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.
