Germinal

I love 2D/3D platformers (mainly those that would fall into the category of precision platformers); I went into this game hoping to find another great platformer, and Germinal did not disappoint. The jetpack gimmick feels nice, and jumping is pretty floaty to complement the amount of aerial movement required in the game. There are collectibles hidden throughout each stage, and they each provide engaging challenges. Each stage of the game explores different mechanics with level design, and they all work quite well. The time trial mode was rewarding and enjoyable. The harder versions of each stage were difficult but still fair. The art is wonderful, and the game sounds amazing. I do have a few nitpicks from my experience, though. [list] [*]While the art style is great and pleasant to look at, a few of the areas look extremely similar aside from a change in the background color. [*]The ending of the final stage can easily be cheesed by [spoiler]avoiding the germs that start the chase sequence[/spoiler] [*]There is a boost that can be performed by holding the hover button on the ground and jumping, but in my experience, it never felt practical to use it often since the stages were not designed around it. Trying to boost immediately after landing will often result in hovering just above the ground. [*]During the time trial mode (in the first stage), I respawned inside the ground collider, and I was forced to reset the run (this was the only bug I had encountered, though). [*]While the level design is mostly great, I noticed many curved or diagonal walls. Attempting to jump off of those walls will promptly result in hitting the bottom of a tile. In a game that often utilizes wall jumps to keep the player airborne, the curved walls felt pretty uncomfortable. [*]You are not able to pause during dialog. [/list] Germinal is an underrated game. if you enjoy precision platformers like Celeste, you should definitely try this game.

Just an amazing game like 🍓 Celeste! It has a lot of settings even for speedrunners! That's cool, highly recommend it!

hardmode unlocked :)

Germinal is a good platformer with precise controls, an okay story and mostly good level design. The game is however held back by poor readability, somewhat janky fluid physics and suspicious hitboxes. If I could, I would give this a "sideways thumb". The game itself is decent, but there are many smaller frustrations piling up throughout the game. The core gameplay itself is solid, and does not overstay its welcome. You have a very high jump, a fast-fall, wallslide and walljump. What makes this game unique is your stamina based abilities to hover and double jump. That said, the game suffers from some frustrating moments which come from either janky gimmicks or visibility issues. First of all, the biggest offender, the double jump. This shared the same button bind as your jump and wall-jump. With no option to re-bind the boost/double jump, you may find yourself wall-jumping when you mean to boost, and boosting when you mean to wall-jump. The walljump is very sensitive, almost like there is a magnet pulling you to the wall, which is good in most cases, but mixing these items will get you killed as stage gimmicks react differently to your boost and wall jump. Secondly, the ceiling-climb. The game may require you to climb on the ceiling. The game will often have you climb the ceiling and jump off, often around a corner and on top of the ceiling you were just climbing on. This would be okay if it weren't from the fact that there is no "swing" mechanic to let you gain distance from the ceiling you were just climbing on. You will often find that when attempting to do this action, especially in succession, you will often time "bonk" on the ceiling and fall to your death, or you will climb too far and just fall off. I tried different distances while in a safe area, and it felt rough. The third problem which sticks out throughout the game is poor visibility. Now, I play many different games, and I have never considered using color or visibility accessibility features in any game before this one. In the end, I decided I wanted to play the game with the default settings, but man it gets rough. There is a lvl where you have a thick, purple outline covering the border of your screen, so you can only see the middle. This "fades" into the lvl. Germs which are green look purple in this mode, and I died many times to thinking I could clean something, but they were a different kind of germ. The lvl design is also not made with this tick outline in mind, as it completely covers and hides important gameplay tiles you will need to finish the lvl. You have to do multiple leaps of faith "off screen" and randomly press the jump button hoping you found a wall, or jump off into the distance hoping the trail of germs the game is showing you will end when you reach the end of the screen. While the purple screen smoke is only there for a small part of the game, the game also suffers from boxes in the background sometimes looking like solid platforms, but when you try to land on them they're not, the "trash" in the party lvl sometimes blended so well into the background I could not see them while rushing through a lvl, the "pillows" that jump at you when you use water are sometimes not telegraphed, they will just hit you in the face the first time you try to complete that room like it's a "gotcha" moment. Also, the trails of flying trash have transparent smaller trash flying after it, this also looks like it is just a visual effect, but it is not. Some levels are so dark you just have to guess where to go and hope you land correctly. You will often have to clean areas where you are landing, this sounds fine, but the jetback water feels inconsistent, especially when cleaning vertical pillars of germs. Making a game like this, in the artstyle they chose, it cannot avoid getting compared to Celeste. Other than the graphics, the story, and it being a room-based precision platformer, it does not try to be celeste. However, with the comparisons the devs are welcoming making a game like this, I am not sure they do themselves any favours. While the game is good, it simply cannot compete with what it is undeniably going to get compared to. So, should you play this game? Maybe. If you are looking for a decent B-grade platformer to play over a weekend and you already played the great ones, this is for you. I enjoyed my time with it, and I am sure you will too. That said, I do not think this is for everyone. There are some rough edges, I found that the music was a mixed bag containing everything from "please turn this annoying music off" to "okay, this is quite pleasant to listen to", I did not care for any of the characters, and I found myself actively disliking the main character. This game is made by a small teams of devs, and they should get all the praise in the world for releasing their game in the vision they had. I hope they are successful enough so they get to continue making new experiences for others to enjoy.

Parts of this game are excellent, particularly the basic moveset and the controls. Having the double jump and hover work off of the same resource makes for really interesting and challenging platforming. Other parts of this game though are pretty flawed. To address the elephant in the room, yes this game is a bit of a Celeste clone. Both games have similar movement mechanics and physics, effectively the same art style, similar level design, particle effects, etc. Not to mention that both are precision platformers with an introspective story centered on mental health featuring LGBTQ characters and themes. As long as none of that bothers you it doesn't really get in the way of the game. Maybe with the exception of the art style, like in both games the primary environmental danger are the blobs of black mixed with a colour and they look nearly identical in Germinal as in Celeste. My main complaint about the game unfortunately is the story, and while that is never the part of a game I gravitate to I couldn't help but feel that Germinal's story was far too much of a focus for how uninterested I was in it. The characters all aggravated me in some way, so the game pushing me to relate to them at different times was a struggle as I found them (primarily Val and the player character) standoffish and annoying. Overall though this is a good game, and while it is very short (if you're familiar with Celeste you will probably finish this game in 5-10 hours) I think considering how limited the market is for precision platformers that scratch the itch at all like Celeste or Super Meat Boy it's worth it. Maybe wait for a sale. EDIT EDIT EDIT: I forgot to mention some quirks with the controls and movement mechanics that can be pretty infuriating. First off (unlike Celeste), Germinal doesn't have much in the way of lee-way or Coyote-time, you double jumped while 1/100 of that platform was behind a jump-activated wall? Try again. Also fairly often the game will have you using particle physics to destroy obstacles which (similar to Spelunky 2's liquid physics) introduces too much indeterminacy into what should be a very cut-and-dry physics system. Finally I would like to point out one of the largest sources of aggravation from this game, the fact that even when facing away from a wall if you press jump mid-air if you are close enough to a wall you will do a wall jump instead of a double jump. This really felt unintuitive to me and felt limiting to how you could approach the levels and even how the developers could have designed them, though really it is something you should just get used to.

If you like Celeste, you'll love this game. It's short, sweet, and a good challenge. Just calling it 'Celeste with a jetpack' would be underselling the game hard, but you can imagine it as Celeste with a jetpack instead of a dash ( well, mostly without a dash. ;] ).

This game feels like a mix of mario sunshine and celeste and that is not a bad thing. Now for many who says this game is a celeste clone or celeste mod I must admit they are right in a way as that is also my first impression when I saw this game. But games being cloned from a popular IP is not necessarily a bad thing. Earthbound one of my favourite game is a dragon quest clone but still stands out due to its unique setting and its story telling being more darker and emotional and less adventurous compared to dragon quest. Alundra is another gamer favourite being a zelda clone but it still stands out in a way with its brilliant twisted story telling, that even caused the writers to be depressed and make a light hearted game instead and it still has that zelda dungeon feel but different as well. In the end clones aren't necessarily bad in fact they can be welcomed in the gaming community if they do something to stand out from their original inspiration and germinal does stand out well, which I must say I like Germinal's story more than Celeste. Now what makes Germinal stand out is its water jetpack which is pretty cool which means no dashing and more double jumping and floating. I like how each level beings in new game mechanic that revolves around the jetpack which Celeste does amazingly well. I think my problem is that Germinal is not as deep or has as much mechanics as Celeste and that could be a smaller budget and smaller team. Celeste does not just revolve on single mechanic as that is Germinal's weakness in a way still fun though. Celeste had golden feathers, running from dark enemies, rock monster to use as momentum, bubble launchers, dashing, gripping walls, etc. Overall I want to say mix with germinal, but I will go with not recommend I do not want to say I hate it as it is not bad, but I feel it does not do enough to set itself apart imo. Though these developers do have talent in coming up with a creative mechanic used in a 2d game and I wish them good luck and hope their next game has a better success story.