Mago

I reeeally wanted to like this game. It has charming graphics, solid ideas, and I'll even admit I don't like dropping reviews for games I refunded; it feels like rubbing salt in the wound. However, I just couldn't bring myself to invest my time into this game. While the controls are solid in theory, they felt slippery and a bit unpolished for me, and more often than not I found myself accidentally moving to the side and getting hit by an enemy instead of landing on it. I feel like you could've improved this by adding a bit more drag to moving in the air, kinda like how Mario World's physics were handled in Super Mario Maker 2. That actually brings me to my next issue: I feel like you leaned too hard into the "old game" aesthetic and ended up remaking a lot of the problems from older games that were left out for a reason. For example, the simple button mapping helps emulate the lesser amount of buttons on an old Nintendo controller, but it results in awkward situations like holding down the run button to be able to reach the next enemy in a platforming section to jump on, only for an enemy to appear suddenly in the air and I have to quickly let go of and repress the run button to fire a stun blast, only to lose my momentum and fall to my death. I feel like cutting your losses and just doing something like separating the attack and run button so I can configure attack to something else would've mitigated this issue. Also, I'd like to talk about the music. I'm a HUGE Noteblock fan, and frequently listen to his remixes on his channel and have enjoyed his contributions to the soundtrack of Undertale Yellow (an Undertale fangame you can get on GameJolt for FREE by the way!). However, I feel like he limited himself too much with the instruments for this game's soundtrack and it resulted in tracks not sounding as great as they could sound due to being too "retro". What's weird is that Super Mario World (the game this game seems to be trying to emulate) barely uses 8-bit instruments at all, so I don't understand why this game seems to be so obsessed with it? It's not that I hate 8-bit music (I'm a Shovel Knight fan, and I LOVE how Jake Kaufman did the 8-bit music for that game), but I still feel like the music ends up trying too hard to be something it's not. All in all, this game has tons of potential, but due to a bunch of personal little nitpicks, I can't bring myself to recommend it. However, just because I didn't like it doesn't mean you won't, so go ahead! I'd prefer you formed your own opinion of this game rather than using mine as your own. Have a good one.