Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags
(+1)

Nice to see another game by Shibey. This one is a rage platformer featuring Camilla as the protagonist. The story ties in to previous games (I haven't played them all yet) and I think the universe is starting to become really interesting and full of life. The story is short but has multiple endings. I collected one memento during my playthrough.

The gameplay

The abilities you get are really fun. The levels are built around using wall jumps, slides, and double jumps to get around. The levels are well designed with lots of different challenges to test your skills. There are plenty of deadly traps such as spikes, bottomless pits, huge sawblades, telekinetic staffs and plasma turrets. Respawning is instant, so death isn't a big setback, with checkpoints being abundant. Trying the same section over and over is effortless, but after a while death starts to feel a little cheap (some punchy SFX might partially remedy this). If I didn't like the timing I was getting, I would just run into some spikes to try again faster. The turrets don't respawn, which makes sense from a story perspective but that means that even if you don't make it past a turret, as long as you destroy it the next run to the checkpoint will be easier. It messes with the sense of progression a little.

I should also mention that the hazards have really big hitboxes. As soon as you overlap a millimeter with the bounding box of a spike, you're dead as doornails, and abruptly reanimated at the nearest rift. As a result, you have to stay far away from anything dangerous, which doesn't exactly make you feel unbreakable. I also found myself hitting my head often on various low ceilings and platforms, interrupting the flow of movement. One of the encounters with the second boss was particularly problematic, as I had to awkwardly jump, double jump, and walljump to get up a series of blocks. Compared to other similar games, the player character is very big compared to the level geometry (and the jumps are comparatively low). This means the tolerances for every action feel incredibly tight. That said I think the art looks great like this, and I would rather have small changes to the levels than change the size of the characters.

On the other hand it feels like the hitbox on your attack is too small. Especially since you have to hit stuff while flying through the air. The attack hitbox only covers a small area in front of you, and not the character sprite itself. It also doesn't feel tall enough.

Narrative

I really like the story, although it's short. The character portraits (and character designs) are great as usual, and the dialogue is actually interesting, as it tells you tons of details and backstory, without spelling everything out for you. There is a lot of effort put into worldbuilding. The level environments fit the story too.

Bugs

Unfortunately I experienced some really unpleasant bugs. The fullscreen is really buggy. If you Alt-Tab even once, or exit fullscreen by pressing U, you will hear the audio glitch out, be unable to enter fullscreen again, and the game might become unresponsive. I had to restart twice because of this. The music also seemed out of place in some places, and there were constantly sound effects that didn't seem to match what was happening on screen. This seems like it could be an engine issue, so I'm sorry if that's the case. I don't know if a desktop version would fix these problems, but I would welcome the option.

Summary

There are some issues at the moment that take away from it, but this is still a fun experience to play through. I especially enjoyed the gauntlet of the second level. I would love to come back (and maybe speedrun it) after some fixes and gameplay balancing.

(+1)

Thanks so much for playing, and all your feedback! Your notes about the hitboxes (both obstacles and attacking) will definitely be getting addressed in a update patch post-jam. They've been the most common request/critique by far.

I'm sorry to hear about the bugs you experienced! It's the first I've heard of this so far... I attempted to reproduce this problem on my system in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, but didn't run into that issue.  Could you tell me what operating system and browser you were using to play? It's probably an engine issue unfortunately, but would still be helpful to know.

If you have a moment, I've made desktop versions for Windows... if you are using Windows, can you check and see if that bug still occurs for you?

I do plan to update the full game with improvements based on all the feedback I've gotten so far! There'll also be a stage 7&8 update coming too, I hope you'll check it out!

(1 edit) (+1)

I just played the Windows version and can happily say there were no audio issues! (including when toggling fullscreen and using Alt-Tab) I finally got to experience it with proper sound effects and music, and it ran a little smoother too!

(+1)

Awesome! Glad to hear the downloadable version is a good alternative if anyone runs into issues!

Thanks so much for your help :)