Sliding Hero

I have played a LOT of great puzzle games. The bare bones of this one are excellent. I love the concept. The execution, however, is ABYSSMAL. The HUD is extremely clunky, and even commonly hides vital information, such as how much attack or shield an enemy has. The character glitches frequently, often standing still in the middle of two grid spaces. Many puzzles require you to "spend" your health to solve them, yet the only way to refill your health is to backtrack all the way to a save point. After enduring this for as long as it took to get NINE achievements, the game has now randomly reset a room that I cannot reset or complete again, locking me out of an entire section of the map in a clearly unintended way. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY. Go play Emuurom, Gentoo Rescue, or Animal Well instead. This one is designed so poorly it becomes LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE. If they ever fix the horrible puzzle design, HUD, glitches, etc..., I would love to give this one another go. The puzzles are cool, but... why waste your time when at any moment you could literally get hard-locked out of progression for NO REASON other than poor design? I want my money back.

An innovative take to the Metroidvania format, focusing on puzzle and exploration rather than combat and twitchy movement. The issues reported in the negative reviews seems already outdated as the developer addressed them swiftly, and the game now runs smoothly without any bug to be seen. Not for everyone, but those that enjoyed Isles of Sea and Sky, Yoku's Island Express, Animal's Well and more niche MV's will enjoy the mysterious atmosphere, fragmented storytelling and interconnected world. 8 out of 10 right now for me, that could easily become 10 with some minor QOL of improvements (area naming, a little more guidance for the main quest).

Great game! I'm amazed how many different puzzles are in the game and how big the map was. This game is filled with content and will put your brain to the test figuring out how to complete each room. Sliding for movement, a series of different weapons, and some interesting boss fights.

A surprising mix of a sokoban-style puzzle game with a metroidvania with amazing character art and a mystery behind it all. You can only move by sliding in a straight line and almost every room/screen is a sokoban puzzle where solving it brings you closer to the next tool needed to progress. Puzzles are challenging, but not to the point of frustration. This is where the metroidvania part shines. If you're struggling with a room, it won't take long for you to realize you're missing something so you can try exploring other areas first. Now, rewarding exploration is a big part of metroidvanias, but since Sliding Hero is primarily a puzzle with a somewhat linear progression, the collectibles you'll find are pieces of lore or a wide variety of colorful costumes for your character(which can also be accompanied by more lore). They might not feel like your good-old metroidvania upgrades, but since this game has a big narrative mystery going on, finding tidbits of lore here and there is still rewarding on its own. On the other hand, for what I think could improve. First, the music could use more variety. Some areas take a long time to solve and the music can become repetitive. Another thing is map clarity. The map is quite large and it's not always clear which area is which. Since movement is restricted to straight lines, backtracking to previous areas filled with obstacles can be a bit bothersome. Fast-travelling helps mitigate this issue a little, but not enough, since you can make a mistake and making your way back can take a while. I believe a way to teleport back to the last fast-travel point would be of great help with this. Finally, some way to keep track of your current objectives would be pretty useful too. Kudos to the developer for being very helpful and sorting out bugs fast. Indie development is difficult, but what's great about it is that it can bring to life such an unique mix of genres like this. I'm definitely looking forward to the their future titles.

The puzzles are fun and complicated enough to require some trial and error to work your way through. There's a lot of them though, and even with new weapons that react to the monsters different they start to feel repetitive before you finish the game. What's really great is the art. There are lots of surprises here and there throughout the game with the art. It reminds me a bit of Equinox for the SNES which also just didn't follow the same rules for scale that other SNES games did. My only real negative is the "Metroidvania" layout of the map (I put Metroidvania in quotes because I hate that term, partly because I've played a few Castlevania games in my day and none of the ones I played were Metroidvania, and also because usually the first game of its sort gets to be the name of the genre, such as "Adventure" games for games like Adventure, or Rogue-like for games like Rogue. And the platformers with interconnected opening areas started with Below the Root. That's all so beside the point but it's starting to stick in my craw when games that aren't even platformers are called this. I mean good grief there are definitely RPG's that had this structure before platformers did. If were going to include non-platformers in this genre, you might as well call it Might and Magic-alikes.) But now that I've gotten that off my chest somewhere, I'll return to the review. Here, the "Metroidvania" structure isn't used the best. Usually these games have areas that loop around or head off a hub area. Here you start down a path, can be on it for quite a while and then run into some puzzles that need an item you don't have yet, and so you have to trudge all the back through cleared screens to find the path the game intended for you to take. It's true that there are warps but the mini map is nowhere near detailed enough to make the warps useful. It doesn't tell you if a room has puzzles that aren't finished it, for instance and each room appears as just a completely empty rectangle like Zelda 1 (but without Zelda's nice organization) . I don't think the game gains anything by going back through the old areas. I'd have preferred to progress through a linear series of biomes in this case. But that aside, I highly recommend the game if you like these kinds of sliding puzzles. It fun to find the proper order to deal with the enemies, and, again, the art is delightful.

Sliding Hero is a very unique metroidvania, based around a central gimmick of sliding-type movement being your only option. It scratches a similar itch to Isles of Sea and Sky, both of those bring top down metroidvanias with mechanics adjacent to Sokoban. While Sliding Hero might lack the polish of that game, the charm is definitely there. The puzzles are incredibly varied and creative, with some of them taking a good chunk of time to figure out. The map is pretty expansive, definitely much bigger that could be expected from a little indie curiosity like this. What gives the game its own distinctive identity is the atmosphere and style. It's very mysterious, with many weird creatures and buildings along the way. The whole game has cute pixel art style, but character portraits during dialogues are high-definition, with a lot of details. There are a few bugs here and there, but those get patched pretty quickly. What this game really needs is some better QoL - like ability to scroll map faster and zoom it in/out, better map when selecting a place to warp to (currently it only shows warp rooms, which is confusing) and better menus (currently they are too much of a chore to navigate). However, those are small things that doesn't affect the overall experience that much. This is an awesome game and I hope to see more like this in the future!

amazing art, chill gameplay so far. save points after every level and enemies don't seem to respawn once cleared so you don't have to worry about starting over if you perish forgiving

It's a simple puzzle concept of sliding around a room in a specific way to hit markers in a certain order, but they've implemented it in a really engaging way. Strong puzzle design wrapped in beautiful pixel art and sprinkled with drawn character portraits that can also belong in an Elden Ring game. The map is big too, so there's lots to explore!

This game is great: I really like the way the authors combined the sliding puzzles (which would normally be stranded in a pure puzzle game) with the elements of an RPG. It's exciting to get clues about the story as you solve each room. This is a fascinating mash-up and I love the creativity. It is very engrossing too. It's easy to play for hours and lose track of time. Really wonderful. Even if you are skeptical about puzzles in games, it's worth a try.