Kingdom Shell

not a bad little metroidvania game. I enjoyed it, good story, could use a few a tweaks but overall not a bad game.

An amusing metroidvania. Difficulty can spike at times, and sometimes you may need to walk away for a bit, but it pulls you back! Had to get a map to find the last 2 rooms I was missing for 100% map completion

很规矩的一个银河城，虽然没有什么特别突出的亮点，但没有什么明显的缺点，玩下来的流程很舒服，全成就条件也很宽松，全收集就是了，非要说什么问题的话就是能力锁有点少了，只有二段跳和空中冲刺

前期还行，后面玩的恶心，游戏时长全靠没存档点的超长即死的跳跳乐撑着

> Solid with a smattering of spectacular ## Why - Detailed pixel art which improves in creativity as the game progresses - Some very unique/mechanically stimulating boss fights - Plenty of secrets, some creatively hidden/hinted at ## Why Not - Instakill lava - Only one type of map marker - Story is kinda just there ## Impressions Kingdom Shell starts off as bog standard as a Metroidvania can be, albeit with very detailed pixel art. You have some basic melee and ranged enemies to beat up, ability gates to bounce off and secrets to discover. This persists even after the first boss, where you go from detailed but bland mountains to detailed but (somewhat) bland undermountain caves. Then, just as you're about to relieve a gnome king of his treasure, your floating exposition buddy shows up. And you jump on his cloud for a shoot 'em up section & boss fight. That's where Kingdom Shell really started growing on me, and its a pity it happens over an hour into the game because there's a chance some players bounce off before that and miss a really well made game. There definitely are a lot of stretches which scream 'standard Metroidvania', but it also never dips below 'solid' and the high points are great. I especially enjoyed the Queen fight for its presentation and sharp but fair increase in moveset complexity compared to earlier bosses. It's a bit unfortunate that her fight is toward the end of the game, and that in general the 'quality' of the experience scales up dramatically as you near and pass the halfway point. There's potentially a bit too much time at the start spent on relatively mundane environments and entirely mundane enemies; a bit more early creativity with enemies and environments could've lead to more players sticking around to get to the really interesting stuff. Having said that; I've seen the release version of the starting area and the dev definitely made huge improvements versus what it looked like then, so good on them for putting in what was probably a fair amount of work to address issues. There are a few variations on the standard formula as well. For one, your only source of healing is a consumable Nectar which doesn't refill at save points (at least until you unlock it through exploration) and dying causes you to drop a fixed percentage of your currency on respawn, no corpse runs. Secrets are handled in some interesting ways too, with a mix of standard illusory walls, hidden ladders _just_ poking out from ceilings and cryptic rumours delivered by random NPCs who demand large sums of money up front. Some things could stand to be a bit more 'standard Metroidvania', like multiple map pins so you're not struggling to remember _why_ you couldn't progress past that dead end. Overall though Kingdom Shell is a polished, enjoyable experience which builds up steam over its runtime to a satisfying conclusion. Well worth fishing out of the sea of competent Metroidvanias we're surrounded by these days.

Nothing groundbreaking, but I thought it was a pretty good Metroidvania. People who like maps filled with obscure secrets will find it especially enjoyable.

Really like this game. It is a fun little Metroidvania. The bosses start out easy but gradually get more fun to fight as the game goes on. Some really creative ideas here too.

great game. Inventive boss fights with great pixel art animation. There were some places where it wasn't obvious where to go next, but that wasn't too bad. Definitely worth playing.