Goo Keeper

6/10

Recommended. I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game. The graphics are charming, a nice change from all the dark games out there. The game play was fun. It's not a genre I've spent much time in, but I found it addictive.

neat little metroidvania 6/10

The menu controls are broken, presumably after changing the joypad bindings. There is no way to reset to default either so the game is partially unplayable.

Goo keeper is a decent metroidvania that is held back by a slew of balancing issues and janky controls. It also doesn't do anything to make it stand out among its peers other than having an arguably unique art style. This art style manages to both be charming while also looking quite amateuristic. The character and boss design are ugly and uninspired, as are most of the environments although some of these look decent. However all of this comes with the budget & time constraints of being a small 2(?)-person team, so it can be overlooked. What cannot be overlooked though is the complete and utter imbalance of the game. You start off with barely any health and a peashooter for a weapon, but bosses can dish out a lot of damage and take even more. You have to wail at them for a long time, without any indication of progress as there's no health bars. Later on this becomes worse and worse until you find the triple shot upgrade. Here the tables turn because this allows you to absolutely wreck the bosses without having to respect their mechanics at all. In fact respecting boss mechanics before acquiring triple shot is often impossible. This is due to a barrage of attacks that is nigh impossible to dodge with the clunky controls. Pair this with non existant invulnerability frames when you get hit and you can evaporate within the blink of an eye. The end result is that you safespot or cheese the early bosses while tank&spanking the later bosses with no real strategy or engagement for either. Also i forgot to mention that you can only heal by picking up orbs that drop from enemies. As you can guess this means no healing during bosses which is the final straw. The bosses are the biggest pain point but the clunky controls also make the rather poorly laid out levels a slog. On a micro scale the levels are frustrating, with annoyingly placed spikes or enemies. However credit has to be given where it's due, on a macro scale the world is interconnected and there's lots of choice where to go next. You almost always have several options to explore to find that next movement upgrade. These upgrades are your standard MV fare, things such as a double jump and wall climb. Again the game doesn't bring anything new, and what it does it does pretty weak. The music is also outright annoying, with basic and repetive tracks that made me mute the game after a while. In the end goo keeper is a pretty lackluster experience that is plagued by design issues that drag the experience down from okay to meh. Luckily it's pretty cheap but even at that price the quality just isn't there. I'd recommend this to metroidvania enthusiasts that have played all alternatives but still want more. For anyone else maybe on a deep sale if you're really craving a sidescroller.

This is a short, fun, simplified metroidvania. There are minor quirks in getting used to the controls and in certain boss/enemy behaviour, but nothing upsetting. There are a lot of secrets and neat upgrades to find. It's on the easier side of metroidvanias, though still not something you can play blindfolded. I had a lot of fun and will keep an eye out for another project from these devs.

Joguei pouco. Mas suficiente pra ver que não é pra mim. Vale os dois reais mas achei bem esquisito, cheguei até o primeiro chefe do caminho que escolhi e sei lá... muito esquisito. Mas é um ótimo primeiro projeto, vi que é o primeiro jogo do dev. Se esforça e vai longe amigo (vou deixar a análise positiva pra incentivar kkkkk mas se você tiver vendo isso, melhor gastar os 2 reais em outra coisa

Ugly. Bad movement feeling. Zero feedback when you get hit. You can rebind the controls but the UI and the tutorials don't show the modified controls. The enemies are damage sponges.