TetherGeist

I'm tethering it

Excelllent 2D platformer akin to Celeste.

I'm loving this game. I've always wanted a game that hits the same way as Celeste in the precision platforming genre and this game brings a refreshing take on it. I'm on chapter 3 and have been enjoying what the game has offered so far. I especially love the cute artstyle, the cutscenes (comic book style) and the UI inspirations from Celeste. Each chapter has introduced a new mechanic which keeps the levels fresh and prevents it from getting stale. Thanks for this amazing game and providing me with a key to try it out! Please keep making games <3

Don't usually post reviews but saw the final devlog for this game and they are asking for reviews so thought I should post a review and give genuine thoughts on the game to help out. I enjoyed this game, I had fun but have some nitpicks/criticisms before I rave about how good the game is. First the NPCs/amount of dialogue was tiring, and I felt like too much was dumped on me whenever I visited a town. For the first couple of towns I interacted with all the NPCs but they felt all very samey. Like each character design was phenomenal and I liked their designs, each felt unique, creative and fit the vibe of the area. However all I felt like I was doing was walking up to them, they would tell me a joke/something slightly interesting for a little to long, and that was the interaction. There was no interesting games, or animations, or something that would play into their designs to make me remember the interaction with the character. Also the quests felt boring to, all I would do is talk to a NPC they would tell me some problem, then I would walk to another NPC they would have the solution to said problem, I would walk back and then fix the problem that the original NPC had and get a flower. I wanted to use my tether in a party game where I had to keep a ball bouncing in the air, or maybe a funny moment would be using it to cheat in a game of limbo that would make a character stomp their feet and turn bright red. So I felt like cutting down on the amount of NPC's and making each interaction more special would make me enjoy the towns sections more. That was my major problem with the game, the other nitpicks I have didn't impact my gameplay experience as much as the town sections but thought I would list them here really fast: The music is nice, however it does feel like it lacks from variety, most of the tracks uses the same sounding instruments. Still added it the vibe playlist tho. Some of the levels felt a little to long, like the jellyfish level. I in general thought most of the mechanics were fun, however I did not like the jelly fish. I felt like sometimes I would shoot the direction I needed to go and other times I would bonk my head on the ceiling and die. I felt like there was also too many flowers tbh, at the beginning I would collect all that I could but every screen I felt like had one and I would just spend countless attempts to collect them even tho I didn't even know what they were used for. When I got to the part where I could use them I didn't really like the character enough to suffer countless hours for them lol. Also didn't know how many I need to collect, I did wish the game would tell me how close I was to being able to help the character. I kinda wanted a scene where the main character and the mom talked at the end but the illustration was nice. Anyway time to glaze the game. The art in general is stunning, the illustrations mixed really well with the pixel art, and didn't feel out of place. The character portraits are really well made too, and I like the different emotions they showed with the amount of detail. Gameplay and level design was super fun, I enjoyed the flow you get into, and felt like the difficulty was really well paced (besides the stupid jelly fish). The story overall was nice, it did feel a little forced at times, but it carried the gameplay which is what is most important thing for me at least. Didn't find any game breaking bugs, the bouncy jellyfish would spam audio sometimes and at the end the evil space elders didn't reset properly when I died so I would just die instantly again but nothing that made me too frustrated. Audio design sounded good. Controls felt smooth, and I felt like when I died is was a skill issue rather then a control issue. Polish was good, and I felt like pulling off a hard sequence of inputs was fun because of the polish. 7/10 would Tether again.

This game is an absolute must play for anyone at all interested in platformers. The art direction and sound is so high quality, and the mechanics all feel innovative and satisfying. The level of difficulty is just right. The world and story manage to feel compelling, which seems rare in platformers. I have ~200 hours in Celeste but I might have to say I like tethergeist even more, and it go far beyond being a clone, establishing a powerful, unique identity.

Beautiful art, crisp, snappy movement, creative precision mechanics and puzzles. Plenty challenging, but more focused on thinking through the sequence/puzzle in a lot of places.