Does Not Disappoint
It was a shock at first to see one of amon26's works being posted here. When the game started, I first thought that someone was trying to imitate his style.
Having played amon26's previous games, Au Sable and All Of Our Friends Are Dead, its a pleasure to see this experience posted on the portal for a wider audience.
The most obvious standout feature of this is, of course, the artwork. The art as always serves brilliantly to paint the scene, and though the environment is mindbendingly surreal, the presentation makes it believable, immersive and consistent. Artwork has been stepped up from previous titles, and every drop of expressive potential is wrenched from the small pixels. Ffrom the tormented trees with impossible features to the shivering and frightened people to the eyes that begin to watch you when you've gone too far, everything works together to present a beautifully unsettling atmosphere.
Little design touches such as the character's last body remaining in the place where it died, the monsters resembling distorted versions of the people you pass, and the shower of water that eases your character's rage show how complete the thought process is.
The harshness of distortion in graphics, music and SFX is used to great effect and nothing is spared, created an agonized sense of unease that people familiar with the author's work will know very well. People unfamiliar with it will be in for a surprise, and for some this surprise will be a pleasant treat.
The storyline and presentation thereof is esoteric, evasive, and immediate. You as a player are dumped immediately into the environment, and watch the world and story unfold around you as if in a dream. It is a cold and refreshing breath of fresh air in a field of games where text boxes and unskippable cutscenes are the rule of the day. The writing is, in fact, almost too obscure to the point of indiscernability, but still appreciable for how different it is from everything else you typically see in games these days.
Unfortunately where this game falters most is the gameplay - unlike in previous works, where the involvement of the mouse invites clicking, the use of the down key is not necessarily a given, and only the overly curious or determined would discover it. Given that the down key is at times crucial to survival and progress, this becomes a major block in play and breaks the immersion somewhat.
The platforming is largely solid, though the jumping is a floaty and can become frustrating - tightening of the controls is strongly recommended, as many platform sequences that would otherwise feel just the right length instead feel a little too long due to the dodgy controls.
The gun and shield mechanics, once discovered, are clunky but servicable - like everything else it could use some tightening up.
Of note as well is the Crucible of Uxaxa, used to alternately sacrifice a poor girl or cross a boiling lake of blood - standing on the crucible is unexpectedly slippery, deadly when you're trying to cross the aforementioned lake. This is especially a problem as dying at that point involves re-crossing large portions of that screen, which can grow frustrating and will further break the immersion.
All-in-all, what game mechanics that exist are sparse, but functional. The flow of the game, however, would benefit greatly if the same attention to detail that was given to the art and design was given to play mechanics.
None of this is unexpected if you've played any of the author's previous work. Historically, amon26's games have always been artwork-heavy and mechanics-light, and this one is no different.
For future projects, however, some more careful implementation of game mechanics would benefit the game's impressive art and environment greatly.
Either way, the game is a sharp left turn from the usual fare on Newgrounds, and it is a solid object lesson for alternate modes of thinking in game design for the designers on this site.
9/10
5/5
