Jenny the Witch

I REALLY wanted to give this game a fair shot, i really did. Especially since my feedback on the demo had been adressed. But i am sorry to say that for a game that puts so much emphasis on its combat and platforming, especially as a spectacle fighter, neither of those aspects are fun in regards of this game. Your melee attack is tied to a limited resource (yes, your MELEE attack) that you must recharge with a ranged weapon that takes nearly a whole second to actually fire and shoots super slow pellet projectiles that has an enormous amount of spread and you NEED it to refill your actually decent weapon, your dashing and to do puzzle platforming (which is glitch and also works with an ultra awkward dash that has too long a start up and always goes way too far, never when you need it to in platforming sections). This felt more like a resource management slog than a spectacle fighter that let me go crazy with my tools but encouraged more variety. And afaik there is no way to upgrade any of your base moves. just add new combos, moves and super attacks (which are generally pretty underwhelming) The only thing that felt consistant was the missile attack. And you are expected to fight against some of the spammiest enemies imaginable in hoards that just get hitstunned whenever they feel like it. Which is a shame cause this game has a banger presentation and premise but i am just not having fun with it at all.

lowk heat

This is another game that makes me wish steam had a middle ground review option. Do I recommend this game? Well... maybe. It depends. Often when I feel middle on a game I can at least lean a little more towards recommend without too much reservation but this one I keep flip flopping every few words on if I should mark it as yes or no. This is one of those games that I picked up pretty quickly after release cause I was excited for it (and then let it sit in my library for a couple months cause I have no focus) and ultimately even though I bounced off the game fairly quickly I don't think I regret that purchase. I like the aesthetic, I like the world, I like a lot of the ideas the game is working with and the mechanics to it. There is some interesting level design here and there with some of the arena spaces you fight in having parts of the environment you can interact with for the fight. The special abilities are cool and the game does have good combo potential. Ultimately though the reason I bounced off after a little over an hour and a half is because while I can see the potential in the systems everything felt a little too clunky for my taste. The character feels too heavy for the platforming sections to feel satisfying with the dash ability feeling a little too short and the jumps falling too fast and not going high or far enough to make it feel natural. It feels a bit too stiff, and maybe that's what they were going for with the character but it definitely doesn't have the best feel. Combat sadly sits in a similar state. There is some potential there but enemy attacks don't feel well telegraphed enough in some cases and with no block and the dash being your best dodge option and still feeling a bit too slow and too short it makes it hard to hit a good flowstate with the combat. Maybe this game just isn't for me, and that's fine not every game has to be, I just wish everything was a bit quicker and smoother. I do find the setup interesting and am curious about where the story will go; but I hit a point where I started to feel frustrated with the feel of the combat and I took that as a sign to stop. Maybe I'll go back to it at some point, as I think there is a good game in here, but for now gonna shelve it and try other stuff in my massive backlog instead of forcing myself to finish through this.

I really want to love this game, but i just can’t. The game looks good and has a nice style, but playing it is just frustrating. Both aspects of the main gameplay loop, which is fighting and platforming have some interesting ideas, but booth suffer from major issues: The Platforming: First the platforming, as it also feeds into the problems with the combat. Platforming can only be described as infuriating. It’s not difficult per say, as falling at best puts you back to a checkpoint platform before and temporarily drains your shield or at worst forces you to redo parts of a completed section again. Don’t get me wrong, the platforming is doable and can be brute forced, but it feels very stiff and unresponsive. This is due to multiple issues: 1. No coyote time. The game doesn’t have any leniency with jumping off ledges. This results in the game regularly eating your inputs and instead of jumping you just walk of the edge like a lemming. 2. No/barely any air control. It is incredibly difficult to adjust yourself mid air which is made worse by: 2.1 Vertically (At least until the point where I stopped) you only get one jump that is not super high and very often the platforms are placed in a way that you can barely reach the next platform height wise. 2.2 Your horizontal movement options are either a normal walking jumps or a dash jumps, with the latter covering roughly twice the distance. The result is a massive difference in ground covered and multiple instances, where a normal jump doesn’t go far enough and a dash jump goes too far, meaning you either have to aim into a wall while dashing or you having to time you normal jumps perfectly, which feeds back into problem 1. 3. The level design conceptually is mostly fine, with some new mechanics mixed in to keep the platforming fresh. However it does often expect a level of precision from the player, which the controls hardly allow. Additionally the design decisions of some sections just amplify theses issues. For example one section has fans, which turn on and off over a bottomless pit, where them turning off doesn’t add anything to the challenge or jumping over tight platforms, while you can get hit by falling debris and getting hit drops you into the pit. 4. The checkpoints are a minor thing, but they can be jank sometimes, such as respawning me very close to the edge or for one checkpoint, that repeatedly threw me into the void. One larger annoyance is, that if a platforming challenge is multiple areas stacked above each other and you fall down, then the old checkpoint can override the new, meaning, that if you fall but land on a platform, you might have to redo the platforming again from that point. The Fighting: Note: This is very subjective, as I’m not super knowledgeable on these types of games, so a skill issue is absolutely possible. The fighting (at least to the point where I got) was initially promising but ended up being largely disappointing. For combat you have melee and ranged options as well as a dodge and the ability to buy upgrades to increases your move pool. The problem is, that ranged attacks are free and can be done basically without consequences, while melee costs stamina, thereby competing with dashes. Melee is risky, as you leave yourself open to attacks and the melee attack options are kinda limited and the attacks have some noticable recovery to it. This combined with the fact, that if you get hit, you get stunned for a second in which you are still vulnerable. This means, that if you get surrounded by melee enemies you can get repeatedly stunned. You can still escape after taking some hits, but this and the fact that in my experience most melee options besides maybe the uppercut felt mostly unhelpful (as bigger enemies can’t be stunned) melee just felt like an overall bad option. After trying out different approaches to melee and either using melee and running out of stamina for dodges when needed or taking damage, because the melee options weren’t that useful, I made the disappointing realization that the best way to approach every encounters is to treat it like Serious Sam: shoot while walking backwards. Again Ranged attacks are free and infinite, so if an enemy manages to close the gap I can just dash away and keep shooting. I can rack up bigger combos and the game (as far as I’ve seen) doesn’t have anything that would incentive’s me implement some variety. The result is, that every encounters boils down to hold down the shoot button and walk backwards or strafe to avoid ranged attacks and dash when needed. It’s safe, easy and incredibly boring. The players missile ability is fine, even if I never found it to be super helpful and the special moves also didn’t feel very useful. The enemy designs are cool and I like, that they all work slightly different. However they reinforce the Serious Sam play style. You can run away from normal melee enemies and just dodge attack of the stronger variant. The gun enemies shoot projectiles that can be dodges easily if you far enough away and you just get hit if you try to rush them down, especially, since focusing them is kinda difficult with the games movement. The large enemies have strong melee attacks and can’t be stunned and the exploders and flamethrowers really want you to keep a distance anyways. The only outlier and enemy that requires some strategy are the missile enemies, as their attacks track the player, but can be parried with a correctly timed melee attack to damage themselves or other enemies. The arenas have some interesting ideas, especially with variety, but many were not super fun for me to fight in. One example and referring back to the platforming section is fighting enemies on multiple disconnected platforms over a pit. If you use the dodge you will fall off the platform and using melee can also have the same result. Meaning that you shoot and strafe. A different example of an interesting design and meh execution were arenas with a pit you can open up by shooting a button. Cool idea, but in practice I didn’t find a use for it, as normal enemies die fast enough and large enemies can’t be juggled towards the pit and trying to lure them also seemed less viable than just keeping distance and shooting. Overall the game in it’s current state is very rough. For the price you can absolutely check it out, as I would describe it as a potential diamond in the rough, but at least in it’s current state I really didn’t enjoy it.

(gifted a copy + am in the credits, for transparencies sake) damn. this ruled. i really liked steel carnelian dont get it twisted, but i consider jenny to be the original concept from that title in its fully realized form. very snappy game, at its most composed it hits all the beats of your typical hacky-slashy/beat-em-hitty, but when it gets hectic it makes you feel like a scatterbrained animal that just sprung from the zoo. carnelian's big bullethell-ish moments that really shined happen every like 5 minutes in this game, especially in those last couple instances. as succinctly as possible, it owns. if i had any complaints to make, i much prefer the combat segments to the platforming. not that the platforming is 'bad'. its just that the combat is so 'good'. it never got to a point where i was running out of steam or anything, but a few of those instances made me think on all of the killing i could be doing. and no i am NOT malding, i CRUSHED those segments. i also wish i had unlocked a few more of the special moves in my first playthrough, but im sure that can just be marked down to me not using my kit as good as i couldve been, and of course the coveted second playthrough AKA The Real Playthrough. had a great time, already counting down the days for more

needs optimization. Looks fun but It's unplayable for me.

Прикольная небольшая игрушка. Довольно аутентично воспроизводит вайб PS2 игр. Отлично играется на steam deck, не понятно почему до сих пор нет зеленой галочки. Советую забиндить прыжок и дэш на лепестки.