Venineth

It's the worst game that I like. The platforming is slightly enraging but the scenery and vague nature gives off one of the best alien vibes i've seen.

Came here from Jacob Geller, who recommended it for the vibes. And holy cow those are some vibes! Very strong visuals, good puzzles and mechanics. There is a story or theme going on, but I haven't figured it all out yet. There can for sure be frustrating moments compared to your experience with a platforming game, since climbing stairs without air movement and with momentum is rather annoying. But, at the end of the day, the visuals are super strong, and you get to explore these strange worlds. As some other reviews have said, it's better to play this in bits and pieces, to digest the atmosphere. Oh, IMO, don't try to gather the collectables to unlock the secret levels; the secret levels don't have the appeal that the main game does. Favorite world: Virx (the one introducing the purple 'quantum entanglement' ball).

Wonky controls & BUGS

I was really torn on this review, but I can't in good faith recommend Venineth. There's a gem in the rough here. The vibes are impeccable, the soundscape is dreamlike, it's an audiovisual feast. But the gameplay has a lot of issues. For the first couple levels it's absolutely fine. You get to go fast and feel free. There's almost a zen-like quality to rolling through these alien landscapes. But the further you get, the more platforming you have to do, and the design flaws begin rearing their ugly head. I'm not gonna lie, the platforming is bad. The ball controls are slippery, clunky and have really awkward physics and momentum retention. It takes 5 business days to actually come to a stop, and landing at the wrong angle will sometimes launch you sideways. This does NOT pair well with platforming sections that require precise jumps and maintaining perfect balance on slopes. Halfway through the game the zen feeling got stripped away and replaced with frustration. At this point even the level design begins feeling a bit sloppy, with some platforms that are just too high to reach with your jump and basically requires wrestling with the janky physics. I kept coming back to this game and I really I wanted to like it, in a way I still do. But this gameplay just isn't it. I'd recommend Exo One instead, as the controls and physics feel way better.

I really do want to Love Venineth but it has some pretty glaring flaws that impact how much I can enjoy it. Venineth is a Hybrid between a planet exploring game and a platforming game played as a very clunky at times marble. The environments are varied and unlike other games with a similar concept they manage to make limited repeating textures work without feeling like they are repeating. There are times when controlling the marble feels great as you can build up nice speed and do amazing jumps. Regardless of the good, the majority of the time is spent doing annoying platforming with very low speed limited puzzles. While I do intend to finish the game piecemeal, I cannot recommend this game. In many ways the game really could have used a TLC patch with a lot of quality of life improvements put into the game. This could have been a gem with a lot more polish and quality of life improvements but that is likely never to happen. Pros: -Unique and varied planetary environments -A cool concept for the phase changes on the marble -A solid and well conceived ( if a bit oversized) level hub Cons: -The font choice for menus is horrible. I barely poked the menu as it was effectively unreadable. -While it is a stylistic choice, The game has a constant sketch like filter on it that I wish I could lower or turn off. -The space levels with sunlight on reflective surfaces is painful. stark bright white in otherwise darkness is a very painful look that makes those levels quite annoying. -All the level transitions are fade to white. this is painful if you are playing in a darker room. -I’m only about 6 main levels in but the entire last level was platforming onto spheres. that was suffering with how it was implemented. -The balls controls while realistic are quite clunky and behave oddly with some of the choices of platform shapes. Not only does the balls behavior vary based on area (sinking or floating in water), It also can super accelerate but it cant stop itself from just rolling off a slope without a running start.

a great platform-puzzler. 20/10 atmosphere.

"where tf do i go": the game

plays the way a tangerine dream album sounds

I really, really want to like this game! and I do! maybe? It's a really, really beautiful game. It looks like a 2004-era demoscene production. The music is good, the environments are *utterly gorgeous* and engrossing, and the puzzles are pretty decent. Howwwwweverr. The control of the marble is physics-accurate and not very responsive, you have to fight the controller more than should be necessary, and it's also suuuper annoying to speed up/slow down -- what this tangibly means is that the marble tends to jump into the middle of the abyss semi-randomly, it's very easy to miss jumps or just not be able to jump at times, it's easy to end up out of bounds or shoot past where the dev expects you to be. The music is looping, which is ok and I Get It but... if you spend too long in an area with just the wrong music it will absolutely drive you insane. There are lots of little bugs, too, that impact gameplay juuuust enough for it to be frustrating (white flashes from the screen, likely from some of the rendering maths going Weird, along with stuff like lifts not triggering or incorrectly detecting that I'm on the lift). There's also some big frame-drops in certain areas on my Steam Deck (it still plays at a comfortable 30 - 40fps outside of that though). I'd honestly suggest the devs keep the current movement system but allow a "Do What I Mean" toggle that gives slightly more responsive ball control, with less physics-accurate handling. Absolutely get it, just... while it's on sale. Also probably don't play this if you're the type that will throw a controller at the screen or whatever.

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