The Tribulation Entanglement

Yeah.. nah, leider ist das nix - Ultra minimalistischer clunky Platformer mit sehr langweiligen Umgebungen und die gleichen 3 Noten dudeln dir permanent im Kopf. Weder Bosse noch normale Gegner sind sonderlich spannend und sieht auf den Bildern wesentlich künstlerischer aus als im Spiel ist. 3-4/10

[h1]In the Steam reviews, no-one can hear you scream[/h1] Presumably named by a thesaurus, [i]The Tribulation Entanglement[/i] is indeed a tribulation, but perhaps not in the ways that the developers had initially intended. Like many others, I was drawn in by the sheer Gigeryness (I'm just going to claim that's a valid adjective) of the game's art direction. Once starting to play the game, you immediately notice something amiss, something beyond the grotesque setting itself. [H2]The first thing you notice...[/h2] ...is that the main character - birthed seconds after hitting start on the main menu from some sort of parasitic umbilical cord - controls like a**. The arc of your dude's jump is off, almost like the character is weightless until the apex of your leap, at which point gravity realizes something's up and yanks you back to the ground. [H2]You then notice...[/h2] ...the 'music'. A whiney, slightly warbly bass. It just keeps on going. You go to the options menu to try to turn it off. Unfortunately, the game gives you nary an option but to quit the game. [h2]After a while...[/h2] ...it all makes sense. This game is a [i]metroidvania[/i], sure, but it takes all of the worst aspects from its protégés. From [b]Metroid[/b], the obtuse way in which progress is obscured through unmarked destructible walls and hidden areas, and from [b]Castlevania[/b], a less than omnidirectional whip with a rather pitiable range, as well as instant death pits with enemies that abruptly ambush you to push you into the void, meeting your untimely fate. Nothing feels particularly satisfying. It feels rather like the creators prioritized artistic direction over functionality and game feel. Heck, even the art falls short in a number of places on account of screens becoming overcluttered with uniform tiles repeating ab infinitum. If more focus had been put into the central gameplay before the art direction, this could have been a very solid metroidvania. While The Tribulation Entanglement doesn't feel unfinished, it's rather unrefined. 4/10

Ну, что же, игра звёзд с неба не хватает. Очень линейный платформер, едва на полтора часика. Радуют только приятное управление и интересный визуал, ради которого это, собственно, и покупается. Боссы такие себе, но зато они есть, музыкальное сопровождение "для галочки". Фоны, местами, "проседают". Основное оружие одно единственное, хорошо, что дополнительные разные. Но, по видимому, игру создал один человек. Так что, честь ему и хвала.

I really wanted to love this game. I love the aesthetic, and the atmosphere that the game sets the second you start playing. The level design has issues, and there's a stark imbalance in the damage enemies deal, the cost of using any special abilities, and the resources the game throws at you to replenish your HP and SP. Enemy and boss design in terms of mechanics need more polish. Many things in the game feel cheap or unfair. I like difficulty, but I need it to be calculated difficulty. This game could be a great little moody classic metroid title, it just needed a little more time in the oven and because of that I cannot recommend it at this time.

Psychodeliczna platformówka. Można się nawet pokusić o stwierdzenie, że to taki czarno-biały Scorn, ale jest tu więcej akcji :) Szkoda, że gra jest krótka - na jakieś półtorej godziny, bo apetyt miałem na więcej. Grałem na padzie. Używamy wyłącznie strzałek i trzech przycisków, nic więcej. Jest dość łatwa. Na swojej drodze napotkamy wielu wrogów i kilku bossów. Możemy też odnajdywać serca zwiększające poziom zdrowia oraz punkty strzału (specjalnego pocisku). Grafika ma swój styl i urok. Klimat potęguje muzyka w tle. Gra jest bardzo często na promocjach do kupienia za dosłownie parę złotych. Warto.

I should not have bought this game for 69 cents.

Si

I feel a bit bad giving this game a bad rating; it seems to have been a labor of love of a single person. Unfortunately, it seems more like a proof-of-concept than an actual, fully-fledged game; and not a very good one at that. This is a very short Castlevania-like game with a Gigeresque aesthetic. The latter is really the only thing the game has going for it, and is the primary thing that got me to buy it. There's not really a story to speak of, and gameplay-wise, it's kind of a mess. The controls are stiff and not suited to the kind of quick reactions the enemies (especially the bosses) require, which means that there's a LOT of trial and error. There's also a frankly embarrassing bug with knockback: As in many games of this type, when you get hit by an enemy, your character gets knocked (or in this case, teleported) backward; however the game is programmed so that you just get moved in the opposite direction of where your character is facing, even if that's where the hit came from. In other words, if you're facing to the left, and get hit by something from the right, you get "knocked back" to the right. Often this means you get teleported back into the enemy and immediately get hit again. The last update to the game was April of last year, in which a bunch of things were promised that weren't delivered. Considering that both the author's personal Twitter account and the "Anxious Neck Games" one have been deleted, and that his YouTube channel just recently posted teasers for a "Tribulation Entanglement 2", I'm guessing they never will be. Unfortunately, I just can't recommend buying it in its current state.

[h1] The Tribulation Entanglement [/h1] [i]Thank you for releasing your game for us to try on Steam![/i] The Tribulation Entanglement, where to begin writing about such a bewildering hand-made experience such as this? We find ourselves from the moment we complete our download plunged into a dark fever-dreamesque 2D platformer that takes every conceptual idea of horror you can imagine and having it scribbled across your eyes in black and white. Our squishy protagonist has only one thing on their mind: Run, Attack and Survive the countless nightmares they find themselves up against and don't expect it to be an easy ride. The Tribulation Entanglement is a 2D action side scrolling adventure that will deliver on its promise of providing you with a short adventure with a beginning, middle and end that leaves you feeling complete with a smile during the finale. You will have a great time combatting all of the different level designs and puzzles which although simple and very clean and easy to understand. Game mechanics are fed to you in a somewhat logical manner and I didn't feel exhasted with learning how monsters functioned or being stuck too long in a particular area of the game. The unique hand drawn gothic art style will always drag your eyes attention to the scenery making every area in the game mysterious and adding a creepy layer of atmosphere you don't expect at a first glance. All in all, it was a 2 hour experience from start to finish with bonus replayability from the additional achievements that require the game to be completed with the longest health bar and the shortest. I had a great time with such a small title and it was worth the money invested to try it. At the bottom of the review I have compiled some of my more objective thoughts on the way the game was presented to me, some challenges I feel could be overcome with some small tweaks and some impressions I had during the playthrough. ________________________________________________________________________ [b]CAMERA[/b] I felt that the camera moves with the player character way too fast, it made me feel motion sick a lot of the time during the fast paced chicken chase in level 3. I think that it could be a bit more smooth and follow the character rather than being the character. [b]SCENERY[/b] Although the strange scenery is a major part of the game, there were several moments when the hands looked like walkable terrain and killed me several times as I had to learn that there were all in fact just decorative pieces. Minor frustration but worth noting. [b]Monsters[/b] The monsters are all in all very simple and their mechanics can be learnt quickly allowing the player to feel a sense of progression. There are however, far too many. Every level introduces more and more monstrocities onto the players screen and I felt that none of them had enough screen time to be rememebred as one of the games challenges. There were some really unique monsters that appeared briefly for a few moments but were killed in seconds whilst their more common variants troubled me the most. I felt that they deserved a bit more respect considering they appear once only in the game. Second big point about the monsters is that it took me a while to realise that attacking the monsters was actually pointless in most cases! None of them are worth fighting unless they are blocking your path and combined with the flashing body animation that gives you 3 seconds of invulnerability after being hit once by a monster you can pretty much skip half the game by just charging into them. It became clear that it was much more efficient to just take damage and then use the invincibility to skip large portions of the fights. This is odd because the monsters are what makes the game, a game. There are no challenges outside of the encounters in this game so there needs to be more punishment for being hit. I understand that you have an achievement which sort of tackles this by forcing the player to use less health per level but the primary experience (The first playthrough) needs to have a bit more emphasis on learning the monsters behaviours rather than just abusing that mechanic. [b]Smashable terrain[/b] This was one of the only things that made me a little angry. From early on in the game you established to the player that terrain was destroyable and that ANY kind of blocks could be destroyed to unlock a secret or additional route to the end of the level. Although secret routes are enjoyable to find, the fact that most of the levels are built from these squares meant that I was in a constant state of anxiety about hitting every single tile possible just in case it led to something. I feel like maybe there could be some slight differences on the artwork, visual clues that seperate them from their common unbreakable versions just so its a bit more coherent. [b]Attack animation[/b] I thought it a little odd that you could attack through walls, this meant on several parts of the game I could skip damage alltogether by just killing the monsters from below or through a wall next to them. I don't think there is any reason to keep the attack animation like this and you should limit the range if a wall becomes in range. [b]The Eyeball drops[/b] What exactly is the point in the droppable items obtained from the bosses? I didn't understand that at all.Do they have a purpose or is it just a visual que of completion? ________________________________________________________________________ Anyway thank you so much for your release and the indie game experience! I look forward to seeing more content from you in the future. Chimzing

[h2]windows11で起動する際はコントローラーを外してください[/h2] ラヴクラフトタッチなヴァニア系、ゲームボーイにありそうな感じ。 クリアまで2－3時間、慣れれば30分かからないくらいでおわります。 セールで200円くらいなら妥当なラインか、ボリューム不足は否めない。 リリース当初の1520円で買っていたら返品してたと思う。→セールで108円になってました。（2025/3/14） 鞭のような攻撃とSPを消費するサブ武器（4種類くらい）がある。 キーボード操作がやや難しい、方向キーで移動、Z-ジャンプ、X-攻撃、C-サブ攻撃。 コントローラーを繋ぐとPCがまともに動かなくなるのでsteam入力で使用することもできない。 HPが0になるとゲームオーバーだがすぐにセーブしたところから始まる。 チェックポイントごとにオートセーブ、HP,SPは全回復するのでトライエラーで敵パターンを覚えつつ攻略していく感じだ。 アイテムは回復とサブ武器、HP+SPアップがある。 全実績解除には最低2周必要、取りこぼす可能性があるのは以下2つ。 HP+SPアップを全部取る、HP+SPアップを取らずにクリア。 取らずにクリアは当然SPが最後まで初期値ままとなる、サブ武器があまり使えず後半の難易度がおのずと上がっている。（[strike]まだクリアできてない[/strike]）→クリア済み一部ボスパターンがえぐかったです、何せ操作がキーボード…。 正規ルートが隠し通路、壁が壊せるのだが序盤は見た目が同じなので探すのがムズイ、最初は進行不能バグでも起きたかかと思いましたね。 オススメだが注意点あり。（前述のコントローラー） おま環かもしれないがコントローラーがUSBに接続されているとプログラムが暴走します。 おそらく無限ループ、箱コン、switchコンで確認。 PC全体がめちゃくちゃ重くなる。fpsがどんどん下がっていく。 コントローラー抜けば解消されます、タスクマネージャ開くとかalt+f4は重くてまともに機能しません、まずは抜いてください、フルコントローラーサポートとは…？