itch.io

This is a copy of my review, since those aren't publicly visible on this website. (Which is scummy as hell on Itch.io's part.)

1/5 Stars

Quite simply didn't enjoy it. The puzzle design is just...bad.

Firstly, having no rewind button is a pretty major oversight, this is a feature that's been standard in sokoban games for years now, decades even, and for a good reason! No player wants to be forced to do the first 5 opening moves of a puzzle EVERY time they try another way to do the last 3, for example. Calling this "feature complete" is already a bit misleading, as such.

Secondly, the actual puzzle design, as previously stated, is not good. It's not fun, it's not enjoyable. For many of the later puzzles, there's simply FAR too many permutations with no solid, logical way to pare them down! And when there's no logic to follow, you're stuck just...trying different things, again and again and again, forced to resort to trial and error to attempt to make progress on beating the par. You clearly have very specific solutions in mind to make par on the later levels...but did you ever think about how the players are supposed to FIND those solutions? What chain of logical steps are they supposed to make to deduce the solution, here? I'm not bad at puzzle games, I beat the entirety of Patrick's Parabox without guides, and that was a HARD game sometimes! ...But it was also a well-designed game with well designed puzzles, and this is, simply, not.

And yet, as I'm forced to just brute-force try different permutations of moves with no way to tell how in the HELL it's supposed to be possible to beat par, the game doesn't even have the decency to make my life a little bit easier with a simple rewind feature? That feature wouldn't even fix the problem of poor puzzle design, but it'd be SOMETHING! And we don't even have that!

I beat levels 1-14 under par without any guides (does this game even have any?), and I'm giving up on level 15 out of 18 and uninstalling. I'm sure I could figure it out with enough trial and error, with enough time of wracking my brain for a SINGLE thing I can do differently without making the state of the puzzle impossible to solve under par, but it's simply not fun. I'm not enjoying it, and frankly, I don't think I've enjoyed a single puzzle here. And yes, I DID actually manage to reason out how to get under par for level 13, I managed to logically deduce the final change I needed to get under par for that level...and it STILL wasn't fun nor satisfying. That's the reality with solving poorly designed puzzles, it's just...not rewarding even when you find the solution. So I'm just...giving up here, the design is sub-par and the juice isn't worth the squeeze. I can go look up better porn than whatever is at the end of this game WITHOUT the unfun gameplay tax, thank you.

As such, giving this a 1/5 score. Perhaps the artwork at the end would be enough to raise the rating somewhat, but if the player never reaches it, then it adds no value, does it? I've given this game enough of my time and endured enough frustration with it as it is. And the rest of the game...very much earns the 1/5. "Feature complete", what a joke...it's both feature incomplete AND poorly designed so as to be extremely frustrating and unsatisfying to play, so be warned! The juice isn't worth the squeeze, here.

...And just to preemptively address the people who will say that the game is too polished for a 1/5 score, let me ask, what good is that polish if I don't get a single ounce of enjoyment out of this game, if I leave feeling purely negative, frustrated, and unrewarded for my time and investment? That is a 1/5 experience, the "polish" of the graphics, or sound design, or ANY of that, is irrelevant to that fact. The experience was bad with no redeeming factors, and I regret every bit of the time and energy I spent on this game. It was a 1/5 experience. (And I can see what the ending porn is going to look like from the Itch page, and I can tell you, no, I would not feel rewarded for slogging through all of these puzzles for it. As I said, I can look up better for free.)

If you never figured it out, you cover yourself with ranch and then get caught by the 2 nearby people. They don't like ranch, so they throw you away, and you somehow land past the waterfall, letting you bait the lollive.

Thanks, I checked back there after doing everything else and it didn't have the new option, but apparently I had to finish another run and THEN it opened up! But I'd just checked, so I wound up checking every single other location again before giving up and looking at the comments.

Managed to reach endless void 1000, got about 80 rooms deep the normal way before finding out you can skip rooms by moving left, down, then right while in the upper-left tile of a room, which is how I did the rest of the rooms. Honestly fully expected it to do the thing where going backwards takes you to room 1, which is why I didn't find that sooner, not until I accidentally when down instead of right leaving a room, which trapped me between some walls and forced me to go backwards. (Also got all 3 endings and all upgrades, of course! Forgot to mention that.)

Anyway, interesting game. I do think the ability to map slopes should've come sooner, I personally expected/wanted it when you instead get the ability that maps an area around you when you enter a room...and what's up with that upgrade, anyway? Pretty sure that's the one described as raising children to be scouts, but I have no idea how that connects to the behaviour of it.

That aside, I did enjoy it, although the lack of saves was kinda rough, and some areas felt a little too stretched out with too many repetitive inputs required, definitely felt this one in my joints. It did give me a similar feeling to playing Void Stranger though, I like the sense of exploration, pushing the boundaries of the rules, it's good stuff. I imagine Void Stranger might've been an inspiration here actually, but if it wasn't, you should probably check it out, you might like it based on what you went for here! (I personally stopped playing Void Stranger when I reached hard mode, got a bit too tedious to progress at that point, but still!)

Good work though, especially for something made in 5 days. I'd give it...like, a 7/10, which is pretty good, mostly dragged down by the gripes I mentioned and the length, but that's just looking at the end result objectively, the length is actually really good for how much time was spent making it. Since this site only allows rating out of 5 though, I'll give it 4/5, it leans closer to a 4/5 than a 3/5. I'll always prefer something interesting that I have gripes with to something bland and boring, that's for sure. That's the whole reason I follow Adrien here after all, ever since Idle Nightmare 2, that game fascinated me.

So yeah, that's it. Nice stuff, looking forward to more, I'll probably be catching up on some of the other games I've skipped over here in the coming days, I enjoyed this experience.

Does Mercy mode not do that? I haven't bothered to test it myself, but I assumed it'd disable the mechanics, since you unlock it after getting all achievements.

...How is an Incredibox mod supposed to be difficult? It's a musical/visual sandbox. Well, that video recommended I should try it myself before watching, so I'll give it a go, despite not having previously used Incredibox. I have seen several videos, so I know the general deal.

Alright, reporting in after getting all achievements, the "difficulty" only comes from two sources. One is the chaser, appears occasionally and follows your mouse, if he touches your mouse, you lose. He goes away after a while. The other is the crasher, taking the place of one of the...guys you can place, whatever they're called. Don't use him, or you lose. Would be easy, if not for the occasional swapping of two of your instruments, combined with the icons for them being blocked much of the time by an eye graphic that replaces them. Your goal is just to survive while still occasionally adding or removing an instrument, the time stops counting up if you don't do one of those things for 4 loops, the loop time being indicated by a wheel.

So, I wouldn't exactly call this difficult. Not at all, it's pretty easy. The crasher is seldom actually targeted by a swap unless you are exceptionally unlucky, and the chaser is just a matter of...moving your mouse constantly until he goes away. The most demanding achievement just requires you to keep the mix timer going up for 6 minutes, which isn't that hard. (If you idle for too long, the timer only pauses until you act again, it doesn't reset, if anyone's worried about that...you probably already know that if you're reading this, though.) The only thing that actually adds difficulty is trying to keep a good sounding, dynamically changing mix going...but then the icons being hidden and the chaser physically stopping you from really using tools like the headphones to isolate the track to just one instrument at the right time to pull off the really good stuff, so at some point you resign yourself to just randomly swapping guys in and out and accept the result while endlessly dodging the chaser. Keep track of where the crasher is, occasionally remove a guy then fill his slot with someone else some seconds later, and you win.

Credit where it's due, the time did pass quickly for that 6 minute mix. A lot of the instruments here are nice, it's a high quality Incredibox package. Getting all achievements unlocks "Mercy" mode, which I'm pretty sure just disables the mechanics so you can play with the instruments the normal way. Crasher still crashes you, though, he has no mercy. Fun fact, I noticed after a while that the buttons on the guys scramble themselves every time you mouse over them, thought I was just being sloppy when I kept clicking something else when trying to click the headphones to isolate the instrument.

Overall, pretty alright, but the claim that it's made to be "difficult" is overblown, it's just a pretty simple survival and endurance challenge, so don't be intimidated by it. Reminds me of old flash games, a simple challenge with accompanying art and music that lasts you 10 minutes, and that's not a bad thing at all. That format allows for a lot of creative expression, and this is pretty well made, on that end.

Immediately feels pretty nice, appreciate the speedup button greatly, and the 2x bonus for full clearing a planet is nice. The basic gameplay loop is definitely there, reminds me of To the Core, which I imagine was probably an inspiration here.

A few planets later, I can't help but notice there seems to be no real incentive to linger on any of them. I clear a planet and that gives me enough to just buy the next planet, which gives more money, and one clear gives enough for the next planet...fewer planets that you spent longer at would feel much more nicely paced. The 4th planet only took me 2 quick rounds of digging to the center for the high-value materials to afford the next planet, and that's only because I got unlucky with ore spawns on the first round. My only upgrade is energy level 5, for context.

Yeah, the loop of constantly interrupting the fun part of gameplay to go back to the galaxy menu and buy the next planet gets pretty annoying, should definitely have fewer planets that are harder to buy, I think, so the player can actually focus on the digging part for longer at a time. ...Oh, already at the first prestige.

Prestige feels nice, a good, chunky leap in power, feels very satisfying to play. ...Definitely confirms how annoying the loop is of going back to the galaxy menu, clicking next until the green number turns red, then clicking back, buy, and play, though. Maybe planet automation would work, automatically buy the highest planet the player can afford and place them there between rounds? Just give it a toggle so the player can save their money if they want to, but buying planets as soon as you can seems to be optimal, so automation for it would be nice. Let me buy some upgrades and see if any automation shows up.

Running into another issue that becomes apparent at around prestige level 4 for me. When you reach a certain size, the individual chunks of the planet become so small you can't see where the remaining ore is. Combined with the increasingly high energy levels, this results in me circling around nipping at the last pixelated remnants of the planet trying to get the full clear for that sweet 2x bonus. I'm not a developer, so take this with a grain of salt, but the easiest fix I can think of off the top of my head for this is to only require a percentage of the ore to be collected starting at some point before the rest are harvested for you. Something like, when you've got 98% of it, the last remaining pixels are cleared automatically since the player can't actually see them anymore. And yes, I do know there's a button to abort the level, but I want the 2x full clear bonus, being forced to abort the level constantly would suck.

At prestige level six now, I'm so large that I can barely see the first asteroid anymore. And since I'm forced to start on it, I often miss the asteroid entirely since my mouse was placed on the "Play" button to start the level, and with my scale (and thus speed) being so high, I quickly soar off into the distance. It's getting harder and harder to see where the asteroid actually is in order to steer myself back towards it, it's naught but a spec now. Could probably use some sort of level borders that scale with the player's size to remedy this so you can visually see the area the planet should be in. Something simple like just a red ring would work fine, it doesn't even need to block movement, just be visible to indicate where the asteroid is.

Ending at prestige level 6, and the energy upgrade at level 51. Could really use a "buy max" option for upgrades, I had to actually click it 50 times. Never unlocked any other upgrades though, so obviously no automation. Anyway, hope this feed back can be useful to the dev, I'd definitely pay, like...$5 for an expanded, polished version of this. $10 if it's really good and has a good amount of content. 

Copy of my review, since reviews aren't public apparently. (Sorry for long comment, blame itch devs for making reviews not public.)

2/5 stars
Nice atmosphere, I like the visual style and concept, and I REALLY want to like the game, but I don't. It simply isn't very fair. The whole premise is using the sound detector and your ears to tell when the monsters are in the dark tunnels to know when to flash, but the detector will constantly go off when there's nothing there, and there are a bunch of other random noises that are also just false alarms. I gave it a couple attempts, but stopped playing because of how my last attempt ended.

Here's the story. My left hallway consistently kept giving false readings seemingly identical to real ones, while my right hallway was getting hounded constantly. Flash right, scare off Jeffrey, recharge, check left, it SEEMS like there's one there, flash, nothing, recharge. Check right, he's back, flash him away, recharge, check left... Light consistently flashing green, sound bar keeps going up to three bars, I flash, nothing. Recharge, check right, he's back, flash him away, recharge. Check left...bar flicks up a couple times, but only with the sounds like falling rocks and such. I've had at least ten false alarms with those sounds, there's always nothing there, and at this point I NEED to progress the computer. Batteries take a LONG time to recharge, like 15 seconds or something around there. So I turn away...and instantly get jumpscared.

What did I, as a player, do wrong here? I flashed when given signs of a monster, and kept being punished by wasting time while making no progress. (Not to mention constantly rapidly moving my mouse in a circle, my wrist really hurts now, and that's while fully lifting my arm and trying not to rotate my wrist at all.) So I put together the patterns, and I don't flash on what has been a false alarm every other time, and I instantly die. I'd just flashed the other side, so it couldn't have been it, and I was just before the point where you open the third door.

How is the player supposed to tell apart actual danger and random noise? The tutorial doesn't say, and from experience I knew that monsters make shuffling sounds, and cave noises are false alarms. I then died for ignoring cave noises, when I couldn't hear any shuffling sounds with my ears. If there is any way to consistently tell, the game doesn't tell you, and I couldn't find it after a lot of trial and error. It feels like a complete gamble, and since it didn't feel like the game was respecting my time or agency, I quit. It's not fun for the player to be able to do everything right, and still lose because the only tool they were given to defend themselves...just lies to them most of the time

The exe is basically a zip, you can see the internal folders if you just rename it to a .zip file and open it.

Cool idea, very easy to softlock though. The Summoning upgrade is super dangerous, if you buy too many ranks of it before getting any of the boss upgrades it becomes impossible to reach the boss. Every time you hit an enemy it deals damage, and there aren't enough survivability upgrades in the part of the tree you can reach without boss currency to survive hitting that many enemies. Seriously, if you max all pre-boss upgrades, you still can't get far enough to even see the boss. Could use more survivability upgrades placed at the start to negate this, gotta start a new savefile now. Like the idea of the game, though, stacking bouncing projectiles is satisfying.

Just replayed the first one for the fourth time last night, and today there's a sequel out I didn't even know was in the works. Have found something strange, though. Injection 6's automation upgrade is cheaper than the challenge itself...so I should be able to just buy the automation and do a SPU reset and complete the challenge without having actually completed the challenge legitimately? Doesn't seem intentional. Interesting game so far, though.

Edit: Oh, also, the description for the tree is misleading. It should say "Branches with no children", not parents.