Shooting Saucer

Maaaan I really wanted to like this one. I love Kero Blaster, and I even got a little Toby Fox from some of the music and quirky character designs here. I love platformers where you can play as multiple characters, and each character here definitely feels distinct. Unfortunately the game is so unbalanced, particularly with the boss fights, that it dampens almost everything good that's here. Some boss fights become either impossible or near-impossible to beat if you get hit and lose your "level 3" power-up status. With games like Cave Story, most bosses will dispense xp pellets as you fight them, giving you a chance to power back up even after taking hits. But here? If you get hit once, you're as good as dead. Especially with certain character-boss fight combinations, like fighting the first boss with Piggy. There was also one attempt with the first desert fight, where the boss abandoned the battle halfway through, yet the health bar and music remained. There's clearly heart and personality within this game, but until it becomes more balanced, I can't recommend this one at all.

I'm a bit sad because I think this is almost a really fun game, but it gets held back a lot unfortunately. For Positives, the game looks good and has a fun gameplay loop, I was having fun my first couple runs. But it's after the third run that I started to become frustrated with the game. In terms of the controls, it's fairly good, though it sometimes feels a bit floaty and there is no coyote jump it seems. I've had so many times I just die because the game decided I left the platform slightly too early and I get no chance to recover. It doesn't matter on your first run since you're learning the game, but when you play one of the unlockable characters you are on a much shorter time limit that makes any mess up extremely punishing. Most levels are fun, but the sky level is just awful. It's an extremely punishing level with really tight jumps that a lot of the characters have difficulty getting past enemies. I really did not have fun with either of the 3 characters I made it there with. I think some of it lies back to jumping sometimes feeling unresponsive cause of lack of coyote time on small moving platforms. Still talking about the stages, I'm not a huge fan of some of the gimmicks. My main non sky level complaint is definitely the steep sand in the desert stage. I don't think having to mash jump to get up it is a very interesting mechanic and it is more annoying than anything. The main part that changed me from liking the game to disliking it is a spoiler so read at your own risk: [spoiler]Krinkly's gimmick is that they cannot power up and the saucer moves a lot faster. So they're the challenge character which is fine but it doesn't feel like a fun challenge. He's slightly stronger than the base characters, but the issue is he really isn't enough to make up for the lack of powerups. This combined with short range leads to a lot of frustrations as it feels like you don't have the time to fight but enemies still kill you in one hit. I really don't feel like the level design is suited for this character. I had gotten to the caves where I almost got to the miniboss but had lost because krinkly moves too slow in the jelly and I didn't see any possible way to avoid that than just have gotten there faster? Except the UFO still rubberbands so going fast doesn't help much. I feel like krinkly needs to be able to one shot more enemies and attack a bit farther if you want the tradeoff you gave him. [/spoiler] I enjoyed Crowtel Renovations a lot so I was expecting to like this as well, but after a while I just realized I wasn't having fun anymore. I think the major issues can be addressed, and if they are I'm willing to come back and see if my opinion changes, but with the many annoyances and lag I just ended up not having a good time.