An Breakout/Arkanoid-like game with less abstraction, instead of playing a paddle that moves from left to right to hit colored blocks, you play one of 5 available "Puppet Kings". You start with one and can unlock new characters during the game.
It's a bold move reiterating such an antique game concept to an modern game and in my viewpoint, the developers were succesful with it.
Instead of breaking blocks, you break bosses. This is a boss-rush game where the enemy itself consists of tons of parts you break apart, this is interesting because instead of just having to catch the ball, you also have to dodge attacks of the enemies with your paddle. If you get hit you become stunned for a while, which makes it harder to catch up with the ball. So while destroying the enemy you also make them less harmful, by making them smaller or destroy significant parts they can attack you with.
The Boss design itself is superb because basically no idea becomes recycled, nothing is streamlined, every boss is unqiue and there are plenty of them (I've found 20 so far). The first boss is a funny little aversion of your expectations, because it resembles the colored arkanoid blocks, but they also have eyes and teeths and try to squish you.
What really sets this game apart is its arcade structure, the game description on steam says it has an "rouge-like twist" which kinda scared me off, because I don't like procedural level design. But what it actually means is simply that you have a set amount of lifes to play through the game, you won't be able to discover everything on your first run because there are a lot of alternate paths that lead to different bosses. It's like in Star Fox 64. There is a set amount of level which level you play depends on varying conditions for every boss. Like for example which part of the boss you destroy first.
But that's not all, like mentioned you have 5 characters and while unlocking new characters you also unlock new levels on future playthroughs, so many, that up to this point i'm still not sure if I've seen everything this game has to offer, you have to play through the game at least 3 times to see the credits, the final level will vary several times and i'm at the point where I believe I beat the "true final boss" but i'm still not sure sure.
At the point where I saw the Credits I thought "well now i've seen everything" only to become surprised with a new secret phase of the first boss, after that I've unlocked another new level with an absurdly hard boss fight that even puts the final boss to shame and even this boss has extra conditions to unlock another new one, it's crazy!
A single playthrough will appromixately take 12 to 20 Minutes, it depends on the path you take and which character you play (the last one is pretty overpowered)
The game is also given by it's nature pretty RNG heavy, so how succesful you become may also depend on the droprate of power-ups, especially lifes are something that can drop plenty of times or not at all, this can sometimes result in a bit frustration if bosses time attacks so inconvenient that it's next to impossible to catch up with the ball.
Also some bosses take way too long in direct comparison with others sometimes it becomes absurd. There is one boss with 4 forms and several phases that could be easily the final boss in another game regarding to representation, some boss designs are really obscure which is what I like but i'm not looking forward getting accidentally in the route of the mentioned boss, my biggest gripe about it is, that there is no compensation for it, after that boss, you simply take the route to the next level and it doesn't look like you can unlock new endings by taking special routes.
I also encountered a few bugs that made it impossible to clear some of my runs wich is fortunelately not often the case but can still happen.
All in all the games takes its unique premise and pretty much implements every imagineable idea I could think of, there is some kind of versus battle where you battle against the boss for clearing faster the level, there is a Pong/Tennis like fight where you smash your- and the bosses balls over the horizion, there are bosses that can tamper with your controls and visibility. Some require precision, some speed, some reflexes and so on. It really accomplished to surprise me and that's something that not a lot of games aren't able to anymore.
Definitely a hidden gem.
