Recent reviews by Homestuck Jumpscare

The character doesn't feel good to control. There's a lack of 8 directional aiming, the jump physics do not feel good, and aiming your gun is clunky. I expected a playable, maybe NES metroid like experience, but the character physics are so complete garbage that i couldn't force myself to keep playing.

Game feels good, lives up to its name. Combat feels smooth, soundtrack is killer, supergiant always kills it on all sound design including the VA's. Some attacks dont have visually well defined range (like the cleave attacks in the first boss), but that is a very small subset of attacks.

I was expecting the game to be overly beginner friendly, and i did not feel that. I'm very used to playing other roguelikes, and this had the difficulty curve i was looking for in these kind of games. It leans very heavily into the rouge*lite* aspect. I think it would be very difficult to play more than fifty runs without a success, the meta scaling you get from various sources just kinda guarantees the game will be a cakewalk at some point.

I'm currently playing with the "heat" mechanic, the method by which the game maintains difficulty for avid players. It lets you choose which penalties to apply on yourself, but doesnt let you gain certain benefits until you pass a threshold. Very fun, excited to play with it more.

I like gemcraft, the whole series. I've been playing since ye olden flash game days, and i really love the tower defense genre. I like *this* game. It feels good, it's an authentic gemcraft experience. I played on the intended, normal difficulty, which early reviewers claimed was very difficult. Honestly, it wasn't that bad. I had a couple roadblocks, specifically the swarmling boss stage, but clever positioning and skill usage allowed me to win after *very* minimal grinding. The game has a lot of content, a lot of grinding, and a lot of skill testing challenges. Trials on every field is a massive task, but i could see it being enjoyed.

The game also has a multitude of issues.

It feels like they saw "Oh Chasing Shadows was a broken mess with chain hit and Crit Hit and Mana Leech available on every map. Let's fix that." So they removed chain hit, and turned its functionality into a building, the lantern. I like the concept of the lantern, a reduction in damage for a constant AoE effect. The issue is, there's almost never a reason to use one.

I feel like there's some massive perception issue between skilled players off this game, and new / inexperienced players of this game. Every map feels like it's developed to be interesting for inexperienced players. Interesting pathing, pre-placed structures, lots of mechanics, etc. I imagine if you're a new player to the series or even the genre, this is a nice game to use as an introduction, through its easy mode.

As a skilled player, the map design is just worthless. every fight is the same "drop two towers, drop 3-8 amplifiers, upgrade until you win." Trial mode may incorporate these things, but it comes off as so gimicky every single time, the one trick of "Oh look you cant build structures!!! Whatever shall you do!!!" gets old very fast.
That first roadblock i hit was my *only* roadblock. Other boss stages didnt even phase me, despite being utterly unprepared for most of them.

Endurance is not fun. It's obscenely repetitive, and the "gaining wave stones" mechanic just makes playing endgame content harder to get to.

I didn't need to unlock all the skills to beat the game, hell i prolly didn't need *most* of the skills. The issue is, there's about two hundred wizard caches to unlock, and most of them are approximately worthless, containing either talisman fragments that will be obsoleted quickly, or shadow cores that will barely make a dent in your requirements for unlocking you full talisman.

On the topic of talisman, Shadow Core grinding is unbearable. The time commitment to reach a full talisman is massive, one i didnt complete. I imagine it's easier on easy mode, but it cant rectify it completely given the listed changes. The puzzle mechanic is nice, I quite enjoy it early game, and i love the hidden mechanic with the symbols. The shadow core requirement is just so incredibly high as to pad run time.

The game has a thousand different things that show up, and don't get expanded on in any way in terms of design, unlike other games in the series. Cameos of mechanics from chasing shadows, labyrinth, and other games all show up *for exactly one field*, and then are gone. Other mechanics are entirely new to this game, like wizard hunters and chaotic wizard towers, but just dont get used again after the first time they're seen? It's so weird that so much content and so many ideas went into this game for them all to be half-baked.

I've been ranting for a while, so i'm gonna close it out with this.
The game feels like a beta-test for their next(and final?) game in the series. They tried a whole bunch of new ♥♥♥♥ to see what would stick, they tried and failed to balance the game around certain things, and now they've gotten feedback. I regret buying this game. It's not worth the price tag. Wait for the next installment, when the ideas are legitimately fleshed out.

Good game, feels like megaman battle network mixed with slay the spire. Difficult, try to move quick and not die.

oh god I've just started and it's already sucked away forty hours of my life

it has a bit of content

the maroon man hits things hard, card makes woosh sound and shows big number, I like

the green gal hits things quick, the cards give me more cards and those cards make big green number, i like

the blue bot gains the power to go even further beyond, lots of numbers that get big, i like

Its just a pretty fun MMO beat-em-up type thing. The game just *feels* fun, its fun to do basic tasks in it. The game rewards being a skilled player, not a long-term player. No microtransactions, F2P, its just fun. Take a stab at it if literally any of the sreenshots interest you.