itch.io

It's a pretty alright experience. After the first couple of days I spent a lot of time moving stuff around so they're all easier to access when I need to fix or resupply stuff. lmao

It helps that you're typically worried about just 1-2 tasks at a time after the frantic first few minutes, so it's never completely overwhelming once you get past that.

The only big issue I had is when the mouse stops working when you click or tab out, so it was mildly annoying to have to restart twice when I just wanted to write down my thoughts. But it seems to be a problem that's shared with a lot of web builds, so it's not exactly the game's fault.

Quite a few interesting ways to count down, got my head spinning for a bit. Definitely found myself stuck on a couple of puzzles trying to think, and it can feel overwhelming to look through the guide especially when you hit the atomic level.

All that said, it was a bad idea to play this game while feeling sleep-deprived, but my mind was still pretty engaged for a while, so props for that. The audio certainly helped with the concentration, too.

The art is eye-catching, and the music is pretty nice (especially given that you'd be hearing it on repeat). Very nice selection of sound effects, too.

Then comes the meat: the gameplay adds a neat twist to the "dig as deep as you can and buy stuff to help you dig deeper" loop. This sort of game's normally not my cup of tea, and it certainly took me a few runs to get used to steering with the mouse (especially when I got the Bite and Saw upgrades and tried to incorporate them into each run), but it became a very fun experience once I did get used to it. And the Bat upgrade really helped me push just a bit further, especially when paired with the Bite upgrade.

I might actually play more of this genre because of this, so good work!

Very nice gameplay concept, and the art is wonderful, especially with the Count literally aging up or down. It got me scratching my head in a couple of sections, and I even almost got tempted to skip trying to figure it out, and what doesn't help is the uh glitchy? character movement—it definitely made me restart more than a few times. Still, I powered through, and it was pretty enjoyable overall.

The ending was definitely a twist, and while it might be unintentional, I like how you could just keep repeating it. lmao

I relate so much to the main character, so I connect with this game on an emotional level. lmao

Great music, a very comfy artstyle that contrasts extremely well with the escalating craziness of the gameplay, and I do not want to multitask ever again.

Also, thanks for the pan-seared salmon tips. I will have one in honor of this game.

5/5 Would play with the demon core again

Great concept, the art is very nice (especially the backgrounds!), but the music is the absolute centerpiece. Getting a new track to vibe to is definitely a big reason to push as far as you can.

I do wish there was an option to lower the volume (because boy I was not expecting to get my ears blasted, and I was scrambling to find a volume slider until I just decided to lower the system volume) and at least accelerate the intro (since it felt like old Dark Souls runbacks where you had to spend too long to get back in the action).

Regardless, a very enjoyable experience overall.

I blacked out after breaking 5000 boxes. When I recovered, the game was long over, and yet I was still breaking boxes. Hundreds, thousands by the minute. Life lost all other meaning. I could only break. And I broke myself in the process.

All that aside, the art is nice, the narrative is impressive for such a simple premise, and it's pretty hard to put down once you get your momentum—I was only made to let go after I upgraded a couple of things a dozen or so times in one go and lagged so hard that the game was threatening to crash. lmao

Does have some pacing issues in terms of the progression, since there were upgrades already available for mechanics that weren't yet explained or introduced. Also, there were some things I may have missed the explanation of and I ended up misplacing a couple of things. But the exponentially frantic pace kind of ended up balancing things out, and adjusting to my missteps made the experience more memorable.

I don't think I'll be a warehouse sorter any time soon after this.  lol