I've never reviewed on Itch (I basically only play games that are on Steam or console) and when it allows the rating it won't allow me to copy and paste. So for anybody passing through, here is my very thorough and long review:
I want to like this game so badly.
It's visuals are beautiful, it has an interesting mechanic that I think could be really fun, but unfortunately I find even attempting to enjoy this game so infuriatingly annoying that the good points quickly get outnumbered by the frustrating moments.
I'll begin with the most egregious thing first. This game has very obviously not been playtested with a controller before. I will preface I only have an Xbox controller, so I was only able to test this game with that and not a Playstation controller (which is very clearly the only controller used for this game). As soon as you boot up the game with a controller you are immediately able to move the character in the background with the joystick. Neat! That's awesome. One problem though....you can't interact with the actual words on the start screen. Yup. That's right. No matter what you press, you only get to interact with the background. To interact with the starting menu you have to DISCONNECT the controller and use your mouse. Just fantastic.
Okay. I've started a new game now and have reconnected my controller. I climb up the dirt and now I'm staring down a rock. The man tells me that rocks will repel me. Got it. I hit the spear against the rock and...nothing happens. No. That isn't a joke. The spear will literally go THROUGH the rock. It won't latch onto the stone, it does nothing. You will once again have to DISCONNECT the controller to progress. At this point, now that you have disconnected the controller (and if you didn't realize back on the start screen), you will realize you can move the spear in the direction you want! Handy! If only the game TOLD ME THAT. If you play on controller you have no way to know that the right joystick can control the spear. Which is something most games would tell you immediately. Not this game. On the other hand, mouse and keyboard you get to know immediately. How unfortunate for us controller folk.
At this point I had mostly given up on the controller and just went with mouse and keyboard (Something I am significantly worse with) because of how unoptimized the game was for the controller. So now let's talk about the main thing that made this game so unbearable for me. The spikes (the obstacles, not like difficulty spikes lol). I have played multiple platformers and metroidvanias, I have seen numerous spikes, these spikes are probably the most poorly thought out compared to all the other games I have played. It always feels completely unfair when I die to spikes, and I figured out why; it's because the hit boxes aren't forgiving whatsoever. It always feels as though I absolutely shouldn't have gotten hit by a spike, then when I look back on my video footage, it turns out I was a PIXEL on the spike so I died. This is so frustrating and rage inducing. Perhaps it's a skill issue! Maybe that's what all my complaints boil down to, who knows! But I do know for a fact that these hit boxes are absolutely a problem. Inbound Shovel made a fantastic short about this, watch it if you're interested in what exactly I'm talking about. https://youtube.com/shorts/X0jy94VP_Ko
This game seems to pride itself on the player learning the controls and getting better as they play. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to do so when the player isn't given any real movement variety beyond the spear. Let me use Celeste as an example here. In Celeste you jump, you can control how high you jump and this can help with obstacles- like spikes. In Spear It Up, you can't control how high you jump, it's always a set height, so, if you wanted to, I don't know, try to avoid the pixel perfect spikes....you don't get to! There are numerous instances where you must jump off walls, but you don't get to control your jump whatsoever. So in all likelihood, you jump too high and you get spiked.
Alright, alright. I know what you're thinking. So it's not the best platformer, whatever. This is labelled a metroidvania! The exploration! The enemies! What about those things!? Well, first there are no enemies. Which is fine. Whatever. However, this game just doesn't understand the reason why metroidvanias are fun to explore, it doesn't understand there needs to be some sort of direction, some incentive. When I play Dead Cells, I know that there is a door I need to go to, but if I explore a bit in the room then I can get some loot and weapons and etc etc, when I play Hollow Knight, I can find geos, new area's to explore, new characters, yada yada. When I play Spear It Up I get....a gem. Alright I guess....
I know what you're thinking, "But! But! You brought up Celeste earlier and Celeste only has Strawberries, so isn't your point a bit hypocritical?". Well dear stranger, Celeste has a destination and a story with extremely fun and challenging platforming that makes me want to get the strawberries to prove I can beat the challenge of getting them. Celeste also makes these strawberries completely optional. According to Spear It Up's description, although I have yet to experience it in the game, these gems aren't going to be optional and will be required for the story. Which then, once again, begs the question as why I should explore at all.
Alright, okay, well we just mentioned the story and the gems. What about that? Is that any good? Well, there is an old man that magically appears after you reach certain points (of which he actually has multiple twins that you get to see when you press M lol) and he is where we get our story from. MC meets old man, old man is teaching her how to navigate the cave. However, because players like me like to go off the beaten path (and because this game wants to be a metroidvania) you will get dialogue out of order. The old man knew my name before I told him for example. Which is a bit of a problem when a game's story seems quite narrow. The reason metroidvanias can have stories is because it tends to be pieces of information that don't need a specified order. Clearly the old man is more narrow and you do need a specified order for it.
Do you know what this game actually reminds me of? Jump King. Jump King the rage platformer game. However, unlike Jump King, this game doesn't have the controls to make it feel fair. When I lose height in Jump King, I know it's because I didn't hold space long enough or held it too long. When I play Spear It Up, I just think the game is designed poorly.
UI wise here are some things I would really like since it would be nice QoL:
- When starting the game I wish text faded on screen that said space to jump, WASD to move, mouse to hit, etc
- In the settings, instead of putting the arrow keys in the corner, put the left and right arrow key next to whatever menu box we are on so I know I can switch menu boxes. I thought there was only one menu and I couldn't turn off rumble until I watched the video attached to the reddit post.
- When in dialogue let me know that I need to press space to progress it. I thought I ran into a bug when clicking E wasn't progressing dialogue
Bugs not mentioned in the above but that I found:
- In one section the old man and the MC repeat the same dialogue numerous times
- Settings Menu appeared at the top of the screen for a little while after starting a new game using the controller.
Overall..... Spear It Up is a rage game that doesn't understand the fundamentals of the games it's trying to emulate. It has beautiful art and there is clearly passion in the project. But unfortunately in the state that it's in, it's a project that I will be passing on.
I will state that I had not heard of the game Pokey Poke until now, but after writing this review, this game seems like a very close copy of it, but once again it just doesn't understand the fundamentals of why Pokey Poke works. (I watched a video of it, and Pokey Poke actually has direction to it).