Searching Light

I'm giving this game a positive review, because I want to show support to a developer who clearly put a lot of effort into his first game. I want to give constructive feedback, so I'll go over my positives and negatives. Positives: The world looks very nice, sometimes it's a bit too cluttered, but other times the background and the play area blend together to give a very cool look that I haven't seen in other games. The mechanic of switching back and forth to see new perspectives is implemented well, it goes great with the teleportation butterflies, and I can see a lot of creativity with how you've implemented some of the obstacles. I appreciate the secrets that you can get off the beaten path, I also like how they have their own little puzzles. Negatives: This game is overly punishing with it's enemies, and most of all it's hitboxes. I found myself unable to really appreciate the world, because every single puzzle carried with it the threat of immediate death, if I didn't play it perfectly. It really works against the perspective switching mechanic, because now I can't take my time to figure out how to solve the puzzles because there's an enemy about to kill me. So it becomes a game of dying, a lot, until I figure out what the method is to solve the puzzle. That's the main reason I haven't gotten further than the third boss. The game also introduces a lot of new mechanics with no real tutorial or warning, this would be fine, but since every puzzle has a built in time limit to figure out how to solve(the enemies killing you), it turns what should feel like really cool discovery into an annoyance, because that's just another 10 deaths added to the counter to struggle through it. The text in the game is also a little difficult to read, with how visually active the background world is, it clashes with the text at times, making it a bit of an eye sore. In effect, it was really difficult to follow whatever story was being told. The game has really, really irritating spike placement, reminiscent of rage games. They blend so well into the environment, that there's a good chance you won't notice them before you're dead. You have so much as a pixel on that tile, you're going to die. The same with the floating platforms, they're especially easy to fall off, especially when you consider that some disappear with the perspective mechanic, and you have to switch on the fly. I think the game overall has a lot of really cool ideas, but in it's current state it just feels overly punishing in a trial and error kind of way. Even so, I think it's worth a few bucks, just to see the beginnings of what could be a really good indie developer.