest character designs u will ever see. Type of game where you actively decide against using a guide even when youre stuck cus the aha!! moment in solving a puzzle/objective is sooo satisfying since you do need to think outside the box a little at times.

⚡极⚡致⚡动⚡感⚡

I can't stop thinking about this game. Maybe one of the greatest pieces of media I have ever witnessed/experienced. It has some of the most bizarre/alien/foreign/otherworldly structures, gizmos, colors, textures, and creatures that a human could possibly come up with. I can't even comprehend how it's possible to create something like this. But I know it's surely impossible to have done it sober. I thought it was just a collectathon/walking sim (and I would have been perfectly happy with that because the world is so interesting), but apparently it's also a metroidvania and a puzzle game. Perhaps the best metroidvania I have ever played. It even has character customization (which you have to unlock with your abilities). It does have maybe one or two unintuitive puzzles (that had me stumped for a while), so it’s not perfect, but I still think it’s a masterpiece, and the price is way too low at just $8. Also, I didn’t even notice until after 2 hours of playing, but, just like basically everything else in the game, the rate at which you shoot projectiles is also synced to the music.

This game speaks to me on a spiritual level. What else is there to say? If you feel the vibes, just go and get it! Gameplay wise it's a light puzzle game with some metroidvania elements. You'll mostly explore, talk to the denizens of the space station and collect collectibles. But really, mostly you're just vibing to the music and visuals, marvelling at all the strange and delightful stuff around you. I wouldn't have it any other way, too few games dare to just be delightfully weird!