Gleamlight

скачи, мечом руби :)

[h1]It's no Hollow Knight[/h1] Hollow Knight might be Gleamlight's greatest curse. Developer DICO created a beautiful stained-glass graphic style for their platformer. Only that, on the very first look it's reminiscent of Hollow Knight, which can create specific expectations. The truth is that Gleamlight plays nothing like Hollow Knight. It's much more simplified, shorter, without any metroidvania elements. It's an action platformer with a very basic gameplay formula. The problems arise with various in-game mechanics being directly at-odds with eachother. The so called „unspoken story” might feel like narrative is non-existent. Gleamlight tries to convey it's plot through presentation. Unfortunately the inconsistent gameplay focusing on backtracking and re-runs of the game makes it really hard to get engaged. The poorly designed combat system is the final nail in the coffin. It devoids Gleamlight of any challenge and depth. I see glimpses of passion and artistry within DICO's team of developers. I'm going to pay attention to their future projects. Regrettably, as for Gleamlight... I do not recommend this game. If you are interested in a really thorough review then check out my video about Gleamlight: https://youtu.be/q3CEr0gqMW0

$20 for about 3 hours of gameplay if you want to 100% the game. $15 for Hollow Knight with about 30 hours of gameplay if you want to 100% the game. Yeah... please save yourself $5 and just buy Hollow Knight if you want a good action, indie, adventure, dark fantasy, 2D game

I found this nice looking game in the steam sale. It looked very beautiful and interesting so I tried it. The movement kinda nice, with you being able to cancel nearly all your mobility abilities, but not the platforming. It is NOT a metroid vania. It is an action platformer. You run through lots of corridors spammed with enemies. In one of the screens you have to jump up small blocks while six enemies attack you through walls, sometimes diagonally. The platforming is rather frustrating as you don't have coyote time (or very little) while jumping. The game has barely a story and no dialog. The enemies are stupid and get stuck a lot of times. Sometimes it seems like they just give up and stand there looking at you. It is very frustrating to play and you will die through a lot of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. On the other hand the bosses are surprisingly easy and I often first tried them except for one that was aggravatingly difficult for all the wrong reasons. Overall the game plays more like a demo than a 17€ title.

I love the design of the game and the character but sorry i cant , The control is bad and the combat is worse its not worth to playing even it was free

It looks like a metroidvania, it plays like a metroidvania, it WANTS to be a metroidvania… but it is not a metroidvania. It is a strange game. From the fact that you gain new abilities from defeating bosses to the dungeon-style levels where you have to find the glorified red button (over and over again) to open doors, it seems to me that the devs had a metroidvania in mind but didn’t understand the key elements that make these games fun; exploration, progression and new abilities. The combat is the cardinal sin; surely one of the blandest, most boring button-smashing games you can find, your character doesn’t do anything but monotonously swing his sword; there’s no combos, no jump and smash attack, no shield to defend yourself, no ranged attack and not even a health bar! Truly, it feels unfinished. The art is good, the name is catchy and some of the movement abilities you gain later on (by the point everyone NOT achievement-hunting has already stopped playing the damn game) are kind of fun, but its repetitive nature and uninspired combat don’t do it justice. I guess I’ll go for the achievements and forget about ever playing the game. Too bad.

I'm a bit mixed on recommending this one but the rating is already very low. As of today it sits a 36%, a near irredeemable score which makes the game seem worse than it is. But it does have some redeeming qualities and fun aspects to it. Mainly the obviously pretty art style that paired with the sound design which really sells the stained glass world design. Music is not too remarkable but still blended with the rest of the audiovisual experience to make a coherent package. The controls were fine and while combat was a bit mixed atleast it wasn't stupidly hard to drag out the experience like many of its ilk do. There were some genuinly fun bosses and parts of the levels that were worthwhile experiences. The level design as a whole is a bit lacking though with a near fully linear experience that sends you back and forth across the map a few times to get the full ending. Some things change here to spice it up but not nearly enough to make it not feel cheap. However the game is often at a very low discount and for around 2 bucks there's worse way to spend your money. It's not a big time investment either so if you really like these sorta games and are desperate for another one. Gleamlight may provide, especially if you can immersive yourself in the unique aesthetic without paying too much attention to mediocre game design.

Sad to add to the not recommending list, but it really isn't fun to play. It's beautiful, albeit lacking in variety in both enemy and area design. It's not even a Metroidvania as you'd anticipate seeing it, it's very linear and they reuse the majority of it for the various endings. There's only a few areas added to these subsequent playthroughs and sometimes that's nothing, one of the required things to do is run through the game backwards for another ending/boss. It had some neat ideas to deliver the endings, but it just needed more effort. You even unlock a gravity power that shifts the gravity for you but it breaks if you get hit. Instead of that they should've designed it like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. That level design was stellar when you get to the inverted castle. Nothing in this game requires any effort. Even the jumping is mostly bog standard fluff. There are maybe 2-3 jumps that require any level of "skill" (thought). And that amounts to dropping off a platform, falling below a wall, dashing and then double jumping for required progression. That's the most complex section of platforming in the *entire* game. And on subsequent playthroughs you don't need to do it lol. The subsequent playthroughs also involve reused bosses which are tedious (mostly the flying one). As well as adding really beefy crystals that you have to break to progress each room on the first playthrough they break in 1 hit and it's simple. In the last playthrough (two save deletes later) it takes 3 or 4 hits and it's incredibly annoying. You can use the charged attack as well but it's annoying since it can't be stored properly and loses the charge if you don't use it right away which makes timing so annoying that I barely wanted to use it other than on bosses. You regain HP as you attack and so do enemies so the flying boss is a big tedious battle most of the time as you both chip away at each other while recovering. Just back and forth constantly. Annoying boss. The main questline bosses are all kind of lame tbh. It's very disappointing how shallow of an experience this really is because it could have been a gem. It's just not worth the time and I played through twice on PS4 and PC now. (I bought it on PS thinking it was Unbound for some reason) The time playing after this review will be for the remaining two trading cards and I can't wait to delete this and hopefully forget it.

enemy spammers soflocked in the end OST is pretty good art is good gameplay - is the biggest pile of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ i ever played

I've bought the game to have my own opinion about it. It costs about 17€ but I've spent 3,30€ on discount and I somehow still feel robbed. I'm not gonna make comparisons with Hollow Knight since it wouldn't be fair, but I have to say this title is as hollow as fried air. From the top of my head (gonna edit with other points while going for the other ending): Avoiding focusing on the plain issues with the main menu (new commands that get overwritten by the default ones as one replays the game; some options that lack sfx; simply uncomfy to navigate in; video settings that just sets the window size), there is no content whatsoever: uninteresting rooms (you cannot be serious to goodness to make the player walk a linear map TO MAKE THEM GO BACK JUST TO HAVE A BUNCH OF MORE ENEMIES THERE. This is NOT level design, let alone a metroidvania!), broken enemies, no story (let's be real: nothing transpires in the playthrough: there is no pathos in the bosses you defeat, they have no personality, many just have the same sprite), unclear and broken mechanics (istg it just praises tanking, it asks no wits from the players. also, losing life for just moving and double jumping is such a bs when you're just going for the other room, im serious), no replayability, ... there is nothing one would enjoy playing it, let alone to justify the prize (the first playthrough can take at most 2 hours. AT MOST, for 17€). Forgot to say it but: another thing, however minor, is how, for instance, when one defeats a boss, you are stuck in place for up to 3/4 seconds with no animation that hints you're stuck (so ig that's a bug). There are other things that, however minor, show the game was not tested and, hence, nobody cared to get the best game for a better experience like: 1. how tf can room transitions last so little? And the up-down transitions are so short one can just go back to the previous room because the player has to move to the ledge. 2. Also, when the game is in background, somehow it still registers the inputs (I play with the keyboard and even when editing this review I hear the game sfx doing things while I'm just tiping here). 3. Also there are no i-frames after getting hit. 4. The dark swords' attack (basically hk's greatslash) lags the game so much when hitting an enemy. 5. When falling down, the camera cannot keep up with the player's fall acceleration. This means that the majority of times a player can fall onto an enemy or an environmental hazard and keep going down and down, getting more and more damage. 6. enemies can clip in the environmental walls and floors. it's especially frequent in the last bossfight (bad ending) and some enemies such as "the airplane" ones and the "jump to pierce" ones (who played the game knows which i mean) 7. very very minor but: the enemies that crawl around the platforms just straightly shift when they get to a surface of a different angle. there is no smooth animation for it. while its very very minor, its still an eyesore 8. the "melt n spikes" enemies can melt and slide in midair 9. checkpoints literally in screen trasitions? like, come on! 10. about transitions: some, everytime single time, they play a noise, like a "locking/closing door" sfx 11. ambience music changes between area transition very [i] very [/i] clearly 12. the credit music doesnt even last for the whole credit scene, [i] my god [/i] The only ups may be the artstyle (that is still not justified lore-wise, has nothing interesting gameplay-wise and at times makes the navigation really confusing, since one can't tell what's in background and in foreground and what can be broken due to no consistency in the room level design) and the bossfight song (which is seriously the only think I enjoyed, even if it doesn't fit with action scenes at all). I've yet to do the good ending but I did the bad ending and [spoiler] istg the "broken credits" and "broken menu" scenes are so edgy because they are not justificable. Nothing and I mean nothing in this game suggests meta content other than those scenes, really. It's not like Undertale and Deltarune and Oneshot where the entity of the player is acknowledged as actively involved in the game's events. Not here. [/spoiler] This just tells me that Gleamlight tries to be alternative for the sake of being alternative, without the effort of being it. When I have the will to check the true ending, I'm gonna update the review. But one thing I have to say regardless is: developers please, [i] please [/i], get your game tested before release and after major and even minor changes, please please please. P.S.: ah yea and credits are unskippable, why? also i cannot believe so many people were involved in the localization like dude, what was there to localize? the achievements and the main menu? so much written content /s