Clockwork Ambrosia

Милый пиксель арт, интересное исследование локаций, неплохая боевка с хорошим импактом от стрельбы. Добротная метроидвания, за которой можно с удовольствием провести пару вечеров.

I've always loved Metroidvanias and anything that resembles Mega Man X, and this game feels like a delicious combination of the two. The game encourages exploration and always rewards you for it. The art is fantastic, and the music is phenomenal. The story throws you right into it all, and the gameplay is straight up solid. Customizing your weapons is fun and feels good. You'll come across weapon mods that you think you'll never use, but then later on you'll receive another mod that might combo well with it. Or maybe you won't ever use it anyways. The point is you get a LOT of choice with how you want to build. You could make your revolvers into hard-hitting hand cannons, or go in a totally opposite direction by modding them into a rapid spray & pray build that shoots multiple shadow bullets at once which explode into columns of fire. Both are good and viable! Plus you can have several Loadouts for each weapon type, allowing you to switch it up easily. And you can switch between all weapon types on the fly, which feels great. Upgrading equipment is excellent too, usually giving an item a VERY good new ability or enhancement and sometimes granting new mobility options --very cool to see. And from the time I started the game to the time I finished, the devs released multiple patches which really improved overall quality of life -- especially around Map and Fast Travel functionality. My primary complaints with the game were around those two bits and now they're fixed. You can tell they're considering feedback and applying thoughtful patches. I volunteered for this game's press key through an indie game outlet I write for. After playing through the entire thing, I can say I would've happily paid the money for it. Working on a full article / review that I'm aiming to release within a month.

I really wanted to like this game. The gameplay feels good and the art is well done, but the exploration part feels really bad for me. This update was supposed to make the fast travel better but it's just not nearly enough imo. Maybe it'd be ok if there weren't so many blocked areas constantly which require constant backtracking, but unfortunately the level design and the map aren't up to the task. The map often isn't an accurate representation of the screens (it shows two tiles connect but they actually don't). And theres so many screens where you can go one way but not back which requires you to go really out of your way to just go back the way you came from. And this applies to entire routes, where the amount of backtracking you do to get to a place that seems pretty close on the map can be maddening. And this is where the level design doesn't work for me. For a metroidvania you want an interconntected map to explore, but the lack of fast travel (they're very sparse and don't feel well thought out for where they are) and areas not being interconnected well, you have to travel incredibly far to get anywhere. So when I got stuck not knowing where to go next, and I have to go check all the screens where there may be a path available on my screen (I'd already been to all of them multiple times but maybe i missed something) it takes so long and forces you to go such convoluted routes. It makes one of my favorite parts of a metroidvania tedius, opaque, and frustrating. The movement is fine, but it's not good enough that navigating the same screens for the 10th time is fun. It feels this game probably needs double the fast travel locations (I'm writing this after the fast travel update so it needs double the amount it currently has). If you are someone who wants the difficulty of a game being in the exploration, this game might be a good fit. Sadly for me after multiple attempts to power through, Im putting it down after 6hrs.