Recent reviews by BBͤOͨBͨJͪSͥ

A deceptively deep puzzle game that explores the concept of a world where words have power. You learn new abilities by rearranging the letters used in various flowers. Each new flower you find is a new set of letters your can try to arrange and each new word you can make out of those letters is a new ability that can help you alter those letters into even more new words or open up areas in the world. This compounds quickly as you'll have to use multiple abilities and even multiple flowers to craft complex words to find more flowers and so on.

While this is nominally a game about spelling words, it avoids the pitfalls of similar games through clever use of mechanics that keep it rooted in puzzle. The game never requires the player to actually know how to spell something and mechanically the game would function perfectly if all the letters were abstracted into alien runes. It is a puzzle game above all else and a challenging one at that.

Before considering a purchase of this game, it's important to know that there are some technical issues. If you plan on using a PS4 controller, while the left stick will function properly, left and right will be reversed on the d-pad; since there's no way to alter gamepad controls in game, you'll need to find an external solution. The story is told through a series of comicbook style videos that will likely require you to manually install codecs found in the game's directory. This is poorly explained by the game itself but has effectively no impact on the gameplay. From a fresh install, the game will assume you want to play "Hardcore" but hardcore versions of stages are locked until an area is completed on "Normal" which has caused many players to report frustration because the first stage appears "Locked."

A fantastic little action platformer that captures the feeling of being a ninja through expert use of flow and fluid movement options. The game is fairly simple, you're trying to get through stages as quickly as possible while collecting as many yellow orbs as possible and finding three hidden items (kanji). Also, unlike similar games, you get points for everything you kill, so go nuts!

To accomplish this you're given a basic set of options: Jump, Dash, Shuriken and Slash

Jump: This is the button you'll press more than any other. You can double jump and wall jump. Probably the most interesting feature is that you're allowed to double jump even if you're not on the ground. As a result you can double jump from the wall or run off a platform and still double jump! You can also influence your direction mid air or short hop by pressing the button for minimal frames.

Dash: You can ground dash and air dash. An air dash will count as an attack and is the quickest, often most effective tool against enemies that aren't immune to it. Although you can airdash after a jump, you typically won't be able to jump after an airdash. Interestingly, although the ground dash has significant recovery frames, you'll be able to jump immediately if you dash off a platform. You can also dash downward in air which has minor correction toward grounded enemies below you and results in a special kill animation against most. The only way to cancel a downward dash is by landing or with an airdash.

Shuriken: These will kill ranged or unaware enemies and stagger melee enemies. Throwing multiple will kill some melee enemies but typically isn't worth it. They recharge after a second or two and you can store 3; a wise mechanic that grants access to projectiles while preventing the game from becoming a shoot 'em up platformer. If not for being required to hit some switches, you could get through the game without pressing this button.

Slash: There are several things this button can do when you press it. If you're facing the front of most enemies you'll attempt to grab them with your chain, pull them toward you and slash them. If you're running toward an unguarded enemy you'll do an running attack. If you're behind an unaware enemy you'll do a stealth kill. In most situations you'll slash your sword pointlessly. Unfortunately the only reason to press this button is in combination with a grounded dash because it's the only way to reliably kill one particular enemy type. Typically it's safer and faster to do a short hop dash.

The game is definitely geared toward speedrunning and provides a fantastic environment for someone looking to get into it. A level editor is included so there's high potential for replay-ability. Unfortunately there does seem to be some cheating on the leaderboards.

Although you die in one hit, the game provides generous check points so it's rarely frustrating. Unfortunately there's no option to respawn from check point, only to restart level... which is an issue because there are some areas with the potential to let you clip out of the stage and become softlocked.

It's no secret that this game looks fantastic. If you're into the SNES era pixel graphic aesthetic, there's no doubt you're drooling over over the screen shots and as good as those look, the game only look better in motion due to some gorgeous dynamic lighting effects. The music is good, the controls are responsive, the story isn't intrusive, this game has almost everything going for it!

Unfortunately, the actual gameplay kinda sucks. It's not that it's overly challenging; you're given generous re-spawn points, infinite lives and there's almost no spawn delay, you can even "restart from checkpoint" at will from the menu. It's not that combat isn't engaging; you have a range of options to deal with everything the game throws at you and there's a large enough variety of enemies to keep things fresh, even the palette swaps have some interesting twists. The game doesn't even rely on unfair tricks or excessive trial and error deaths or anything silly like that.

The problem with the game is that it's BEYOND tedious. Every enemy and I mean EVERY enemy is either a massive damage sponge or flying. Basic skeleton enemies don't even die from your standard issue three hit combo! When you're dealing with big enemies it takes either multiple counters or charge attacks to take them down, and while it's reasonable to not simply be able to one shot them, basic attacks do so little to them that it's hardly worth sneaking them in. The result is waiting, lots of waiting.

There are two primary types of sections; long corridor sections and climbing sections. When dealing with the former, you often encounter unit spawner protected by big enemies. Since big enemies basically require use of multiple slow calculated charge attacks or counters, this basically results in kiting everything back, killing the big thing, then slowly advancing to the spawner because everything it spawns takes about two attack combos. Sometimes you can rush the spawner but it's the exception. In some cases you can use your magic to stun the basic enemies and chain counters off it, but not all basic enemies allow this function.

The climbing sections are a bit more interesting, but often include major level design flaws. I'm talking about things like dissolving platforms that don't respawn and a switch that's required from progression and easy to miss on the side you came from. Normally this would be absolutely intolerable but the generous checkpoints make it somewhat forgivable, it's still just more time you can expect to have to waste though.

There's one boss in particular that highlights everything wrong with this game and it's the... Banshee Queen. This boss does exactly three things:
1. Scream: An attack which covers a HUGE area of the boss room in an instant death attack.
2. Spit Eggs: They do no damage but if you don't destroy them before they come to a rest they almost instantly hatch into these super annoying little ghosts that sprint at you, teleport and take multiple three hit combos to kill.
3. Teleport: She can teleport either direction but tends to go away from the nearest wall.

The way this battle actually works is that if you let any of the eggs hatch, you basically lose because the thing that will spawn from it takes far too many hits to deal with. The chaos it causes will prevent you from destroying eggs in the future and if it manages to hit your at the wrong time, you might be locked into an instant death scream. The eggs themselves are easy to destroy but you can't really chase them down so you need to be near the Banshee when she spits them. You also need to be near her when she screams because the safe area is under her. The result is that regardless of what she does, you want run right up to her and spam attack. The ONLY thing that she can actually do that gives you ANY chance of failure is teleport. Normally it's easy to know the direction she'll go, but the room is so big that if it happens near the center you straight up have to guess because you can't see far enough to either side. If you guess wrong, gg. You either die to scream or she hatches an egg and you might as well restart.

The game's not terrible, but it's deeply flawed. If you're OK with tedious gameplay and you're a game design student, this game is probably worth buying, just to deconstruct.

Despite how simple this game looks, it's a shockingly deep and polished bullet hell smup. While, if your a fan of the genre, you're probably not going to encounter many completely original mechanics, what you will find is a large range of ways to approach a familiar formula. Unlike many bullet hell games, where defensive play is essential, in this the majority of bullets are produced by low health minions, and since bullets are transformed into points on death, aggressive strategies are shockingly valid. The game also allows you to customize your bullet patterns (although most need to be unlocked) and switch between three of them on the fly (either with a direct bind and/or with cycling if your prefer). While most are fairly simple, some are complex and can be affected by the direction of your movement, your location when you switched to them or the use of slow move (the essential bullet hell feature reduces your speed and displays your hit dot for precise dodging).

The only complaint I have is that some of the menus are less intuitive than I'd like them to be. For example if you don't have enough points to buy a bullet pattern, you're not able to see a display of it. There also isn't a fully functional stage select function; you can either play arcade mode which allows you to set all your options but always starts you from stage 1, or conquest mode which allows you to select previously beaten stages but saves your lives and doesn't let your alter your bullet patterns without creating a new file (starting from stage 1).

If you're new to the bullet hell genre and interested in trying it out, this game is probably a fantastic starting point. Easy is challenging enough to be satisfying and since conquest mode allows you to save progress between stages, the game is relatively forgiving. If you're an experienced smup player, this game is certainly worth having in your library. If you're only a casual smup player, this probably isn't a must own unless you're a fan of the cute/derpy aesthetic. The screenshots and video paint a rather accurate picture of the game, so it should be rather obvious if this is something that might appeal to you.