This game is growing on me. I played a bunch on steam deck over my business trip this past week, and I will say it could use some updates for steam deck. Specifically the text size on the skills screens and other stuff is really not optimal. That said, the game ran fine.

This is a pretty good metroidvania. You start out with only very basic abilities, essentially attack and single jump. It seems simplistic, but as you play you unlock more of the staple abilities like wall jump, dash, combo strikes, fast travel, etc. So I mean the game has that stuff, but if you judge it too quickly you may miss that part of it. I beat the first boss, Crawley, on the first try and I'm kind of crap, so this isn't a super challenging game but I found it about right. I had also spent my points on damage upgrades, and if I hadn't done that it may have turned out differently.

The platforming is somewhat precise, but not frustratingly so.

My biggest critique for this game is graphics. The game is retro and that looks great, but there's a lot of background art that uses the same resources and the foreground art, and especially on steam deck it became very difficult sometimes to tell the difference between foreground and background. The purple spikes for example I often found I couldn't tell if they were foreground or background, and that matters because they hurt you. I also found that I lost track of some enemies amidst the background colors.

Game play wise though I think this is pretty cool, I'm enjoying it and I definitely think it's a great little indie metroidvania so far. I'm looking forward to seeing how things progress as I get further into the game.