Fun concept, just a single boss with 3 phases, each with similar and highly telegraphed attacks.
Bad execution (not that bad actually, but glitchy enough to be a problem). I get that this is just a student project by 4 devs, which makes it extremely impressive. However, I found the game to be glitchy and unejoyable to go for 100% achievements. (Theres a part of me that just doesn't believe that almost the same number of people have beat the game no hit, found the hall of fame, and found the potato black hole, unless this is just a massive skill issue on my part [I'm not a game journalist, I swear]).
1 or 2 playthroughs max. Just beat the worm and be done, like most the other reviews here (check the playtime).
On my trek to try to no-hit the worm (I still haven't) as of writing this, I've found extremely frustrating that
1. Touching the worm, just barely somehow inflicts massive damage on you (it just doesn't make sense that touching a stationary worm deals damage. I'd understand if it was moving, but stationary, I call BS).
2. While light attacks feel much nicer, it just isn't worth using them at all for no-hit. Heavy attacks are what I feel are the only viable way to grind out the worm in a reasonable time after many attempts since they do a reasonable amount of damage and also have a longer reach. Unfortunately, Heavy attacks are susceptible to just not working or stopping you from moving at all, even when you aren't charging the attack (glitchy).
3. The menu just doesn't work in phase 3. Literally had to throw myself into the black hole every time I took damage to practice phase 3 to restart. This is extremely frustrating.
4. Sometimes, the worm in phase 3 just loses its hit box? Like there's a phantom worm that does no damage, but other than the rocks that appear out of thin air, you can't deal damage and it can't damage you.
5. The worm's tail end has a larger hit box? or it does a tail flick every time it enters the ground. Either way, I'd think I'm safe, avoided the head and body and now standing still, when the tail just damages me out of nowhere.
6. My sprint (shift) key sometimes gets stuck, which means that while I have no stamina, the game thinks I'm still holding it down (I'm not) and prevents me from regaining any stamina until I press and release it again.
7. There's no skipping the animations. Like everytime, I restart, I have to sit through all the animations. Also, since phase 3's menu doesn't work, once I beat the worm again, I have to sit through all the credits again. Add in a skip animation button please (like space of esc).
8. It's cool that the terrain gets destroyed by the worm throughout the fight, and the ground gets indented when it draws a rock. However, the ground only partially changes its hit box so I'll float-walk above the indented ground. Disorienting. Either make the ground properly indent, or just don't indent it.
9. No tutorial. You get a call at the beginning of the game for lore exposition and walk a little to the right before the game starts. For anyone reading this and still wanting to try the game, WASD for movement, shift to sprint (uses stamina), left click (tap) for light attack, hold left click for heavy attack (can't move while charging attack, but can be falling), right click to dash in your direction of movement, space to use your jetpack and fly. Also, middle click to change your camera apparently, but this was very glitchy for me and you're better off not using it.
These weren't written in any particular order, but I found 3 and 7 the most frustrating to my experience.
If anyone is able to no-hit the worm, message me if there was anything special I might have missed aside from just memorizing the patterns.
Edit: I feel like I was too harsh on the game. It's fun enough that I'd recommend beating the worm once, but not fun enough to 100%. If 3 and 7 are fixed and maybe there was a bit more variety (different weapons) for replayability, then I'd definitely recommend this.
Edit 2: Update! I finally did the no hit. Not that bad, but the long cutscenes compared to the gameplay still irks me.
My no-hit run was:
40sec cutscene
40sec phase 1
30sec cutscene
1 min phase 2
20sec cutscene
1:30min phase 3
2 minutes cutscene/credits.
I had to alt f4 to reset runs that got to phase 3 or credits since the menu still doesn't work there.
