Let me be honest, I actually liked this game quite a lot, and I hate having to write a negative review. The characters are funny, the dialogues hilariously demented, the pixel art is adorable and the metroidvania structure decent enough. So why the thumb down?
Well, for starters, there's some very odd design decisions here. You get a very basic tutorial, but no explanation about any of the power-ups you collect, so you have to figure them out yourself, and not all of them are exactly obvious. I also can't understand what the dev was thinking with that "Lv50" achievement, when the game can be very easily finished around lv. 10-15 (see my playtime? Around 8 hours came just from grinding this cheevo).
But the real reason I can't recommend the game is that even after years of early access it's still absurdly buggy. I'm talking Sonic 06-level of broken, if not just one unmoving truck away from Big Rigs. What's worse is that many of these bugs can actually break the game or save file, sometimes permanently. Just off the top of my head, here's a showcase:
- Got stuck into a wall and had to close the game. Multiple times.
- Some save statues don't save your game.
- After dying or loading a file, you start with a fixed 100Hp instead of full health
- [b]The tank in the underground section doesn't respond to controller input, you can only move it with you keyboard[/b]
- [b]The arcade minigame flat out deleted my fluffy friend Nyan. Permanently. She's cute and I missed her, so there goes my progress, had to restart the entire game.[/b]
- The same minigame appears to be literally unplayable, meaning [strike][b]legit 100% completion is currently not possible[/b][/strike]. [b]SMALL UPDATE (28/07/2023)[/b]: Following various reports, I came back and verified that the Cookibius achievement is in fact obtainable (the requirement is just getting 1000 points); however, the minigame itself is still broken and the entire process essentially boils down to moving around while trying to collect INVISIBLE items and avoiding INVISIBLE enemies.
- [b]An optional boss (the robot) instantly softlocks the game and cannot be fought[/b].
- Another boss (the witch) spawns infinite chests on defeat. This is maybe the only GOOD bug, and pretty much the only way to grind to level 50 without losing your sanity or sacrificing your soul to Nyarko.
- Many prompts don't work as intended. For example at one point you have to sit on a bench to progress, but using UP or action doesn't work (in spite of the onscreen instruction), you have to JUMP on it instead. Sometimes you enter a door and a dialogue window briefly appears, while other times you CAN'T start the dialogue at all (I'll never be able to sleep not knowing what lies in that orange bush).
And so on and so on. A lot of these bugs actually made me think I got stuck, so at one point I started keeping backup saves, but that's something you should only do to [strike]cheese achievements[/strike] transfer saves, not to finish a cute casual game about a hammer loli. I shouldn't have to fear for my save each time I enter a new area.
Again, overall I LIKE the game, being a fan both of 2d exploration platformers and cute things, but in good conscience I can't recommend it, especially with the fairly high price tag.
Should a patch fix at least the most serious issues, I might update this review, but until then, sorry Piko, but someone has to work on their programming.
