Don't get this game if you want a Kirby or Mario type experience.
Get this if you want a Super Meat Boy or I Wanna Be The Guy experience.


The flaw of this game is it's simply too hard, and the difficulty doesn't come from great places. First and foremost, you have no health bar. One hit and you're dead. There are some hats that let you take an extra hit, but even then you have no invincibility frames if you fall down on spikes, so you'll lose both your hits before you can get out of there. If you lose a life by any means, you lose your hat and may not be able to get it back in the stage. Also, bosses straight up ignore the extra hit point your hats would give you.

On Normal mode you start with 3 lives and your max is 9. While this is nowhere near enough once you approach the second act, it also creates the problem where the platforming is boring because there's no collectables. There's lives which you may cap out on quickly, there's crystals which just turn into a life at 100, and there's ink for your ammunition. Once the game gets hard enough around the second act, you won't be needing the ink refills as much because you get a full meter every time you die. Which is gonna be often. So play on Easy mode, which starts you with 20 lives and your max is higher than I ever got to. You'll need all those lives and more.

As a Game Boy tribute, the game smartly lets you crop off the edges of the screen so as to emulate the resolution of the Game Boy. However, this just means enemies will react to you a lot sooner than you can react to them and you'll constantly be ambushed by their projectiles. So play in the standard widescreen mode.

To prevent ambushes and blind jumps, the game smartly lets you scroll the screen by holding down. However, even though there's an animation for looking up, you cannot scroll the camera upwards. This did result in me getting killed by falling projectiles at some points, and it felt cheap.

The camera has another major, glaring issue. Whenever you hit a button to open a door or change something in the environment, the camera pans over to show what you affected. But while the camera is moving, everything else in the game is active. Enemies can and will kill you while you can't see where you are. In some situations the button stays pressed for such a short time that you have to move while the camera is away to make it through the door in time.


Also I frequently ran into a bug where entering the overworld would make the screen go black. I would pause the game, not see the options menu, but hit down and confirm and exit to the main menu, reload the save and it'd be fine again.
Another possible bug is the fact that projectile noises can be heard throughout the whole level. If there's drippy drops or tree-climbing enemies throwing nuts, they're on a global timer and the things will all hit the ground at the same time, making it UNBEARABLY SUPER LOUD.


The game is just as heavily focused on story as it is on platforming. It does a great job of setting up memorable locations and scenes and character motivations. Unfortunately, any time a text box appears and there's multiple characters on screen, there's no way of telling who said that. Characters don't have a unique "voice" in writing, they don't get separate beeps and boops for the message box, and it's not like a speech bubble that points to the talker. Sometimes it's easily figured out that it's the last person to change their experssion that's talking, but often there's conversations where the people just don't animate.

I was interested in the story at first when it was about the octopus faction, three human factions and the people who didn't fit ideologically with their country. It seemed like there was gonna be moral ambiguity, hard choices and tragedy. But ultimately, a true villain is introduced last minute and everybody gets a happy ending.


My suggestion to the developer about how the game could be improved for a sequel; Just make it more Mega Man. Hats that give extra hits, increase jump height, double jumps, and any other innate ability should just be a permanent upgrade. Your regular ink should not use ammo, all hats that affect your shot should be swappable at all times with their own ink meter.


To the game's credit, the pixel art is gorgeous, being able to swap color palettes is very nice, the music is great, there's lots of enemy variety and many forms of platforming, and there's a ton of sidequest content and hat collecting that I barely scratched the surface of. You can get your money's worth of content, but to me it does not outweigh the amount of frustration the game caused me.

I think this is a fantastic retro styled platformer. It is challenging and punishing of mistakes, but never feels unfair. The music and art have a fun gameboy color feel that reminds me of classic Zelda games.

This review is subject to change if something really game altering occurs later on, as ive only progressed through what the steam achievements consider "Act 1" of the game.

Its good.
The music is just good enough to not be annoying through the several levels the same track may use.
The art style is limited due to the gameboy aesthetic meaning you shouldnt buy and expect to be blown away by what you see.
The gameplay is simple, its what I can only describe as a cross between any Kirby game, and the ice beam from Super Metroid. By this I mean to say that your real main gameplay mechanic is the use of enemies as platforms to reach secrets and avoid taking damage.
As far as difficulty, its really not very difficult, I've run into a few encounters where I'll respawn at a checkpoint and be killed by an enemy before I have a chance to choose a hat because the menu will get in the way or I'll enter a boss unprepared with only 1 or 0 lives remaining just to be sent back to the beginning of a level.
This might be a big problem if not for the small size of most levels, so it really isn't that much of a concern while playing.
The story isn't amazing or anything, but it serves as a good reason for the main character Mr. Tako to run around saving kids so thats about it for that.
Overall the game feels like a work of love, if you followed the project since years ago when it first was shown to the public it really has come some way and feels fairly well developed. There are hats to collect, different characters to use throughout the story, little quests sprinkled throughout the world, and confirmed easter eggs thanks to Christophe Galati and Nicalis on twitter.
When I finish the main story I'll edit this review to add whether I'd recommend it or not so take from this what you will.

Puzzles are weak, the platforming is very easy, there's a distinct lack of enemies, it's tedious to move between stages and backtrack. The visuals and music are great, and the palette choice is a nice touch, but overall I just can't bring myself to finish this game off because it nearly puts me to sleep. My suggestion: Go play a Kirby game to fill this niche.

I really wanted to like this game. It uses gameboy graphics and has sound effects like it too.
The game just isn't very fun. The castles have no enemies, and is just shoot switches and run to them.
It gets boring very fast. I recorded footage to make a TickleGrenade reviews video, but the game refused to record after halfway through the game. 4/10

Lovely and charming if you want to take a nostalgic trip!

It really is a fun little game so far, if you're like me who played the original gameboy then I think you should give this game a try. Also really good music.

Got to world 3 so far.
The game is clearly a work of love. You can see the effort in each detail.
Gameplay-wise, it's kinda like Kirby but instead of absorbing enemies you inmobilize them and use'em as platforms.
The story so far is pretty engaging, I wll update this review once I'm done with it.

YES!

An omage to the underserved retro handheld, the gameboy. Simple and charming and ugly as I remember it.