Heartless

This generic precision platformer gets thumbs up only because it’s cheap and gives you a couple of hours of content. Except for the intro and the final scene, there’s not a lot of story here. It deals with a topic we are all guilty of, yet it is appropriate for the contemporary era in which we live. The story involves a nasty ghost that’s running around taking peoples’ hearts. What makes it worse is that people give their hearts willingly in exchange for a brand new smartphone. They disregard their family, friends, interests, and games… and stare into their new gift. When this happens to a family that stops paying attention to their youngest member, the family radio decides to do something about it and walks into a dark cave. You have 40 stages to complete. The goal in each is to grab all the hearts scattered around while avoiding various traps and enemies Traps include time-tested favorites like saws and spikes. There are no surprises in this game, unless you count spikes that suddenly fall on your head. There were even hints of disappointment when a suspicious part, where I was expecting a cheap death, turned out to be perfectly safe. Luckily, the little radio is quite nimble. It can jump up to four times without touching the ground. And because jumps are floaty, meaning you don’t drop down like a rock, it’s possible to make some precise acrobatics around the stage. The bad thing about is that fast-flying projectiles will usually hit you. Some traps shoot in an interval that’s tricky to dodge when going towards them, so you might avoid the first one and get hit by the second because you’ll be still in the air. Another weird and bad design choice is the screen shake whenever a projectile hits a wall. Now imagine a machinegun. The pacing or difficulty curve is not great. Sometimes you’ll get stuck in one stage because of bad trap placement and then breeze through the next five. For example, stage 12 has this weird projectile speed that’s impossible to dodge. I only managed to finish it because of a bug that allows you to finish the stage even if you die on top of the exit gate. Another bug happens when you finish the game and you’re left with a white screen after the ending scene. The presence of enemies makes the game appear more difficult than it is. Most are just walking around and die as soon as you jump on top of them. The most common are colored bells that have a strange red circle with a number 1 stuck on them. I’m not sure if this is a design choice or a leftover from the game’s engine. The cheap part comes with music, sound and art. They are basic and stay the same from the first stage to the last. Because the single music track restarts each time you die, it is very annoying and you'll definitely turn it off pretty quickly. There appears to be partial gamepad support. I was able to move around, but none of the buttons worked for the jump. The keyboard works fine.

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If you find this review to be helpful, my curators page is here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/The_dull_games_reviewer This is a nicely put together tricky single-screen platformer. The aim is simple: there's a number of hearts dotted around the level and you have to collect them. In your way are various obstacles that escalate in difficulty as the game goes on, and what starts off as a fairly easy test becomes pretty challenging. With pixel-perfect jumps and dangers like roaming enemies, giant buzz-saws whizzing about and static or moving spikes. Initially it's rather easy but it gradually ramps up-to a fairly fiendish degree, although it does introduce some elements that are trial and error, which is a mild blip. Generally though it's a decent effort, with smooth controls and a good feel to how it handles. On the other hand: The story isn't all that engaging, and after 22 levels (of maybe 40 in total?) this is very much game-play first, with no bells and whistles for anything else. The sound effects are good, the graphics are quite nice, but there is only one musical track and it lacks oomph. For the price this a good effort but I have to admit it isn't so appealing to me that I will play it for hours on end. A fact borne out by having played it for, uh, around an hour before switching it off for something else that offers other diversions than just pulling out my hair after failing another tightly timed challenge. At under a few pounds this seems like a reasonable alternative to the likes of 'Super meatboy' or 'N++', and there's probably still at least another hour or more of "entertainment" left before it's finished. Personally it's not my long-term cup of tea, but I have "enjoyed" it even if I'm not likely to finish it anytime soon to leave a 100% review in a timely fashion. I'm going to give it a recommended, given that it's so cheap and well-made overall. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/The_dull_games_reviewer

Its a pretty simple platform type game the only issue with it is sometimes the spikes or enemies have this weird hitbox where they suck you in, even if you destroyed that said enemy.