GIGASWORD

Gigasword is a throwback to old school 8 bit games like Kid Icarus but with a more modern take. My time with it, while short thanks to my vast library, has been an absolute blast. The game is responsive with s fun light story that reminds me of the Messenger if you loved that game you'll love this one. The mechanic of character movement dependent on dragging a large oversized blade to jump higher or sink it water is unique and fun making opportunities for some moderate puzzles that give the game some flavor. I enjoy the upgrade a progression system that keeps things fresh and i can't wait to keep playing this on my steam deck when I have more time.

Very solid linear MV. The core loop is based aroiund your being in 2 states - with the sword (with garbage mobility) and without (with no means of attackin) and a lot of the puzzles and navigation is in how to get the sword to where you need it to go. The biomes were nothing special, but interesting enough. There's a lot of exploration, but most it is pointless (more or that later with the upgrade system). The bosses were genuinely good with some good patterns you needed to learn. Moving around the world was fun and all that. The best part to me though was the narrative, which was genuinely good. Ok, the one downside. This game has the most garbage health upgrade system I've ever used (note I say health but maybe it's more too, you'll see why). So the way you upgrade health is to gather 5 feathers. Nothing strange there, except they're all tied to each area and the game has no tools whatsoever at any point in the game to help you locate missed feathers. Now imagine if someone found 3-4 feathers in every area, but not 5 in any. Yeah, that's me. Fortunately it does have a supplementary system where you can find a carrot and a bunny to get an additional health point - of which I found 2. Fortunately, the game is not that difficult and I managed to beat it with those 2 extra health points (and I probably would have managed even without them eventually). I enjoyed it. Looking forward to more from this dev.

2/5 j'ai du mal à comprendre l'intérêt de faire de cette aventure un metroidvania. tout est linéaire, chaque zone est structurellement identique, donc à chaque passage entre deux zones ça n'apporte pas d'exploration mais ça rajoute une friction inutile qui est personnellement devenue de plus en plus frustrante. la mécanique centrale de devoir manier cette épée 10 fois trop lourde pour le personnage est chouette et les puzzles du début l'exploitent bien. je me suis amusé à pendant à peu près 1h avec ça mais très rapidement les puzzles se répètent et malgré plusieurs nouveaux gimmicks par zones ils ne changent pas vraiment la manière d'aborder les énigmes et la plateforme donc c'est décevant. mais surtout le combat est ultra chiant, l'idée de lenteur/lourdeur des coups est logique vu le concept de base mais du coup le personnage prend des plombes pour faire des dégâts et je n'ai jamais eu l'impression de progresser et de gagner en puissance au fil des boss. et j'ai rarement skippé aussi rapidement des dialogues l'histoire ne m'a pas du tout intéressé c'est du basique "tu es l'élu harry" on s'emmerde avec tout le respect. en revanche, la da est vachement bien maîtrisée, le pixel-art est très joli que ce soit dans les grands tableaux de certaines salles ou dans les animations plus discrètes (à part pour les cinématiques j'ai pas trop aimé le style). c'est principalement ce qui m'a donné envie de continuer jusqu'à la fin, c'est au moins beau à regarder j'ai hésité à mettre la review en négatif mais c'est un petit jeu indé ce serait nul de faire ça je trouve, d'autant que je peux recommander ce jeu il y a des bons aspects j'ai juste pas accroché

Ce jeu m'a rendu malheureux, j'ai essayé de m'amuser je vous jure, mais c'est un défi que je n'ai su relever. C'est long, pénible, ennuyant.. la musique est bonne, la DA est géniale, même l'histoire est sympathique mais le game design lui.. La lourdeur du gameplay et les allés et retour sont insupportables. C'est le principe même de de type de jeu mais là à chaque zone découverte on SAIT que le chemin sera long et pénible, on n'a pas envi d'explorer ni d'exploiter les mécaniques du jeu, si on peut appeler ça comme ça. Le design du second boss.. j'aime la difficulté dans les jeux, mais pas quand la seule difficulté réside dans votre capacité à ne pas vous endormir pendant que le boss part à l'autre bout de l'areine ou qu'il fait sa phase dans les airs intouchable.. phase à faire 3 loongues fois, c'est comme un mario ! Mais pour les enfants dépréssifs.. On sent que le dev à mis tout son coeur dans le jeu et c'est génial mais malheureusement la boucle de gameplay est un tel fiasco que je ne peux pas recommander ce jeu.

Fun game with a great mix of combat and puzzles. Keeps receiving updates.

Really jank with a lot of attacks. Charged attacks you get later on are basically useless for combat because they take so long to "cast" even after charging them that it's basically just giving enemies a free hit on you. There are a lot of points where I feel completely lost or stuck, feeling like every path available to me is a dead end, and have to look up a walkthrough just to know where to go.

Started out good but the map got worthless, stupid game.

I really dislike this one. The game isn't hard by any stretch but its very frustrating with very little to endear me to it. I'm not even done, I'm trapped in a 'find the key you are missing' hell. I'm going to drop it for now and maybe try and finish it later. (I've got a map and crossed all of the rooms of the offending map off and every single key I can get to has been used. So maybe its another bug). If you really like metroidanias you will probably enjoy this one, just watch out for a bit of lack of polish and bugs. I'd also recommend to also keep notes of what keys are found and where they were used. If you get unlucky like I did you'll thank yourself. Combat is fine. Very serviceable but overstays its welcome pretty fast. Upgrades are really meh. Combat doesn't change at all from the beginning in any meaningful way out side of one small quirk. The game is buggy and I've run into a lot of weird glitches I've had to reset for or just made the game feel worse. Like getting stuck in midair in the middle of dying, Enemies doing that same thing while attacking, Small things like your hits either connecting or not connecting at weird times enemies doing the same. its a lot of small things. The game is fine but other issues make this feel worse. Enemies are pretty ok though. They are reused a lot but the design of each one is solid. Level design is also not very great for a metroidvania. I'm used to metroidvanias being very sharp on their design. You can only jump 2 paces, every block you can make in a jump is 2 paces. There is no stretching to make these or purposely bending coyote time rules to make this work. You either can or you are never intended to and its very clear. Gigasword has a mechanic where you change your jump distance among other things when you pick up or drop the sword. You can also extend your jump using the sword. That in itself isn't the issue except that level design doesn't always seem to account for it. There are many areas I quickly got frustrated with because I had to use coyote time to make jumps with and without the sword. Normally that would just be speed run tech but I have otherwise went searching for other ways around and felt like I was going the intended route. Timings on blocks and various other issues add to this as well. In terms of looks it is very pleasing and I didn't mind most of the puzzles but there was never a time where I felt good. In relation to that I feel like the key system really is super boring(besides also having protentional for a softlock). You do puzzles for keys to get keys to find bosses to get keys. One or two keys is fine but as many as there are? As well as just being lost forever looking for that one key you missed. It makes the designed centered around finding these keys instead of actually exploring and looking for routes and finding enemies and being clever with your platforming tools. The story is very boring and poorly written. I'm a bit biased because its a Chosen one story and I really am not fond of those by default. However, its just weak. Characters we are supposed to consider wise and smart are saying some really stupid things, the banter when it happens is usually weak, and the root cause for this how thing doesn't feel grounded. There is a lot of lore and there are these notes you can collect which are cute and fun. Everything else is rough. The MC is also really unlikable for me. I didn't come into this expecting an amazing story and its serviceable but not a highlight for me. Puzzles are where I had the most fun. I felt many of them were clever and outside of platforming quirks many of them were very interesting. Except a mid-game addition ruined that very hard for me. I don't want to go into spoilers but what I thought was a cute puzzle ability quickly turned into a nightmare for me. I really really hate it and what the game asks you to do to progress. If it were side stuff I wouldn't touch it ever. All in all I was worn down and now I've spent hours just trying to comb these maps for that one key I supposedly didn't get even though every chest is open.

Sono meravigliato che questo gioco non abbia più recensioni positive, l'autore di questo gioco, che ha fatto quasi tutto da solo, ha cercato, riuscendo quasi in tutto, di fare qualcosa di diverso dal solito schema già visto e rivisto, ed andrebbe premiato solo per questo. Ma oltre all'originalità, dietro Gigasword c'è un gioco ben fatto dal quale traspaiono amore e duro lavoro. Gigasword è un metroidvania che cerca di uscire un minimo dai soliti schemi; l'eponima spada non è solo una trovata estetica, ma un'arma scomoda che rende il nostro personaggio più lento e pesante. A parte un paio magie d'attacco estremamente situazionali, la gigasword è la nostra unica arma a disposizione. Questo va tenuto in conto sia durante i combattimenti che durante i puzzle, tanto che si può (e si deve) abbandonare l'arma a più riprese di modo da poter essere più agili sebbene indifesi. Le meccaniche relative al combattimento sono funzionali senza essere nulla di eccezionale, ma funzionano. Onestamente non capisco la gente che si lagna nelle altre recensioni, ovviamente non c'è la fluidità di combattimento che si può trovare in altri titoli, ma la lentezza e la difficoltà di muoversi restituisce alla perfezione la sensazione di trascinarsi dietro un'arma scomodissima. Ho trovato i puzzle veramente interessanti, i vari upgrade tipici dei metroidvania sono usati più che altro per risolvere i vari rompicapo e molto meno nelle fasi action. Lasciare e riprendere la spada in continuazione non mi ha dato per nulla fastidio, anzi, penso sia il punto forte del gioco. Storia e personaggi sono simpatici, anche se sa tutto un po' di già visto, ma alla fine ho trovato gradevole la narrazione. Penso che l'autore avesse voluto espandere la lore aggiungendo gli scrolls e le scritte nel font da lui inventato sparsi per la mappa, ma su questo non è riuscito benissimo. Grafica e musica hanno quel feeling retrò che si può solo amare. Menzione particolare ai fondali, alcuni sono veramente delle piccole opere d'arte che contribuiscono con efficacia all'atmosfera del gioco. Due difetti abbastanza grossi (mancanza di oggetti trovati nella minimap e mancanza di quick travel) sono stati risolti già con delle patch. Secondo me servirebbe una modalità difficile, il gioco tende ad essere un po' troppo facile, anche perché ci sono una quantità esagerata di health upgrade che, combinati con una delle abilità che ci permette di guarirsi, si arriva ad avere una quantità eccessiva di HP. Niente di cui lamentarsi veramente, comunque. In sintesi, un metroidvania veramente ben fatto che non può e non deve essere ignorato dagli appassionati del genere ma che potrà piacere anche ai giocatori meno avvezzi. Consigliatissimo, specialmente per chi cerca un gioco diverso dal solito.

Jogasso indie e desenvolvido por uma pessoa. Muito bom, recomendo.