This is the first game I played from this developer and little did I know the rabbit hole this would send me down. I do not like this game. It is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awful. I played through 7 of the worlds and it was torture. However, I find this game and the developer fascinating. While not fun to play, I like bad games because I find them very engaging from an academic perspective. I love every aspect of designing games and bad games can be particularly fascinating to think about. What works, what doesn't, and why.

Adverse is a treasure trove of bad design. A speed running centric, precision platformer where the platforming is atrocious. The third platforming centric game from the same developer and the platforming has arguably gotten even worse.

Starting off with the basics, momentum in this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥. For a developer who started off with a game called Inertia, they still do not seem to have any understanding of what inertia is. Keeping your speed up in this game is damn near impossible. Platforms are not spaced out in a way that makes jumping between them smooth. Single jumps are rarely enough but double jumps will usually send you flying right past your intended destination. So you have to slow down constantly to make jumps. Any speed you gain over your normal running speed gets lost almost the instant your feet touch the ground again. Now we also have enemies and obstacles that will bounce the player around if they hit the player.

Keeping with the trend started with Exertus, the core platforming has really only seen mostly superficial changes. We no longer have wall running in this one. That has been replaced by a dash. This might be the worst dash I have ever seen in a game. Instinctively, how would you expect a dash to work? You should gain speed in the direction you are facing or trying to move, right? Not so, apparently. In the world of Adverse, dashing will make you gain speed in the direction you are already moving. Are you about to miss a platform because an enemy knocked you backwards as you were approaching? Try dashing to save yourself and suddenly you're flying backwards at light speed. The fact that the dash has been implemented this wrong is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bonkers. Half the time dashes will send you flying in a seemingly completely random direction. There's also the fact that the dash takes several seconds to recharge. In a game where most levels should ideally take less than a minute to complete. A much better way to handle this would be to only allow a single dash each time the player leaves the ground. And while on the ground you can give a small cooldown. Sliding is better for speed on the ground anyways.

I guess we are also ditching the more parkour based platforming to rip off Lovely Planet now. Go play Lovely Planet. Lovely Planet is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ great. That game is genuinely challenging and rewarding while also being fair . The platforming in Adverse is already bad enough. The addition of enemies and spike obstacles makes things so much more frustrating. Especially since we have bow. A bow that you have to actually account for gravity with. This does not work well with the attempted fast-paced and precise platforming. It's not like it isn't manageable in and of itself. I can fairly reliably hit enemies at extreme distances if I slow down. The problem is that this takes an extra level of concentration and effort compared to just having a gun (like in Lovely Planet), that makes it even more difficult to do precise platforming that is already impossible to do precisely.

Oh yeah, there are ladders now. I don't know what the ♥♥♥♥ ladders are doing in a game like this in the first place, but that is the least of our problems. Ladder problems are not uncommon in games. Plenty of games have weird, janky, and downright broken ladders. I have never seen ladders ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up in this particular way though. For some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason, I got stuck at the top of almost every single ladder in the game. I don't even understand how this is possible. It's like movement just stops when you reach the top rung of the ladder and makes it surprisingly difficult to get on top of what the ladder is attached to.

I also don't think I've ever seen a games brightness tied to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ post-processing quality. By default, I always turn off bloom, motion blur, and depth of field. I also went ahead and lowered the post-processing option to "low" just for the sake of it. There are two worlds that were so dark I could barely see any of the platforms. Change that post-processing back up to ultra though and suddenly I can see everything just fine. Medium didn't work and I didn't bother trying high. Why the ♥♥♥♥ is the brightness tied to the post-processing? Is the game almost entirely lit by bloom? I already turned bloom off though. This is yet another thing that completely confounds me.

At least we have some actual art assets now. Really basic ones, and the game still looks pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ugly. But hey, that's progress. It's the only thing I would consider progress but it is something. I haven't played the devs most recent release yet but it does look like the art is better. Hopefully the gameplay has actually improved for once.