Let me start out by saying, I RECEIVED THIS GAME FOR FREE, as a review key. I streamed the first half of the game and gave my first impressions there, then later completed the game in private. Here's the vid if you care!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRzMr_-_H94
This is a pleasant experience! Pleasant enough that I have a lot to say.
TL;DR: It's not the longest game; I've managed to 100% it in a little over 2 hrs, but it is worth considering I'm also fairly experienced in this genre. While this game is on the short side, and is rough around the edges, it does contain a lot of charm from a clearly-passionate group of developers, and a lot of creativity as well. It's a humble puzzle-platformer, but one with a good heart too; I'd call it worth a purchase if this sorta game is your jam, and you want something chill to enjoy.
...Okay, now for the long-form of my thoughts!
The game is basically a mini-metroidvania, though lacking combat and focusing on platforming, puzzles, and collectibles. The world consists of an overworld, four main dungeons, and a final gauntlet-style dungeon. In each location aside from the final, there are a set of spirit fragments to find, with tallies for each area; these work towards unlocking the final dungeon. You don't need to obtain all the fragments to unlock the last dungeon, but you do need the majority.
Despite the lack of combat mechanics, there are enemies and hazards that can kill you in one hit, but this simply resets you back to the start of whichever room you were in with no harsh penalties aside from minor lost progress. Often, these hazards and enemies are also valuable assets for solving the game's puzzles.
Yes, the puzzles...! Some of them are a bit simple, but overall I was fairly impressed with the variety and creativity of some of these. The main mechanic is the ability to change the world's 'element', I suppose you'd call it, at special fountains. While this game's graphics are simple, I do really like how each element-change brings different highlights of color to the world, and changes the main character's eye color as well. Aside from aesthetic changes, the element changes mechanically affect all liquids in the world. This might sound rather minor, but you'd be surprised how changing the world's liquid from water, to ice, to lava, and to acid can drastically affect how you traverse and interact with the landscape.
There are also 'fields', sometimes generated from enemies or animals or movable blocks, which create an independent type of element for some liquid around it, forcing you to deal with mixes of different elements at the same time. (And these fields, too, shift element to something else when you shift the world's base element.) Add on top of this, you may run into obstacles that need to be removed using some of the deadlier elements, meaning you need to both remove an obstacle and avoid dying at the same time.
The puzzles never get brain-bustingly hard, but they are often quite clever and do require some thought mixed with decent platforming-timing. While you do have to try some experimentation by going to different fountains around a level to change elements, the levels are never too sprawling and thus you're not forced to walk too far to switch elements; it keeps a good pace going that a lot of puzzle games fail at. This is also helped by the level design; there isn't so much an 'end' to each dungeon as there is just a bunch of paths and the freedom to leave anytime. You're simply there to find the spirit fragments; if you feel you've found enough, feel free to leave and try a new dungeon.
When you do get enough fragments and beat the final dungeon, you'll probably learn that you didn't receive the 'good ending'. If you collect every single spirit fragment in the game, however...then you're still not done! The game unlocks a new set of spirit fragments in each of the game's dungeons at this point; all at smaller number than before, but all a fair bit more devious to find.
The original set of fragments simply existed in the different areas and were visible at all times, letting you collect them whenever you could physically manage to get over to them. This second set of fragments play differently; each one is invisible and uncollectable to three of the four elements; to collect each one, you need to figure out what element 'reveals' it, and collect it with that element active. This is simple for some of them, requiring some simple experimentation, but a few are quite devious... These 'hard mode' fragments are trickier than the first set, but the levels are not too huge to make poking around them again a pain; some might find this a little tedious but I had fun with the extra challenge, and as intimidating as invisible collectibles sound it didn't take me too long to find them all.
I wasn't disappointed by the game's length; it felt 'right' to me, like it was just the right length for what it set out to do; any more game and it would have been dragging its feet. One thing that did sort of disappoint me was the 'true ending' that you get for finding EVERY spirit fragment, including the bonus set. The final dungeon doesn't change when you have all the fragments, for one; a minor gripe, but I would have liked a hard-mode version of the last level since I went to the trouble of collecting the hard-mode fragments. But more than that, the ending...well, it just wasn't that different from the normal ending. It is different to be sure, but it's debatable if the ending was 'worth' the extra collecting.
But this doesn't super bother me, personally. This game was the most fun in its journey, not in its destination; the simple act of playing and collecting and solving puzzles was the real point I feel, not the ending to the game. And all that said, neither ending is really bad; the game does have a bit of story (mostly coming through via readable logs in the last dungeon), and it's a nice little story with mildly interesting details on the lore of the world and who you are in it. Nothing groundbreaking, but nice set-dressing all the same.
The largest gripes I can give this game are mechanically. The main character controls pretty well; the caped protagonist is responsive to input commands and there's some nice touches, like how you can wall-jump faster if you zig and zag between opposite walls or how if you hold the jump button down, there's a bit more 'float' to your jumps. However, the character itself causes a rough experience in control - namely, the discrepancy between hitbox and player sprite. The character has a box-shaped hitbox all around him, but his sprite is very angled with a lot of unused space within that square. This led me to having a few issues getting clipped by hazards and enemies that didn't look like they were touching me. But the worst problem this caused is with the wall jumping. It is far, far too easy to bump your head on a block while wall-jumping upwards, and it's a proper pain to get the main character to squeeze into 1-block-wide vertical tunnels due to you just being too wide and there being no way to jump straight up into such a tunnel aligned perfectly since you are making angled jumps off a wall. THANKFULLY, moments like this do not come up too often, but this is the worst offense this game ever pulled on me.
Still, that is indeed the worst of it. There are other rough qualities to the game; the simple graphics, some occasional minor sound glitches when switching areas, that sort of thing. This game was made by a small team, and they even made their own engine for this; an indicator of why there's some rough qualities, but also a reason to be tolerant of them while they work out the engine's kinks I feel.
I think this all acceptable; these guys knew how to make a fun game, and to be passionate while doing it. I'm certain future projects of theirs will only increase in quality; these guys have some strong potential, and I think they're worth supporting. :)
