A few more games:
Very, very cute little metroidvania, the pixel art isn't the most amazing or the most detailed, but it's all round and pastely and bubbly and bouncy, I really like the little animations of the NPCs and creatures.
But the dialogue boxes have much, much higher rez portraits and not pixel art that looks... kinda off, as if they went through heavy post processing? The same applies to fonts, which are cute and girly pixel handwriting in the menu... but no in the text boxes or the options. Why? Not that is it ugly or unreadable, but, it's certainly not a coherent artstyle.
Now gameplay wise, I expected more... magic from a title like this. You need mana fountains (or death) to get more magic (which you get two casts of baseline), using it to unlock the way with fire and ice, electricity, etc.
Except there's no mana fountains in the second part of the demo so... you pretty much never use magic except on the required "puzzles"...?
Because, otherwise, you just jump around and smack things around with your wand, and it's... not the best. The character is pretty sluggish, and the double jump and the dash take away too much control of your char... and I'm not sure what they were going for... but the very first jump of the game?
Can't do it with jump! Yeah, you need to jump then dash, which is only told to you after you did it. But don't double jump (not explained to you until right after either), because if you do you hit the spikes on the floor above.
Like, thanks game?
But that's pretty much the game in a nutshell, the difficulty is out of this fucking world, you die in two hits, checkpoints are insanely rare, every jump is rigged to trick you into damage, especially when you go up as there's spikes on ceilings way too often, and with controls being... not Souldiers, oof.
Oh, and ennemies and chests contain gems. Which are lost forever when you die.
Really, really off putting, I was expecting a cute little metroidvania with a little witch with pink hair, I got Dark Souls but far more unforgiving, poor controls and almost never any magic use... yeah that's a no from me.
Not the biggest fan of Kao, the first was okayish as a Crash clone, 2 was pretty janky, and in general the series really lacks the atmosphere that you can find in other C-tier platforming franchises.
And well, this one is not very inspired, but it plays well, looks pretty good, combat is simple but the "special move" is a nice uppercut with a little slow down, and... it just works?
Nothing amazing, but good visuals, good sound design, linear levels with a few side challenges (and bonus levels I assume, but the purple portals are not open in the demo), decent enough combat... sure, why not? It does exactly what was advertised, and I guess Kao is not a bad character, not too cute or too edgy.
I'll play it.
Well, now that's not something that you see everyday from tiny indies, a first person 3D action adventure game... with the open world tag, but that's not really true, that's more in line with Gothic than Elder Scrolls, open but meandering little areas and corridors linked together, with some shortcuts unlocked later and little secrets chests strewn around.
But it's actually a survival game based on archery! Pick up wood, feathers, plants and stuff to craft arrows and potions, fights enemies and use the mats to unlock new skills... and then you see that it's also a story driven game, with plenty of voice acting and a good chunk of cut scenes in a creepy-ass Slavic mythology world with talking mushrooms and assorted monsters, with a crazy spirit possessing you as her brand new... apprentice? Pet? Who knows.
It's kinda like if Hellblade and modern Tomb Raider had a child, with some very decent visuals for such a title and archery combat that feels quite nice, especially once it opens up with the addition of magic - you can charge your shots with a shotgun-like effect in the beginning, and more later... or just outright use corroding magic to kill opponents (and more), it regenerates fairly fast too so it's not too static a game. But the demo is not enough to explore the gameplay potential.
Same thing for the morality system, where you can do good acts like helping little birds caught by carnivorous plants, or kill them for resources, talk to the weird bug NPCs and help them or lie to send them to their doom... in theory, it should end up giving you different passives in the skill trees, but that's a bit of a question mark for now.
And not only because it's obviously a demo... but because it ended up being a bit buggy and crash prone. I went through the environment twice, got a sequence that didn't load the first time, then crashed in the boss fight... not great.
Still, I'll keep that one in my wishlist for sure, it's both unique and well done, without falling into the trappings of either the walking sim or the survival genre but using both effectively.
