TetherGeist

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This game is an amazing platformer with amazing mechanics that are simple at first and gradually increase in difficulty over time. With the platforming itself getting creative as well as how the mechanics evolve. The story had depth and was interesting to read through. If you like platformers, I defiantly recommend!

The critisism about accesibility and some unpolished / unintuitive UI is valid. For the rest the game deliveres in being a satisfying precision platformer. I must say it can be very difficult at times and definitely is not for the casual platformer enjoyer but the mechanics are innovative. I finished the game in about 5 hours (main story, without focussing on all the side quests). I must say I didn't have the urge or ambition to try and go back and do all the sidequest stuff. For that the game is just a bit too tedious. Though just playing through the main story was a blast and I would definitiley recommend it to people that like difficult precision platformers. If you are hesitant or feel like 5 hours isn't too much, get it on sale. Its worth it.

If you liked Celeste, TetherGeist is a great continuation in challenging platformers (that also happen to have collectables)!

The story and characters didn't immediately hook me, although I did somewhat care about them by the end of the game. But more importantly it nails the platforming, and that's the most important part of a platformer right? It introduces new mechanics practically every level so it never got stale for me. And then at the end the game just throws everything at you at once, it's great. My one complaint is that the squid flingers felt inconsistent, because the game never really teaches you that you have to hold the button and direction the entire time you're flinging with them or else you don't get the full momentum. All of the other mechanics felt intuitive and easy to get a grasp on though. If you like difficult platformers then you should definitely give Tethergeist a try. I recommend it

Un excellent titre qui s'inspire de Celeste, mais qui est capable de forger sa propre identité! Ses niveaux challenging proposent une belle variété et du platforming hyper satsifaisant Nice lil Steam Deck game aussi!

(Note that total playtime is closer to 10 hours, some of it wasn't counted due to playing offline) Fun precision platformer! The spirit mechanic makes for a unique base to build the gameplay on, and it feels great to control. Each chapter has its own special powerup that changes up the tether to some degree, so each one has a distinct gameplay style. I was always looking forward to seeing what the next level would have in store. There's some optional areas that make you use multiple different powers and require you to think about the right order to do things in, which were fun to figure out. I like the worldbuilding and vibes, too. Every now and then you stop at a town and have a chance to chat with all sorts of people, with each place feeling like it has its own local culture. It's a neat touch! (Though it's also completely optional, if it's not your kinda thing) The story goes to interesting places, and it tackles some heavier topics with grace and compassion. It's a well-written game all around. And of course, the pixel art is very pretty, and the music does a great job at setting the tone for each level. I'm not good at critiquing this kinda stuff, but I liked it!! I really don't have any complaints here, this was a great time overall. Just make sure you're up for some long and complex gameplay segments, as the game does get quite difficult at times.

TetherGeist is a platformer with the unusual premise that much of your movement is based on different powerups you pick up that allows you to free your spirit from your body in different ways before jumping to it again. The game controls well, has a likable protagonist, and has an interesting idea behind it but it did a lot to make me personally not enjoy it that much but in way that I could still recommend others trying it if it looks appealing to them and if my problems don't sound bad to you. The character Mae comes from a village where others are able to have their spirit leave their body and travel freely, Mae is able to project her spirit but it is tied to her with a tether that limits movement, she also suffers from sudden severe pains from a chronic illness. Mae sneaks out of her village along with her spirit companion Bao to join others in performing the yearly pilgrimage where children around her age travel to the Fount of Souls to meditate, making the journey on foot while the three other children leave through their projected spirits. She meets another travelers whose family has its own curse that eventually blinds them all, while still having partial sight the woman travels to the Font of Souls believing that her research will allow her to meet with the mountain god to heal her illness. Mae travels through different towns interacting with people that cause her to consider the nature and true goal of her journey and if she and her new friend can accept their lives if they aren't able to find healing or any instant revelation from their journey's end. Your movement options just consist of a basic jump, a small extra hop (with a nice sound effect) you can do to get slightly more air if you do not have any of the pickups that activate your powers, and when against a wall you can slide down it slowly or jump off of it. As you progress through different environments you will run into powerups that allow you to move and interact with parts of the environment in different ways. Your basic powerup allows you to astral project that causes your body to slowly fall if it is in the air while allowing you to move your spirit that is tied to your body with a tether, releasing the button will teleport your body to your spirit, this allows you to gain extra distance and to pass through some obstacles. Other powerups allow you to project your spirit twice in a row, launch yourself in a direction from your current position while smashing through damaged or weak obstacles while gaining extra distance, run on heated platforms with extra speed, and to interact with jellyfish like creatures that you can bounce off of or through. The most interesting powerup allows you to fire your spirt like a ball in different directions with no tether locking it in place, it can bounce off obstacles and activate certain objects to close or open different paths or that will teleport your spirit to a new area. Some of these powers are different enough and fun but a lot are too similar with three of them having the same starting use of moving your tethered spirit. You can collect multiple pickups which can add a more puzzle like feature to the game but many of the areas are limited to you mostly sticking to the base type of powerup and whichever new one the series of levels in a biome have introduced. This tends to limit your freedom in interacting with the game as you only have the very limited set of abilities that you need to pick up and collect to make your way through a brief section before reaching a checkpoint that removes your inventory of powerups. It also means that in these fairly long levels, you are kind of just doing the same thing over and over before the next biome changes things up with its own primary gimmick. It seems like the game would be more fun if you can just do what you do and it was built around making obstacles to that as performing similar movements but in a more constant and action focused way seems like it would be more enjoyable. Knocking around a bunch of enemies in Dynasty Warriors is repetitive but remains fun, probably would struggle more if I had to keep picking up the three hit combo ability each time I wanted to do it though. I found a fairly high amount of deaths were more from successfully doing something where the camera would then move to a new area and I would die before being able to figure out what I should even be attempting to do. I found that it is not so much the practice that the game advertises, and that the perseverance is more needing to persevere enough to die to get the layout information to then go, "Oh, that's what the game wants." The camera gets a bit too much like a Sonic game where it isn't backed out enough or following you closely enough in many areas. I kind of found myself enjoying that non spirit use parts of the game during moments where you were dashing across heated platforms and running through objects to keep up your spirit protection or being moved in a direction by running water. While the controls are responsive I did find some hit detection issues. Mostly coming from the heated pipes in the more industrial area that occasionally can kill you before you touch them. At two points I found you can die while sliding down a wall even though I was nowhere near an off camera falling point. In one biome and the end of the game there are some areas where your body and spirit enter a pipe like system where you move through it can exit out different openings (where all but one tends to lead to death), some of these seemed to work in a way that was perfectly intuitive going where I moved the stick and some I had no idea what was going on as I held the stick to try to exit at the right spot before and after entering the pipes or I hit the stick repeatedly in the direction I wanted to exit and found them to only sometimes respond and was never sure what it was responding to. A major part of the game is finding red flower pickups that influence the final ending, needing 100-200 for the normal end and all 201 for the true end (couldn't give us anything for finding all the journal pages and hidden spirits). Apart from just personally mostly hating collect-a-thons (especially when the items do nothing by themselves), these are placed in the stages in a way that I found hurts the game. They might be hidden in the environment or require you to save or use a powerup at a different place to go through a hidden wall or up higher in the environment. The problem is this kind of creates a very start and stop style of play where you might want to play a fun active platformer but you keep looking around to see if maybe there is a secret area, and the game doesn't always help with this. Because, maybe that it is a hidden area if it looks like it, but maybe you will just throw yourself off a cliff or against a wall and maybe the off camera higher area is going to reveal a new place that moves the camera or maybe it's just nothing. These would have been nice as alternate challenge paths or extra stages, which is basically what the newly revealed areas can be if they were connected, but the way they are implemented ends up being such a boring awkward waste of time. There are four village style hub areas in between stages where you can find a few extra red flowers and complete some oddly made sidequests. The towns are another mixture of entertaining and disappointing for me. They look good and there is some good and funny conversations to be had that can give more of a look at the game's setting and do a good job at highlighting Mae's personality, but apart from finding a few red flowers scattered around there isn't any interesting use of the game's mechanics in exploring the area or interacting with anyone. Each area has one or two side quest that is basically just you talking to someone and being told to go talk to someone else before coming back to get a... Full Review: https://backloggd.com/u/Kennan/review/5133218/