Jaded

[h1] Mixed feelings [/h1] At the first glance this game is far too Celeste-y. From cutscene handling to characters, including phoney music and overall storytime bloat, it looks and feels like a copycat. The environments are bland, which doesn't help to sustain the claimed reference. The bloated dialogues morph from cryptic gimmicks into a basic drama out of the blue complete with easy [spoiler]loss and grief[/spoiler] metaphor. Sprinkle in a generic abstract-headed character and this game has nothing going on in terms on identity and vibe. Not to mention the atrocious moveset for cumbersome -and frequent- combat. What saves it though is the thing that counts most in a platformer: level design. It quickly appears that the actual inspiration is more DK Country, and each screen is challenging but can be flashed if you're in a flow, with only a few of them requiring obstinate tries. Respawn is quick and understated, it helps. Other than that, there are nice dialogue boxes. Discrepancies in SFX quality and direction. "..." is not acceptable as a character phrase, especially when it comes up twice in every cutscene. Dodging minigame bosses are a tired excuse for combat design too. And I had massive softlocking bugs on the launching barrels, which only work reliably if you dash into them, but in many instances it's not possible to. I suggest skipping the cutscenes, and you have a neat 3 to 4-hours platform course lightly undermined by the combat moments