[h1]Overview:[/h1]
'[i]The Way of Cinnamon[/i]' is a third person platormer adventure game where you assume the role of "Cinnamon", a shield wielding red panda (not to be confused with fox) that must undergo a risky adventure to save his captured family from the evil Wu Long, the most alpha of the snow leopards that wants to be the boss of all the red pandas in the world! Journey through 4 levels each with their own unique setting and listen for the cries of your family members as you jump from platform to platform while beating up baddies at the same time. The game although not the best and definitely janky in certain ways, is still pretty fun to play. If the game had been polished more and reviewed, I feel like it'd be a pretty nice little platformer to play if you needed to kill an hour or so.
[h1]Gameplay:[/h1]
Despite the mixed feedback the game got, I actually personally enjoyed playing it. There's no doubt that there are janky controls and buggy mechanics, but the overall gameplay is there and [i]does[/i] offer a bit of fun. The core gameplay rests in the platforming and use of a shield called "Dun" that acts as both a weapon and platform. You essentially platform for majority of the game and occasionally engage in combat fighting spiders, snow leopards and snakes. The final boss is also extremely easy to figure out and requires some very light problem-solving. The platforming itself works for the most part but much of the surfaces are awkward and float between the lines of whether you can stand on them or not. This is especially present for slanted surfaces that despite seeming like safe ground actually isn't. However, the ability of creating an artificial platform makes the game [b]way[/b] easier than without it.
Combat is more flawed than the platforming but being able to use the shield as a ranged weapon makes combat extremely trivial. You're also given a tailspin as an attack but honestly it just makes more sense to use the shield as it does the exact same amount of damage and is safer to perform. The tailspin doesn't always connect and using it almost guarantees getting hit yourself. Health-wise though, it's not an issue because you can heal by collecting bamboo sticks scattered all over the world and there are [b]tons[/b] of them (326 to be exact). But even with that being said, I'd rather play the game and get hit as little times as possible even if surviving is super easy.
Alongside the bamboo stalks are cherries that increase your max health when picked up and purple giraffes, a collectable that's a direct reference to the development team behind the game. Everything is relatively easy to spot and obtain and if you're achievement hunting and didn't manage to get everything the first playthrough, you can actually play the game again and your stats are actually kept. Meaning if you collected 325/326 bamboo stalks the first run (like I did), you can just start the game over again and the statistic is retained. So achievement hunting is very easy. Whether it's a bug or not is beyond me but considering how flawed most of the mechanics are in the game, I wouldn't be surprised if it were the latter.
Another odd occurrence I ran into was that for a quick moment, I was able to jump perpetually in mid-air forever probably due to a glitch with the shield platform. I tried to replicate it after it stopped but wasn't able to do so but regardless, that probably should've been looked into. In addition to that, if you time it [i]just[/i] right, you can actually jump, retract the shield platform, redeploy it and land on it all in one jump meaning you can theoretically boost yourself infinitely but performing it reliably is extremely hard and honestly I don't think it's possible to do it consistently so I'm sure the developers didn't intend for this to be a thing.
Overall, '[i]The Way of Cinnamon[/i]' isn't a great game by any means but it also isn't a bad one. The only things that cripple it are the wonky platform and combat mechanics which unfortunately are the most heavily focused aspects of the game so that doesn't help it's case. However, the game is still very playable and these issues don't break it or make it frustrating to play because of it's easy difficulty. I [i]can[/i] however understand why players aren't big fans of the game because I too prefer to play a game with a more solid foundation.
[h1]Controls:[/h1]
Functional to say the least but you can definitely feel the inconsistencies. As mentioned, combat is wonky making only one of two different fighting styles viable but platforming is at least more functional. Looking around also has a very slippery flow making platforming a tad awkward but is nothing too serious. Control menu thankfully exists but there isn't a way to rebind controls. Despite that, I believe the game is basic enough that it doesn't really need anything like that, although it [i]would[/i] be nice to have.
[h1]Graphics:[/h1]
Kind of unique adopting the polygonal art style that some games use which makes the game somewhat nice but also presents some caveats that become a detriment to it's visual appeal. For starters Cinnamon and Flour look horrifying (and they're the main characters!), I don't know what it is but something about their bugged out eyes gives me the heebie jeebies. The other characters didn't look that scary, why did Cinnamon and Flour have to? Another thing I have to mention is the performance. Running the game on a 3080ti still presents frame drops in most of the levels most likely due to many of the maps having an abundance of props either scattered around or cluttered together on top of the entire thing being rendered in at once rather than being rendered when they need to be.
[h1]Audio:[/h1]
I honestly have mixed feelings here because on one hand, I like the music, it's nice and suits the environment and theme of the game very well. But on the other, sound effects are extremely strange and the voice acting is much of the same. Jumping has a weird almost sci-fi sound effect with every other sound effect sounding either below average or mediocre at best. It's almost as if they spent more time focusing on the music and less time on sound effects. The voice acting although minimal, sounds very low quality and inconsistent, like the people who were responsible for doing the voicing in the game had to record their part in their own houses using their own microphones.
On top of that, there doesn't seem to be any volume options at all in the settings menu, why might I ask? There's one thing to have an in-depth volume meter and another to have just an on or off volume setting. But to not have any at all? That's a new low.
[h1]Conclusion/TL;DR:[/h1]
'[i]The Way of Cinnamon[/i]' is a third person platforming adventure game that isn't too short nor too long. Play as a red panda set out on a 4 level adventure in hopes to rescue his family from an evil snow leopard. Utilize a unique shield that helps you both in combat and platforming as it's functions include a ranged attack as well as an artificial platform. Gameplay is a bit unique and is very easy to play and complete but also comes with a plethora of buggy and glitchy mechanics that although are awkward, don't break the game in any significant way.
For a free title, it isn't bad but if you're the type of person that is easily triggered by wonky game mechanics and needs everything to be crisp, then this one might be a skip. Personally, I found that the fun in the gameplay overpowered the glitchy controls and I'd only recommend this one for people who are into third person platformers and are extremely lenient with these types of games.
