I'm a Kickstarter backer and I was really pumped for this game, it being sold to me as a Megadrive styled beat em up. I fully appreciate that this game was made by One Dude and his commitment is admiral, clearly a lot of time and energy has gone into this, but that doesn't remove it from criticism.
Before I go on here's some positives: The Pixel Art is fantastic and the music is top tier! If that's enough for you then get involved, if not maybe consider reading what else I have to say.
This is not a Megadrive styled beat em up, it's more like a Master System game as it only uses 2 buttons... because there's no jumping!? So weird to me, I mean even Target Renegade on the Spectrum had flying kicks. Now that may have been in the blurb for the Kickstarter and I just missed it/ignored it as I wanted to support the dev because I liked his previous games and I love beat em ups so this looked super rad to me.
Unfortunately the gameplay for me is not rad. You have to slap enemies 3 or 4 times with a short reaching weak attack just to get your standard combo to 'activate' and while you are attempting this slapping, the enemies can just smack you out of it, as they are only stunned by the combo. So you have to start the wind up again and hope they just let it happen this time. You can grab enemies for a throw or a strike from behind and this seems to be the preferred method of fighting, as long as you don't mind taking a few slugs as you get in close for a grab ofc. You can also run and attack, but doing a double tap with an analogue stick is never the easiest thing, so its not reliable. (the game defaulted to my 360 pad and didn't allow the use of the d-pad, hopefully I can get Joy to Key to allow me to use my Saturn pad next time I play.) So on a basic level the combat is annoying me to say the least. (Unless ofc I am missing something here?)
This annoyance passes directly onto the 2 bosses I have faced, who spam their attacks constantly. You have to get close to start the wind up on your combo, but if you get close the boss picks you up and slams you down, no grabbing the boss as far as I can see. 'Then use your special attack' you say. You can, once, and then you have to wait for a bar to build up so you can do it again, and this bar is slooow, it does quicken up if you can land attacks but if you get close to the boss you get picked up and slammed, thus catch 22... I somehow cheesed the AI to get pass the first boss, as after relentlessly picking me up as I start my slapping, he just stopped doing anything, not very satisfying at all. This AI trait is in the standard enemies now I come to think about it, sometimes the enemies are super aggressive and other times they stand still and do nothing, sometimes even facing away from the player, a bug maybe?
The real kick to the teeth for me is you only have one life! So upon death you get a, admittedly cool, game over screen and then it's back to the main menu to start again, it really breaks up the flow of play. Granted you can start from any new levels you have unlocked and now you can buy a one use upgrade IF you've got any coin, but the upgrade I bought didn't help with the level 2 boss as even with extra health there was no window in his attack pattern in which to start my slapping for a combo.
Now I fully admit I'm no expert at games, I don't care if I finish a game, as long as the gameplay is fun that's what matters to me, but I'm not having fun with the gameplay loop here.
Thus it leaves me to say that this current build feels like a subpar 8-bit beat em up, and when it's a genre known for its tedium a beat em up has to have a hook, generally the fun of beating up enemies, but so far I don't feel that hook.
So as it stands for me right now I can't see it being a game I will return too very often. Unless ofc my gripes are because of bugs that can be patched later down the line; not sure if that's a possibility or not but if so I will edit my review accordingly when and if that happens.
5/10 - It looks fantastic and sounds great but the gameplay isn't on the same level.