I recommend this game despite its many flaws, especially at the $3 sale price. I had fun, couldn’t put it down, and actually reached the ending, which is more than I can say for most games I try these days. I never saw a forest or got any boss fights or abilities, and the game seemed weirdly difficult and surreal… I guess I did the pacifist route by accident?

I have many complaints, such as the crystal currency being pointless because you lose most of it every time you get hit and every time you die too, and the game throws you into Super Meat Boy type challenges constantly where you’ll die a dozen times in a row, and there’s hardly anywhere or anything to spend crystals at/on throughout the game anyway. There’s also a key in the middle of a crypt area that’s extremely easy to miss, and if you don’t happen to see it then the game leads you in circles infinitely. I also didn’t know there was a map screen and wasn’t given any maps, until at least halfway through the game (but somehow got the “all maps” achievement at the end?). There are unexplained secret controls like “hold down to inspect”. And the character physics are pretty janky, for example enemies knock you really fast and all walls are perfectly frictionless so you’ll rocket around corners at unexpected moments. But, again, I still enjoyed the game despite all that.

I played on Steam Deck and it worked fine there. The frame rate stayed locked at 30 as designed except in a couple of late game areas where the game slowed to a crawl, and rebooting the game fixed it.

mid'

Innovative but tedious mechanics, nice world and premise i suppose.

Very interesting game. It uses a style of combat that I haven't seen done in a side scroller and the multiple endings and secrets add replayability. All together a fun experience.

Only real complaints I have with it are that it's a bit short and some of the achievements seem to be bugged. The biggest one is mainly a problem with the ui in that the game allows you to buy potions from a shop keeper, but to my knowledge never tells you how to activate them, at least not if you're playing with controller. There's a little diagram in the corner showing your potion stock that seems to be intended to show you use the d-pad to activate them, but it was vague enough that I didn't figure it out until I accidentally used one on my 3rd playthrough.

I backed it on its Kickstarter.

While I got what I paid for, it does need some improvements here and there, but it's an unique metroidvania.

Played this often at events, seeing all the progress each time made me fall in love with it over and over again <3

Pretty good game, wish I was good at Metroidvania. Also, thought the Cultists were Druids until I made my review and read the description a bit more.

Although this is an EXTREMELY FLAWED GAME, I recommend. It's a reinvention of the Metroidvania genre. HOWEVER, I'm using the term "Metroidvania" VERY loosely here. There's a bit of backtracking here and there. Small open worlds that you get familiar with and then they get permanently locked away, never to be revisited. Very Linear. And that's a bit of a disappointment. It's just about as much of a Metroidvania as Iconoclasts.

I need to point out that this game is completely riddled with bugs. And I think the game is designed to make you feel like you're losing track of reality. YOU WOULD THINK the story would lead to that, but... although it sort of hints at something like that throughout the game, there's no payoff. In fact, although there's a story, it's kinda garbage. You're introduced to the world. There's a cult, and a bunch of soldiers, royalty, magic, and a mage. Through the entire game, you're not even sure who the villain is until they're dead. So there's no catalyst other or climax. Just rising action and resolution. You being summoned by the cult. Your character motivations are very shallow. Collect the abilities to transform into different things to kill baddies, solve puzzles, and collect keys... but mostly collecting keys to doors so that backtracking is easier... although backtracking can activate bugs that make unlocking doors meaningless and there's no point to really unlock all the doors because most areas have no need for backtracking.

There are locations that repeatedly appear in different locations (same room layout, different place). So it's easy to get lost. And I think the game is designed where sometimes you know how to get from point A to point B, while other times, I think it's intentionally designed to confuse you no matter what, but you DO seem to magically find yourself where you need to be, with little to no difficulty most of the time... which gives you disorientation, but it also gets the game to feel... too easy at times... and infuriatingly difficult at others, especially when the bugs start influencing the gameplay. Don't get me wrong the game is pretty cool.

Basically you're able to transform into various magical creatures. And although I love playing as the spider, swinging around all over the place, it does NOT operate under any type of physics I understand. In fact, swinging around and your control over the actual swing is next to none existent while pulling on the string. While pulling on the string, it's more like a long series of glitches that takes you from point A to point B. Now... I don't really blame the game too hard on that. Mastering any type of physics is difficult. But when I start to have a problem with it is when an object smacks me really hard and suddenly I've been buried inside of a wall and I have to reboot the game and start at my last benchmark to progress in the game. THAT irritates me. It's only happened twice, so I'm not overly upset about it. And the second time, I could transform into a mole and dig my way out.

At the beginning of the game, you can go into a cave and there's a metal barricade from you and going down deeper, into the cave. Later on, you're granted access to this part of the game and when you rediscover that you can backtrack, you might WANT to backtrack, you can buy stuff. Although it's difficult to actually get money and keep it in this game. So... here's what I have a problem with. Being punished for backtracking. So I hit one of the benchmark torches and then returned into the cave and died in the cave. So I respawn back at my last benchmark, OUTSIDE OF THE CAVE. Okay. No problem there. But I go back into the cave and suddenly the metal barricade is back, just like it was at the beginning of the game... so I needed to go ALL THE WAY AROUND to get access to this portion of the map again. And this just comes off as a glitch... which made me much less inclined to backtrack from then on... so I think I missed magic upgrades and transformations, as well as boss battles, but I'm not quite sure... Like I said, sometimes I'm just walking through doors randomly and I magically find myself exactly where I need to be.

Hopefully the developer reads this. Hopefully this all gets fixed.

This game is still somewhat new, so hopefully continuity.... chronological order sort of bugs can be fixed. But I seriously doubt the spider's string pulling can ever fully be fixed unless it gets a full overhaul or something.

NOW DON'T GET ME WRONG. Most of this review has been me complaining about glitches. But WOW does this game have awesomeness to it.

You play as a girl that's too young and weak to even lift her sword... but later on in the game, a big guy isn't able to lift it. So maybe it's just a REALLY heavy sword. Or maybe it's magical... who knows. But when you turn into a fairy, you drop your sword, and when you switch back to being human again, you're able to summon your sword and it'll fly into your hand in your new location. This is pretty cool because it's like planting a trap for enemies, getting air born, and lining things up with your enemies and having your sword fly back to you is totally satisfying. I find this is my primary form of attack right now. It's predictable. The player movements aren't all wonky with this one.

The spider allows you to shoot your sword like a projectile at enemies but your character often times jumps up into the air when she does this, so I'm never quite sure if I'm going to fall off a ledge or something. Don't get me wrong, there are times to attack as a spider and times to attack as a Fairy.

Another transformation is being able to turn yourself into stone. It's odd because she looks like she swings her momentum forward when you turn yourself into stone and you can gain a TON of speed this way killing enemies in your path, but you can also time changing back into a little girl and back into stone again wrong and die very easily this way too. Later on in the game, I'd switch to the fairy and the stone rather quickly and rather often. The harder enemies in the game are way easy as a stone statue... except for the ones you have to back stab in order to kill.

You get another transformation ability to dig in the dirt. This ability isn't really used that often. And feels REALLY out of place. If feels like a way to combat teleportation glitches more than anything. I really wish both the design of this magical ability and the effectiveness of this ability was enhanced -- AND I wish that there was more Game design oriented around it. I probably used it twice, in conjunction with gameplay

You can also transform into a ghost. And to be honest, it's useless most of the time. If you need to speed by a town really quick, it's fast. But you can die easily in this form.

And then later on you can transform into a hawk... which... though the control is a bit differently than the ghost, it's pretty much the same power. And I used it maybe three times in the game.

I think the main things that are useful are at the beginning of the game unfortunately. So the feelings of risk and reward are diminished as you progress further and further in the game. Especially since the most effective and useful power you have is the fairy form... which you get just by starting the game.

It's nice that you can buy stuff... but the money is collected in a totally irritating way. You lose money when you get hit, like Sonic The Hedgehog. And there's a touch of Dark Souls where you need to find where you last died in order to collect your money. Only for you to have NO PLACE TO SPEND IT! You backtrack to go to a store you found a while ago, the game might glitch a roadblock to where you have to go all the way around the map in order to get to where you need to go. So... I ran into two stores. I bought two healing potions in this game. I used one of them at the beginning, when I didn't know how to play that well. And never used the other.

Kickstarted this bad boy.

Tried to do a pacifist run. Passed a fist through my monitor.

Fun game so far though. Would recommend <3

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