Second Works

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So far I have just completed the Lower stage, but I think this game is really interesting! I really like the different moves the character can use and I like the sort of Mario aspect of collecting gems (like stars in Mario) in the levels. The intro to the game gave me a combo of Legend of Zelda and Castle Crashers from the looks of it and I think this platformer looks like it has a good story to offer. I look forward to continuing it.

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Hi! As of this review, I have completed the lower level and collected 1 green gem. I will update this review as I (if I) progress more with the story. The developer seems very in tune with their audience, responding to community posts and comments and therefore this is quite admirable. It is clear that they want to improve on their work. For this reason, I recommend playing the game. Pros: - The menu seems to have updated since previous reviews as I had loaded up with an English interface just fine! [Edit - The developer had quickly responded to reviews on this and had set the DEFAULT LANGUAGE setting as ENGLISH - I feel as though this makes it much more accessible but this is quite biased as I am more familiar with this language and alphabet]. - The introductory cutscene is quite cool. The graphics give me the feeling of a children's TV cartoon for the animation, the thick blocky outlines of the surroundings and generally the colour schemes used. - This seems to be quite fleshed out for early access. Just at the beginning there are 3 pink stages past the lower level, and within that lower level you must collect 3 gems to be able to unlock these stages. Things to improve upon: - Firstly, I feel as though the art for the characters is very subpar. I do understand that it is partially a stylistic choice to make it feel the same as the cartoon-y feelings of the introduction but poor art cannot be completely excused by this. This is with everything, the UI is very choppily put together and doesn't feel flush with the screen, everything is blocky in the fashion that it seems as though it were pasted atop a layer of a game. - The platforms on which you are meant to jump upon (the grey slashed lines) are far too similar in colour scheme to the background and the surrounding walls. It's very hard to tell them apart and I've no issues with my eyesight or colour indication. - The background music for the level doesn't necessarily feel fitting. It feels as though the soundtrack should be used for dialogue or perhaps a cutscene, but it doesn't feel as though it is really likened to a parkour combat sequence. Personal preference would have it be more upbeat, with a Mario type of inspiration. - There is an enemy that snipes you, it would be logical that this enemy should not be able to hit you when the laser beam crosses into terrain (for example if the beam were coming at you at a diagonal and you were hidden underneath a passage way). However, the background/walls that you collide with do not have the same sort of rules for the collision of this sniper. - The controls are the main reason why I am pausing after the first level. They do not feel polished and the choices are quite poor. It is hard to use ad and then s for dash while also simultaneously pressing e. Bear in mind I had chosen beginner mode, so I wasn't looking for a precise timing each time I want to pass through a box for example. A suggestion I have is that perhaps the dash should be applied onto spacebar by default, as your thumb naturally rests there when pressing a,d and e; this way it is easier to press space and e with the same hand. - There should be some sort of introductory module that explains your skills, tells you its damage and precisely which button to use. Instead, the tutorial just tells you that skills will be unlocked and once you go into a level you're quite blind to the skills and instead must use them to find out what they do. They're very strong though and the animations are quite fun. My left click skill was very fun. - Furthering with my controls comment, when in dialogue with the blue-haired lady, you must press enter to begin dialogue with her (which is already a little bit of a nuisance of a button as you most likely had your hand on the mouse to use skills beforehand) but then to progress with her dialogue, you must click anyway. - Final comment on the controls: in the tutorial stage, you must interact with 2 memories. These come up with grey boxes of text which are fine, you can read them, but then exiting out of them didn't seem to be easy. I'd pressed every button and only once walking away a sufficient distance did they seem to disappear. This could be good to touch-up upon to make it a little bit more accessible as already from the beginning it was feeling extremely cluttered.

Steam is drowning in thousands of lazy, low-effort 2D platformers, and "Second Works" is yet another one. I'm not kidding, there's over 17,000 platformers on Steam, almost all of them are garbage, amateur kitbashes. This is not one of the good ones. This is a very amateurish abandoned platformer where you control an MS-Paint anime girl thing and do some platforming with lightweight combat/RPG mechanics... all of which is assembled in a sloppy, unpolished way. This metroidvania is very incomplete and has been abandoned. It's just not worth your time. The platforming genre is pretty much obsolete... just a tiny number of professionally developed platformers exist on PC and offer any real value or interest to gamers (Silksong, etc). This is nowhere near being as good as Hollow Knight or Silksong. Even without a price tag, it's easy to see why gamers ignored this in favor of modern, professionally developed 3D games. This is offering nothing new or interesting, so it's easy to see why this failed. The developers gave up on this 10 months ago. It's destined to remain unfinished. This junkware is just polluting Steam and making it difficult for gamers to fully finished, completed games. That's not good for gamers. This looks a lot like it was designed for consoles, but released on Steam instead by mistake. While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this never made it to the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for. In terms of visuals, this features really godawful MS-Paint tier "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks much worse than most other games because of that decision, and that's a major deterrent to gamers. The deplorably bad visuals here come across as an insult to gamers. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. A peak of [b]3 concurrent players[/b] (according to SteamDB) for a "free" game is a disastrous public reception. Out of 130 million potential players here on Steam, almost nobody was interested. Even though this is "free". That level of rejection speaks a lot for the quality of the game. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? What's the verdict? This one scores a "nope". While it won't necessarily cost you money, the time and hard drive space it requires could be better invested in one of the many higher quality alternatives on Steam.

[quote=author] [b] This 2D game has so much to offer! But still... when you open the game, you start blindfolded! What do I mean by that?! Supported languages ​​for "Second Works": English and Japanese! And you can imagine that my menu was made up of letters that looked like they were fighting each other! After a few random clicks in the settings, I finally switch to the only language I understand(English)! And I play a bit... and damn, I didn't regret the time I spent on this game! For a 2D game, you have a lot to explore and a lot of "BOSS" to fight! [/b] [/quote]

Игра 'Second Works' - это довольно интересная головоломка, которая, несмотря на кажущуюся простоту, может серьезно заставить поломать голову. Механика работы со временем и перемещением объектов выполнена оригинально и интуитивно понятно, что позволяет быстро освоиться и начать решать задачки. Визуально игра выполнена в минималистичном стиле, но это не портит впечатления, а скорее наоборот – помогает сосредоточиться на игровом процессе. Сложность головоломок возрастает постепенно, что позволяет не чувствовать себя перегруженным и постепенно осваивать новые возможности. Иногда решение оказывается совсем не очевидным, что вызывает чувство удовлетворения, когда наконец удается найти правильную последовательность действий. Несмотря на положительные стороны, игра может показаться немного однообразной после нескольких часов игры. Также хотелось бы больше разнообразия в визуальном оформлении и, возможно, добавления небольшого сюжета, чтобы придать игре немного больше глубины. В целом, 'Second Works' - это достойная головоломка, которая отлично подойдет для тех, кто любит игры, заставляющие думать. Рекомендую к ознакомлению.