What could've been the perfect NG beat em up
Concept: Successfully Design a action platformer with a deep combo system that stands out from the usual button mashers action games.
Aesthetic:
Love the art style it's as if Samurai Jack and limbo (video game) had a child. If you don't like the black & white art style there's a hideous color mode where you get this ugly transparent hue of orange/blue. And even then the color is only most noticeable during transitions from each level. A virtually pointless and unneeded feature in my opinion but hey it's there if you want to ruin the games monochromatic style.
The MAIN character's design,both protagonist and antagonist. Although purposely lacking in bodily detail for color stylization. Enough detail is shown in the characters physical design to interpret a feel from the characters even if the written dialogue was excluded. The creatures designs are repetitive and not very unique, with only three types of enemies that you'll run into over and over again. However they do look cool, and fit the style of the game.
The music in the game seemed just as well thought out as the combat system.
The title theme "Train of thought" pretty much sets the mood for everything about this game it paints a picture in your head which is great since there's little, paper-thin story within this flash leeaving the backstory to be however you want to interpret.
Although I find it contradictory to the "wildly chaotic style" mood the author intended this game is suppose to give off the track "Ethereality" fits very well with the tedious action. It's slow, relaxing and has a nice ring to it, and gives off a strange sad yet hopeful vibe to the game.
The track "Brain damage" suiting for the boss fight near the end of the game is the only real chaotic factor this game has going for it. (Aside from fighting the final boss himself on hard mode.) This track is really energetic and during game-play it almost feels like the music choreographs the action going on in the fight.
Story: Good samurai Vs. Bad samurai.
Game-play:
The key to all successful games no matter how "unique" your aesthetic may be if your game play is shit you might as well not even bother.
As far as Culmination goes it's pretty damn good. The author was true to their word about the action design being unique as spamming A vs thinking of which attack to use in varied situations where your surrounded, near death pits, and hovering fireballs can mean the difference between life and death. It does have a learning curve to it especially when playing hard mode for your first few times.
But it doesn't take too long to get the hang of fighting.
The game is not without it's own faults with a number of concerns that can leave the player feeling cheated and make game mastery seemingly impossible. The firefly-bat demon things are cheap as hell, when swarmed (not to mention the enemies on the ground) there's no ways to strategically dodge their fireballs while attacking at the same time as they each combo you to death with a barrage of fireballs , especially on hard mode. You will be forced to rely on the "press W to live" button very often making the "special master" achievement very difficult. Oh and if you don't have your specials maxed out before hand, enjoy your ass whooping(s) and pray you can spam A or S long enough to survive.
This seem like an unnecessary frustration that could've been fixed with a multitude of options. five second invincibility window after impacting the ground, allow player to deflect/reflect the fireballs, getting rid of that dumb get up animation that leaves you even more vulnerable than when you were knocked in the air.
The fighting is slow because enemies take to long to recover.
Also the game is incomplete on hard mode which is a huge annoyance for reasons already stated.
Overall:
Technical faults makes the game unnecessarily frustrating, but the combat system music and style is worth a play trough. However it NEEDS more polish in game design and a COMPLETE product to measure up to other action titles out there.
3/5
Fav