Glitchers

You don’t get much information when starting the game, only that you’re playing as a girl named Trix who has no idea what’s going on. After taking out a few enemies, she runs into a warrior named Ada, who has apparently lost both her guardian and her strength, so she decides to tag along. Trix is built for platforming, with a satisfying jump that can be chained into a double jump. It doesn’t send you extremely high, but it’s often just enough for the handy auto-grab mechanic to kick in whenever you get close enough to a ledge. In combat, you have both normal and heavy attacks. Normal attacks can be mashed together into quick combos, while heavy attacks are important for breaking shielded enemies. Their shield strength is shown by white squares next to the enemy health bar. You can still damage shielded enemies with normal attacks, but it takes much longer. One trick I found especially useful was starting with a normal attack and quickly following it up with a heavy one. A single heavy attack on its own feels slower, but using it during a combo speeds things up nicely. You also have a short dodge or dash move that works both on the ground and in the air. Besides helping you avoid damage and pass through enemies, the dodge can also work as a parry and counterattack if timed right before an enemy attack lands. The game signals the timing with a quick glitter effect on the enemy. Thankfully, the dodge window is pretty forgiving, so even messy button mashing can get you through a lot of fights. You will learn new moves as you progress through the game, but the bad news is that you can’t review how to perform those moves. Some of them are required for progress, like when you throw a sword and teleport to it. The tutorial message shows up only the first time, so if you come back to the game a few days later, you won’t remember anything. Ada is controlled by AI, but she handles herself surprisingly well in combat. She follows you around during platforming sections and teleports to your location if she gets left behind. While you can call her to your position manually, her most useful ability is launching Trix into the air to reach platforms that are otherwise out of range. The game’s most unique mechanic is hacking, which is used on both enemies and environmental obstacles. As you attack enemies, a hack bar fills up. Once it’s ready, you activate hacking and create a sequence using one of four button inputs. Each sequence consists of several main nodes, with the amount depending on the enemy or object, connected by links between them. The button used for the main node itself doesn’t matter, but the connecting link has to match the node’s shape to keep the sequence from breaking. Time slows down during hacking, which gives you enough time to scan the four shapes and choose the correct one, although you still need to act fairly quickly. Successfully completing the sequence triggers the full hacking effect. Full sequences are required for objects that block your progress, and these moments occasionally feel like small puzzles. Different hacking effects unlock as the game progresses. The first lets you push objects in a chosen direction, while another can shrink them. Thankfully, these puzzle sections usually include a nearby pool that instantly refills your hack bar, so you never risk getting stuck. All of these effects can also be used against enemies. While the gameplay introduces several fun mechanics, the stages themselves become repetitive rather quickly. Each of the nine chapters has its own environment and enemy types, but the chapters are mostly made up of similar-looking sub-stages where you move forward, jump over gaps, and clear out enemies. To stop players from simply running through everything, the game constantly throws ambushes at you, almost like a beat’em up, forcing you to survive several enemy waves before barriers disappear. Enemies aren’t that hard, but bosses will destroy you if you rush them without thinking. Ada doesn’t have a health bar and can’t die, but Trix can. If you fall in battle, you restart from the last sub-stage, unless you’re playing on the hardest difficulty, which sends you back to the beginning. Even then, the game is fairly generous with healing. Plenty of destructible objects along the path drop hearts and coins, and those coins can be spent at merchants that appear in certain stages. They sell upgrades for damage, health, and hack recharge speed. The art style is one of the game’s strongest points. The enemy designs and character models look great, and the whole presentation has a charming cartoon-like feel. There are also plenty of conversations and cutscenes between Trix and Ada. Unfortunately, the voice acting is where things fall apart. It becomes obvious almost immediately that AI voices were used. Most lines sound flat and emotionless, with little natural flow from one sentence to the next.