This is a bad game. While that's nothing special (most games on Newgrounds are bad games, after all,) this one's an interesting case because it's part of a much larger game. It's part of an extended universe, dreamt up by the creator, and I think a bunch of games are planned for this extended universe, though as far as I can tell the only released one is Guppy's Quest, a platformer. The kickstarter for the full version of this game is going live in a bit - a few months or so. Which makes this game being bad actually quite a bit of a problem, because it's no longer trying to simply get users to click on it, and maybe give a good review. It's asking for people's money, trying to get them to join the discord, and trying to get them to want the full game. And in that light, the subpar quality of this game becomes much more of an issue.
Presentationwise, the game is inconsistent:
- If there are any sound effects at all, they're very rare. I don't remember any from my playthrough
- The visuals are serviceable at best. pixel art is very low def, the few animations that exist are very minimal, and none of the spritework is anything special.
- UI looks fine on the title screen and starting menus, but breaks down when you get into the game. The resource and death counters do not occupy the top corners of the screen and are illegible or hard to make out quickly in certain environments. The pause menu gives you button shortcuts for exiting and resuming the game, but offers no actual buttons for some reason.
- Music is actually really solid. Energetic, upbeat, and just sounds nice. What few tracks there are are bangers.
Gameplaywise, things are not much better:
- The controls are very floaty and slippery, which can often lead to frustrating situations, especially in parts that call for precise platforming.
- The charge function feels entirely aimless. It is so fast that it's impossible to see what's coming up while using it and it is very hard to control your character while using it, meaning it can only be effectively used in situations where it is ok to be incredibly commital, and required to get through a large segment of a level in a very short time. These sections don't exist in these levels, and considering how fast the player character already moves the charge will at best probably be rather situational.
- When jumping into the top corners of blocks the player character will launch off of them into the air
- The way slopes handle momentum is broken. if you have any built up momentum on a slope reaching the end, or turning around on the slope will launch you into the air. This can lead to very unpredictable and random movement when moving around on slopes
- Falling boulders fall very fast, making them not only making them hard to follow, but also very frustrating to avoid in certain situations. Especially in the second level when there was a segment that had falling boulders super close to the ground the player character had to walk on. By far the biggest difficulty spike of the 2 levels. Whenever I die and respawn, for one cycle, these boulders actually come down quite a bit slower before resuming to fall very fast, making me wonder if their falling fast is a technical error of some sort.
- Any time you move off of a platform without jumping, the game still thinks the player is grounded, meaning the player has all the grounded walking animations and spritework with air physics, and the player character has access to their jump, even in the air, giving a psuedo double jump. This can happen when slopes launch the player, when jumping into the corners of blocks, or simply when walking off of platforms. (It should be noted that I've had this problem with Unity games before and it seems to be specific to my device somehow? I don't understand what it is or why but please take this one with a pinch of salt. Regardless, it was a problem I experienced so I wanted to express it.)
While often jank and subpar presentation can be ignored to be able to play a game or experience something entirely novel, or some other aspect of a game that is very well done, this game had no such draw for me. It's a platformer, and it isn't very good at being a platformer. Simple as that.
A few final nitpicks:
- The "toggle music" option in the settings doesn't actually mute the music. Every time you toggle it off then on again, the song starts over
- respawns in this game immediately teleport the player character and camera back to the last checkpoint upon failure. While the speed of the respawns is appreciated, adding a Celeste-style slide transition would make it far less jarring.
- For a game that will eventually be a full paid release, the lack of options was rather dissapointing. The ability to switch skins is appreciated, but I would also like the ability to set the in-game volume for different sources of sound, or be able to choose to do level 2 on the level select after unlocking it instead of always having to start with level 1.
There are probably a few things I'm forgetting here. Hopefully this review will be updated later with those.
So, with all this in mind, while it should be kept in mind that this is in fact a demo of a minigame found in a much larger game full of similar minigames, if this is a representation of the quality of the rest of the product, I don't believe it is worth financial backing. Hopefully this is very unrepresentative of the rest of the game (though making a demo that paints a good game in a bad light is a problem all it's own,) but either way, I doubt this demo will generate much support for the final product.