After I played Spaicy:Dawn of Hope as my first Itch.io Indie Dev game, I want to share my experience here. Pretty mediocre experience for me.
It's just a clone of Ristar: The Shooting Star for Sega Genesis, mixed with a character that looks like an AliExpress version of Sash Lilac from Freedom Planet for PC (basically she is almost a clone of Sash Lilac's prototype before Freedom Planet went out as a videogame). Not a bad thing, actually Spaicy looks cute and energical for me, but not much an original concept already.
Spaicy's whip movements copy Ristar's arm stretching moves, and the metal bars to swing just look like Ristar's Star Bars to impulse and do bar jumps. Spaicy has almost the same moveset as Ristar (even she grabs ledges and walls like Ristar does, by the way), while also she includes air gliding (reminiscent of the Helipack from the Ratchet & Clank game series) and an unique triple jump that I see more as an annoyance. I get that the Kid from the I Wanna Be The Guy game franchise can double jump thanks to his cape, but Spaicy has no physical reason to double jumpand even less to triple jump, so it seems quite off from my perspective. The other elements of her moveset, like wall jumping (reminiscent of Batman from NES), an electric spider as a main boss (reminds me of Phantom Spider from the old Nokia 3220 phone series) and the 2D/3D backgrounds (actually look like the ones from Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon Stage 2 for the Sega Genesis) just make this demo as a mix-mash of games that the only relation they hold is the use of a screen to play them and the use of buttons for inputs.
So, my veredict:
-Graphics: Not bad, but not good neither. With so many bootleg-esque references i can't see any original aspect. At least they don't seem to corrupt nor fail, pretty stable FPS rates. 3/10
-Characters: Really weak. We only see three of them without counting minor enemies. Spaicy as a playable character, the blue lab-coated character named Bob who is Spaicy's brother, and the electric spider if you count it as one, i guess. Only two have proper attacks (Spaicy and the spider), and the other "enemies" are just scripted and null to show any emotion. 2/10
-History: Like the japanese Mitsubishi A6M airplane, ZERO. The game is called Spaicy: Dawn of Hope, but the only hope i have is to know the story of the game. We have a cutscene about Spaicy wanting to go get some "adventures" and speaking with Bob and he puts Spaicy into a virtual room but, what? I can't get why her adventures and training are shooting targets, getting crystals and killing an electrical spider in a cube-made world! And i don't see what relation it has to get a clue about energy spendings on her planet! It's the spider the energy stealer as it's electric, or it's a robot spider, or what happens?! I don't ask for a three-hour script, but at least give us people a reason to sympatize with Spaicy! Energy-stealing feels more a Final Fantasy or a Ratchet & Clank game! Just give us a reason to get in her skin and spirit, just that. 1/10
-Controls: Too many issues with them. First, we have a tutorial with pre-set buttons. Sadly the game fails to specify there is a second (I would say Secret) where the arrow keys and the Z, X and C keys work too. Pause button, instead of the Tab, Escape or even F1 or Enter keys, is the P key. I get that P is the first letter of Pause, but the only games i saw using that are Unity WebGL or old Adobe Flash games, and in modern times is not much intuitive. In the Options section you get no way to change controls, only volume and language options. Also, controls seem to be slippery, like Luigi from the Super Mario Bros franchise, and there seems to be some input lags, that become serious when the screen becomes saturated by the background, foreground and enemy presences. 4/10
-Bugs/Glitches: Apart that some hitboxes are wrong (like, Spaicy can half-cross walls as her sprite and her hitbox are not aligned) and some issues (sometimes lag can make you cross walls and floors by accident), I only found a major glitch. When you try to select a language, sometimes the game decides to crash randomly, and other times i verified that selecting a language that is not English (basically Spanish) somehow either crashes the game or forces it to still play in English. Not a problem for me as I understand both languages, but for other people this can be an issue. Also, sometimes the whip refuses to grapple on the circular bars even when i pressed the proper key to do so. Saw another person who played the game and after speaking with him he told me he also had the same issue. I hope in a future it's patched. 5/10
-Gameplay: Ristar-esque, with some major flaws as enemy predictable patterns, too many invulnerability frames for enemies, repetitive gameplay sections, the boss is killed by an environment instead of having a proper boss fight with a hitbox, the gems serve no purpose, timer just works for speedrunning, targets are a bit illogical as an objective but follow up their job as map guidders, and the escape section is too easy and holds no emotion, risk nor adventure experience. Also, jumping and changing from elements (water to air and viceversa) needs some refining in order to have a smoother experience. Music is not bad, as it's a demo with one level i can't say anything bad for it, as at least it fits the whole purpose of it, entertain the player. 5/10
-Menu: Only four options are present: Demo (to play the game), Options (to change the volumes, resolution, quality and Fullscreen mode), Credits (to see the people who made the game and the rights of the Spaicy franchise, alongside a link to a comic of Spaicy i have yet to read and some images that seem to be from said comic) and Exit (to leave the game). Also before we get a selection screen to select a language (English or Spanish basically) Spaicy in the menu seems a cute character, albeit i had two minor issues, both for my perspective. First i don't know if Spaicy is a dog or just a generic species from Snoworld. Second, her nose seems a bit awkwardly placed, as i feel it should be between both her eyes and not in the cheeks, as it gives her more of a 2D proportion on her face instead of a 3D one. Still it's my perspective and not the general one, so it's only my issue. 8/10
Basically i should give it a 28/70, equivalent to a 4/10, but as it seems to be the maker's first Indie project and it seems it has been six years in development, i will give it a 5/10 as i have faith this can get an update and become a decent indie game. Also, Spaicy seems a cute character to me (except the nose and specie things, but that is my point of view) and would be a fine addition to the platform-gaming roster we currently have crowned by Mario, Sonic, Kirby and Link. I could even see Spaicy as a cross-over with Freedom Planet, or a mod for said game.
As an apart point i wish to specify, I saw on some social medias like Youtube, Reddit and Twitter that some people claimed this game had pornography or child abuse content in the downloaded files and it's not true. I decided to revise all the files and no one of them contains a single image, archive, link nor file that leads nor shows any of that content, only the sprites, backgrounds, cutscenes and menu images. So if you wish to give this demo a try, it's family friendly and doesn't contain any adult-themed content. You can also donate money if you wish. In my case I did not as i wanted to give it a try, but if it improves and gets some updates (with an update log and game version if possible) maybe I will consider doing it with a small quantity.