Widget Satchel

Death Stranding Meets The Beastmaster A cute, but clunky platformer that challenges the player to lug around widgets in a satchel. The more widgets the player fits in the satchel, the slower and harder it gets to move. Carrying the widgets in the satchel to a certain point allows the player to upgrade their character. WARNING: This is obviously a bias review being a huge fan of ferrets since first watching The Beastmaster as a kid. While there are plenty of games that have ferrets available as companions in RPGs (Torchlight) or units in strategy games (Tooth and Tail), I think this just might be the very first Mustelid-based platformer that ever existed. This overlooked gem will most likely wind up existing to an obscure few ferret fans who are lucky enough to stumble across this and get a chance to enjoy the charm and simplicity of being the one of the cutest space-couriers of the future. If you are a fan of ferrets, I highly recommend picking this up and supporting developers who are brave enough to bring these charming creatures into mainstream gaming as playable main characters. Hats off to you folks at Noble Robot!!! ...let's see here. A quick internet search of Noble Robot's resume shows "...and animation sequences for NBC's Parks and Recreation". Interesting side-note. Ok, so apparently this will appeal to ferret owners and hardcore Parks and Rec fans as well. I guess the important question now is, who would win in a fight - Widget Satchel or the Goose? I'd put my money on the weasel. If you own ferrets, pick this up. You won't regret it. It will be one of the few things you can own that those adorable creatures can't steal and hide from you and/or destroy.

It’s not great, but decent. Controlling the character is snappy, but controlling the character in the world is not. Visuals are partially nice and cute, but level design and visuals is somewhat bland. At the same time it has multiple routes and alternatives, and is freshened up with physics objects scattered throughout. It may be worthwhile for specific players who enjoy platforming, and collecting through multiple routes, and who do not mind the flaws. The setup and visuals are cute. The visuals are cute, but the tile based levels visually repetitive. The playful non-gameplay physics objects scattered throughout the levels lighten them up and make them more interesting and living. One main aspect of the game, albeit optional, is collecting resources to unlock abilities. The first two were easy to unlock. Collecting is tedious and I had no interest in pursuing that further. For completionists and those not minding taking several routes and exploring to the last corner to collecting all resources, this may be worthwhile. For me, that’s not fun nor interesting here in the bland levels and setting. Running through the levels “simply” to complete them is somewhat bland too. Enemy types can be hard to distinguish. They do have distinct coloring, but shaping is only marginally different. First introducing enemies that zap/damage you, and then later ones you can and have to jump on to increase jumping height is unfortunate. It’s possibly if not easy to get stuck. This has to be identified by the player themselves, and the last checkpoint has to be reloaded manually. [i](I also encountered a bug where loading the last checkpoint was broken and resulted in a grey screen while gameplay still seemed to work. Going through the main menu to reload worked fine though.)[/i] The level design is punishing at times, with climbing sections over multiple levels with the possibility to fall down all of them and have to reclimb them. This is made worse by adding time-based jump boosters (pads) which do not accept any pre-hit leniency, so jump has to be pressed at or after hitting them. A section as described is what ultimately made me give up and stop playing. All in all I found the visuals interesting, part of the controls snappy, but the experience and gameplay very bland. Widget Satchel may be worthwhile to some players still, but not for me or most.

The premise of the game looked fantastic and I commend the author on selling it sight unseen. That said, I cannot recommend this game. The premise is fantastic and the gameplay mechanics hold a lot of potential. Picking up widgets quickly encumbers your character, forcing you to explore and strategize to make the most of your carrying capacity. At the end of the first couple of levels you can find a "fabricator" (really a shop you can only access once) and obtain items which affect which paths you can take. The graphics are cute (though the animation feels clunky by comparison, especially when jumping) and piles of objects obligingly spill over and bounce down the halls as you crash through them, accruing points in the process. At least, all this is in theory. In practice, beginning in the third stage and becoming starkly apparent by the fourth, gameplay begins to drift southward. Widgets become sparse, with the three, five, and higher value widgets disappearing in lieu of single value widgets. Much of the stages revolve around platforming, jumping from one conveyor platform to another without making mistakes lest you be sent back to the beginning to start from scratch. Momentum is sometimes mysterious and don't be surprised to slide off the edge of platforms even when it seemed like you had made the jump properly. Piles of objects no longer cause the point counter to appear and become so much background clutter. The "doohickeys" utilization also becomes less about finding new paths and more about navigating the paths you're forced to take. For example, in early stages you can use the boots to jump off robots to reach higher platforms; by the fourth stage, the boots are necessary in order to not lose every widget you have to elevator sequences where robots cover the entire platform. Would having a different doohickey play out differently? It's hard to say because the areas seem so same-y, with nearly identical sections appearing multiple times, that I'm not sure I'd even notice if I'd stumbled on to a new path or what form it would take if I did. And that's an insurmountable problem. After spending an hour and a half on the fourth stage, I had to call it quits because I'd stopped having fun nearly an hour ago. The physics make the platforming sequences frustrating and tedious, and the lack of widgets (and the ease of losing them, sometimes to gameplay faults such as the screen failing to keep up with the character while descending rapidly from platforms where it turns out enemies lurked below) and the unlikeliness of collecting enough to obtain the final doohickeys killed any sense of reward for completing these sections. Eventually I hit my third long conveyor platforming section in a row, identical to the previous two, and realized I simply had no interest whatsoever in seeing what was on the other side. In the end, I dearly wanted to like the game and tried to push through the inanely long platforming sequences, but when they gave no signs of ending and yet another fall sent me back to the floor where I bumped into a robot that wasn't visible until a couple of seconds after I'd landed, that was enough for me.

Enjoy the journey of a lovely thief, it's a ferret after all 🐭, in this metroidvania with smooth controls and rich environments. May be little tedious when you backtrack for lost money (widgets) to buy new stuff, but it's still lot of fun. For more quick reviews please [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6972871]follow my curator[/url]. Watch the gameplay video: https://youtu.be/JPvecPAC7pE

This is the most fun I've ever had with a ferret! And I collected so many socks! Ferrets must love socks.

A cute ferret Metroidvania-ish game with a unique play-your-way gameplay. Speed run, Go hunting for rare, go for hi-score or just simply walk casually through the game. Great replayability. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGjsn1VyvAY

Lol what a fun game! You know, this is one of those little games you should play just to remind yourself you're a human being. I've played it a bit and will continue to play more. It's as involved as you want to make it on any particular play through but it can really pull you in, especially as it allows you to "stop caring" and just play the game for the sake of fun, something that is just not possible with today's games where the game can end every two seconds. It has great themes and a sense of humor. One thing I wasn't expecting was that it's also really interesting: this is a game that leaves me guessing where the mysterious pathways and doors are leading to and from, and that's a little unusual that a game made me care. Why do I care with this game? Not sure. It's not because you have to know to "complete" the game (you don't, unless I would imagine you play it strictly as a completionist, which I guess some people insist for themselves), and that I think is the key: it's interesting just because you kind of buy into it and just want to know. It's also not procedurally/auto-generated; there really are rewards to be had here and it's obvious that actual thought was put into by an actual human being. Support a developer and have some fun in a way you forgot about! Totally worth it. (No, I wasn't paid nor did I get this game for free or anything. Sorry if the review is too glowing; I just liked it and wasn't really expecting to.)

Cool game with an interesting method of allowing multiple routes through a platformer

[h1]Widget Satchel[/h1] У разработчика специфическое чувство юмора, ПРОДАВАТЬ такую игру. Думаю люди купившие ее, а тем более купившие за полную стоимость, страшные личности (прям отмороженные на всю голову) , с которыми лучше не связываться. Поэтому на всякий пожарный рекомендую (но это не точно, прям от слова совсем не точно)

It has Ferrets and has some challenging platforming puzzles. I would say I have fell in love with ferrets over the years, so that makes my review a little more biased. Its a fun quirky game with a ferret that collects socks, jumps around and breaks things all while running around figuring out puzzles with a ever filling Satchel.