This game should be tagged as part Runner (idle and non idle), part Clicker, part precision platformer. Pros and cons lower if that's why you're here.
It's broken up into levels to where the tags don't apply to all of them, but it never stops autorunning unless you're on the world map.
The story is fairly non existent aside from one level and npcs/signs. This doesn't matter to me, but if you were looking for a storyline, this definitely isn't the way to go. I thought the few things that were written for the game were amusing though.
I'm gonna say what everyone says; too bad there's no neutral button because it has good and bad parts to it. I'm labeling it as recommended because I spent hours on a $2 game I got on sale for 49 cents. My philosophy is that you should get about an hour per dollar spent, and although a big majority of this was spent idle, I'd still say I spent a few hours that I didn't hate on it.
Pros
- I'm over level 100 and haven't capped stats yet. I don't think your HP or crt multiplier caps but I could be wrong.
- There's an endless level after you've beaten the majority of the game you can leave your game on to gain experience faster.
- It introduces different gameplay mechanics as the game progresses so it doesn't feel like the same thing over and over.
- If you love to grind, this game is literally a grind fest. I had to grind for about 3 hours to leave the first set of areas without getting demolished by the Oppressive Forest.
- The controls aren't incredibly responsive but it feels like it's supposed to be that way to add a layer of difficulty. There's a slight lag when pressing on screen buttons but attacking is immediate, which is why I think it was intentional. Controls are a major reason why I downvote games so this being in the pros section seemed necessary. You're not here because of the amazing graphics, so I thought I'd explain that the gameplay feels decent.
Cons (The reason why cons is so long is because they're pretty specific. I've had questions asking me if my cons list is so big, why I liked the game, it's because you didn't read them SMH! This doesn't mean the game is terrible, it just means I have to explain specific situations)
- When you level up, your stats menu shows up and it doesn't go away until you close it. I thought it would be a great idea to leave my game on while I slept then went to work, but it was stuck on the stats menu after the first level up when I got home. This game feels like you should be able to leave it running to gain exp and gold, but all I did was add time to my hours played for no reason. Like I said, I'm over level 100 and still have to close the stats page every 5 minutes or so when I'm hundreds of levels into the endless stage. An overlay showing you leveled up instead of the menu popping up and pausing the game would make this much better so it doesn't stop progress to the game. This con alone almost made me downvote this game. I got the second one of this to try as well so I'm hoping it will be different.
- Remember how I said this was part precision platformer? This is purely because of one level; The Tunnel of Egress. This level actually frustrated me to the point where I wanted to write a review telling the developer to fix their game; it's SPOILER WARNING TIME! [spoiler]The game introduces a jumping mechanic... but it's broken. There's no indicator like in the other mechanics that shows you the cooldown, but there's a cooldown for it. If you try jumping right after you land after jumping, it just flat out doesn't work. You have pits and one hit kill spikes you have to avoid, and there's a section that you have to jump 4 times in succession immediately after your jump cooldown, yet you don't have any way of knowing when that is besides your internal timer. I know my name is RtaFicial, but I'm not a robot.... yet. To make matters worse, it's about a minute into the level, and this game has 0 checkpoints so you have to start over every time you fail. To top it off, there's no way to control your jump, so when you click jump, you jump the same height and distance every time unless you hit an obstacle. This is comparable to the Battletoads speeder bike level, except if you crash you start over completely, and there's no invincibility if you think I'm talking about the new one. I found the sweet spot after about a half hour of trying, and after about a dozen more attempts, finally got through it... to get killed by jumping into a dead end with spikes at the end. This level blocks you off from the last 3 levels, which includes the endless level, so beating it is vital to the game. [/spoiler]
- The gold to exp ratio is vastly broken. I've beaten the game and grind about 50 more levels rn and still haven't maxed out the shop hours into post game.
- Your menu doesn't show you a vast amount of things; No gem count, no artifacts, no keys. This is very frustrating when you're trying to get enough gems to purchase artifacts.
- When you level up your potions, it gets rid of the old ones. I get it's because there's only one potion slot in the game, but it's inconvenient to have to buy more that cost more because I bought an upgrade. This is more of a beginning of the game problem.
Bugs
- Your experience bar resets to 0 while you're on the world map (it doesn't show the overlay on the world map but it's clearly obvious), then counts up to where you actually are at the start of the level. After you stat getting up in levels (I'd say around 60's) your exp bar starts wigging out; it flashes in and out of existence while it's counting up until it finally just disappears for good. I thought I capped max level at 70 when I was playing, so I went and to defeat the end boss and leveled up in that level. The bar occasionally comes back for brief moments to check up on me, never actually displaying what my exp is, just flashing as it's climbing.
- If you're trying to flee, it makes your character flip out sometimes when you don't. He teleports up to the top of the screen, runs and attacks backwards, and if there's an enemy it occasionally nonstop hits your character.
- I walked through the second level on the world map. What I mean by this is that I physically walked through the activation part of the level trying to start the level, and when I tried walking down out of it, it started the level. I was trapped in that level because every time it ended, I activated the level because trying to walk down out of behind it caused the level to start. I hadn't stopped the game at this point, so I didn't know if it saved my progress and I had been grinding for a few hours so I didn't want to start over. I finally closed the game after multiple failed attempts of trying to leave the level through the outside trees, and was pleasantly surprised to have my character load with all my progress at his home.
- When you get to the parts where the enemies slam down on the screen and you get hit by one; your screen shakes but the overlay texts don't.
I don't expect a GOAT game from the Under $5 section of the Steam library, but I do expect a game, and this delivers more than the vast majority of games you sift through wondering if it's worth the couple dollars you're willing to spend. Plus, it's not hentai so it's definitely a step up from that alone.
