PulseCharge is an electrifying experience! Brace yourself for intense action and thrilling challenges. The gameplay is fast-paced, requiring precise maneuvers and quick reflexes. The stunning visuals and immersive sound design create an adrenaline-fueled atmosphere. With its addictive gameplay and electrifying energy, PulseCharge delivers an unforgettable gaming adventure. Get ready to charge up and unleash your gaming skills!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2986399580

Nifty concept, needs a lot more work to be a good game.

The basic gist of this game is a platformer where you can absorb certain type of attacks and then immediately use this to blast through walls, fly to spots you can't reach normally, etc(this is your sole method of attack) and you unlock your other ability as you go (there's two unlocks but one of them is really not that important). You finish the level by attacking 3 different boxes to open the way to the exit portal-thing. The fist two boxes you attack will unlock double jump and a longer attack (the same attack but you travel further).

The attack/dash mechanic is pretty cool but the pacing of the game is pretty bad. This comes largely in part to level design, there simply isn't much to do within a level despite how large it is. The way most platformers deal with this is by constantly throwing enemies and obstacles at you. In this game you pretty much spend most of the time jumping into position, using your absorb ability to float and then fly where you need to once you get hit with an attack. The rather large tileset (tiles are the size of your character for the most part) added in with the fact that your attack is locked to 45 degree angles means that a lot of times you're just banging into corners because of slightly off positioning and that's the only real difficulty to the platforming.

That is paired with rather slow movement most of the time and the fact that the levels open up into areas that end with you having encountered nothing. Literally just a waste of time to explore some places.

The respawn system is strange. There are two blue heart pieces that you can collect which will let you respawn at checkpoints infinitely. Before you get both of those you will restart the level upon death. This creates a really weird contrast of hardcore one-shot platforming and ehh die as much as you want nobody cares (providing the respawn system doesn't bug out and restart the level anyway). This adds to how slow the game becomes because the game makes you go through the dull bits over and over whenever you die and by the time you can reach both respawn pieces you've more likely than not completed most of the level already anyway. This also makes half the checkpoints you can activate worthless since you wouldn't have the ability to respawn yet anyway. Maybe letting you smoothly (and quickly) restart on death like in meat boy would make it seem better, as it stands you have to sit through the whole death and restart sequence every time which gets aggravating really quickly. Maybe just give players the unlimited respawn as an easy mode and the restart on death the normal mode. Hell, even the traditional lives system would be better.

Aesthetically the game has an interesting look to parts of it and some tiles look pretty well drawn. The problem is how slapdash the levels tend to look, it looks as if the level was designed and then bits of random tiles were thrown in everywhere to attempt to make the level look more varied post-design. Another issue with the tiles is that they don't connect well which is a big issue if you're going to make levels by connecting tiles together. Especially when the SAME kind of tile doesn't connect to itself well.

Every once in a while you come across a random piece of art in a frame on a wall which I can only assume is something the dev drew as a hobby. I mean that's nice and all but...why is it in the game? There's no context or anything it literally just looks like they decided to throw in some art they made to show off for the hell of it.

Overall: Cool concept to unlock your abilities as you go but it needs much more variety, better pacing, etc. Not Recommended.

Unique concept that could have end up as a great game, but sadly got destroyed by lack of polish . Idea is that in platforming environment you can absorb enemy attacks and use them to your advantage. Blast through walls by reusing one type of attack, fly by absorbing another etc. Sadly level design doesn't help to showcase these unique concept and most of the time you spend preparing for just one action which is pretty boring. Then again your abilities can be unreliable. One time they will work as supposed to, other time they will bug forcing you to start over. Artstyle is specific and not for everyone but is unique and well made. All in all it could be really cool fresh idea for a platformer, but with weak level design, pacing and bugs it's much weaker than it could be.

This game has a unique game mechanic I've never seen used before and is just overall really awesome to use. My only complaints with the game so far is the movement can feel slow at times and you dont have much control over your jumps, for example in a Megaman game you can control the height of your jumps and such, here if you even lightly tap Z, your character goes flying all the way up into some traps. Overall I would highly reccomned this game as its a nice cheap, colorful, and fun game! Also the music is very catchy :P . I just hope a patch is implemented soon to make running and jumping smoother soon! (Especially since you get a rank based on your time in the game.)

This just a barebones boring platformer that has stupid design choice for making it a platforming game.

In order to move through the levels you need to do this one move that freezes you in one spot and you have to get hit by enemy projectiles and you turn into a heart for some odd reason and shoot across sections of the levels. Personally I don't like that mechanic and I believe they could do a better job than having you stand still and get hit by enemy bullets which can get frustrating if you keep missing and you don't shoot in the right direction. And the game is really focused on this mechanic which annoys me that I can't justify playing through this.

Conclusion: Barbones platforming game with a bad mechanic that is heavily dependant on it. Don't bother unless you want some trading cards.

Rating: 3/10

Can't help to think that it could have been alot more. Graphics are so-so, partly really nice, and partly something hastly made in paint. Playing with keyboard is really clunky, so if you buy this, you really should have a controller. Still it gets the job done, but there are platformers out there that do most things a little better. But based on the price, you get what you pay for I suppose.

Still, not a bad game, just not that great either.

It seems like it could be a good game but its really poorly executed, first you start only by selecting a level and are thrown right into it with no explanation given, you are just there, you aren´t explained how to move and WASD is not working so I try the arrow keys and yeah thats how you move, not bad but its not really that common nowadays, the game feels ok, but really slow and runs really slow, I have a laptop and I know its not meant for gaming but when the game like this runs as bad as if I was trying to play Batman Arkham Asylum I know its not my laptops fault. Also for exiting ALT+F4 wasn´t working for me and there was no menu with ESC so I just started pressing buttons and guess what, its ENTER, thats a new one for me, not even in those old flash games in Newgrounds I played a game using only ENTER as a pause, so I wouldn´t reccommend this game unless it is polished a LOT more, I would rather reccomend searching on Newgrounds for a platformer rather than playing this game rght now

I suppose the first thing that made me dislike this game is the fact that it is just frigging hideous looking. Just look at the screenshots... I must have been gifted this game or it was in a bundle because I never would have thought about purchasing something that looks like a half-digested sonic on acid.

Add in stiff controls, lame level design and odd music and you have yourself a loser. :(

Sorry developers.

Disclaimer: I write this review only after beating 2 levels.

PulseCharge is rather simple game. On each level, you must find and unlock 2 different power-up, then find "switch" to unlock the exit gate. The core game mechanics are unique and rather interesting. You can absorb enemy attack in order to move to specific direction, blast through obstracle or simply avoid taking damage. That's probably the only great thing about this game.

The respawn system is very unusual where you have to restart entire level if you die before you found 2 respawn relics. The walking speed is rather slow, which is acceptable by itself. But weak level design and uneven pacing reduce the fun. Additionally the game doesn't seem to handle "off by one pixel" problem either, which means you need to be more precise.

Graphic/visual is weakest aspect of this game. While few tile/texture look ok, i feel the developer simply throw few random tiles which doesn't mix together and some of you might even joking "graphic design is my passion". Game UI and main menu is better, but could use improved. Game music/sound-effect is just "so-so".

PulseCharge could be fairly good platformer game, but it's a shame it's released on unpolished/unfinished state. It's not bad for $1 game, but you probably better look for more better platformer game instead.

My eyes((