Roots of the mind Reviews

Nice game a few bug, i had fun

This is a simple metroidvania that takes heavy inspiration from hollow knight. The level design is fantastic, and it's honestly my favorite part of this game. The equipment is really interesting, it has multiple uses in both combat, mobility, and navigation. The firefly (charm) system also gives you a lot of different strategies to choose from. You can swap fireflies at anytime, which makes them a lot more fun and versatile. The enemies move sets aren't very complex, but the level design makes them pretty challenging to fight. Also, the dev actively fixes bugs and problems that are brought to their attention. There are some negatives; there's no way to rebind keys (you can just change the button icons), the english translations aren't great, some text boxes are cut off, and the monotone pixel art isn't interesting to look at. Monotone pixel art can be done well, Unworthy has beautifully smooth animations for example. I had a fun time with this game! Such a small price for a 1-3 hour game is absolutely worth it. 7/10

Roots of the Mind is a game I completed almost despite myself. It's got a lot of jank, including some really rough performance even on a fairly high end machine such as mine (7950x, 4080 super, 64GB RAM) where the game, and especially the music, will start to stutter the longer you play. However, it is also really cheap and has some decent enough "puzzles". GOOD! But it does have some missable quests that lock you out of 100%ing your file... NOT GOOD! BUT but it's also quite a short game, so doesn't take too long to replay with what you've learned. OKAY! Your mileage will vary A LOT with this one, depending on your jank tolerance. If there was a "shrug" button for recommendations, I'd pick that, but right now I'm not sure I can truly recommend it.

The overall vibe is reminiscent of hollow knight, but it very much has it's own identity. The game does occasionally crash, but otherwise I didn't encounter any bugs. Combat is very simple, but feels solid. The only drawback is the inability to rebind keys. While I was able to beat it just fine with the basic controls (wasd plus arrow keys, with down being select), i definitely would've liked to be able to rebind the controls. By default, the game is in portugese and with xbox controls, and it took me quite awhile to figure out the keyboard controls and switch the language. Overall I'd definitely recommend this if you want a fun little game to spend a few hours on.

Roots of the Mind is a simple, short metroidvania inspired by Hollow Knight and other classics from the genre. Aside from a few minor issues, I had a great time with the game and would recommend it for fellow bite-sized metroidvania fans. The visual aesthetic obviously draws heavily from Hollow Knight - from the insect-based cast, to the heavily-vignetted camera, to the use of specific lighting effects and parallax scrolling techniques, you can feel HK's influence strongly here. However, this is largely where similarities end, as RotM focuses more on exploration and light puzzle-solving than combat or traversal. Combat is a fairly simplistic affair, without any flashy dodges and with few, if any, special attacks. You do gain the ability to perform a simple combo, which is well-implemented, but that's about all you'll find on that front. Don't come in expecting i-frames and dashing around an arena like a madman. Despite its short length, there are a lot of items and secrets to find; between augments to your character, merchants, and various quest and traversal items, I was surprised at the rate at which I was collecting new goodies. Similarly, I found myself bashing every well possible, as I was often rewarded for attempting this. Bosses were well-paced and relatively well-designed, with well-telegraphed attacks and not too many cheap-feeling barrages. The mini cutscenes introducing each one were nice, too. My complaints overall are fairly minimal, but there were a few things I wanted to touch on: - The intro to the game feels a bit strange and unnatural. The first few minutes of a game are your chance to really catch your player's attention, so making them go through this Groundhog Day loop, while I understand the narrative device, felt pretty boring and uninspired. - The music overall could be revamped - the loops are often quite short and a lack of diverse instrumentation made them feel pretty similar to one another. They got repetitive quite quickly. - There are various issues related to the text in the game, both because there are many translation issues and because there seems to be a missing font or something in the game files - occasionally, letters simply wouldn't render at all. - I still don't know that I really understand the health mechanic. It could be explained much more clearly. Aside from these few gripes, I found myself really enjoying my time with Roots of the Mind. If you're in the mood for a nice little metroidvania you can finish in 2-4 hours, I'd recommend this one. Find more reviews and recommendations on my Steam Curator page, Indie Infinitesimal: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41769714/

For the longest time I was feeling undecided on this game. Then I tedously backtracked to a locked door after finding the key to it only for nothing to happen and that proved to be the breaking point for me. I cann't recommend this game. However, I do need to address the other elements of this game and why they made this game such a tossup for so long. The game takes a lot of inspiration from Hollow Knight. Too much, if I dare say, from the plot to the music, to the tone. The performance is fantastic and the game felt great to play even as you were limited if your ability to move and fight. That's not a bad thing per se as the game wants to make sure you know that you are a small and insignificant creature as it goes with the lore and is done well. The world is interesting to explore but the map is really limited. You have warping but it costs money and when you combine that mechanic with the limited map you began to have a serious problem unless you have a very strong memory... and there are no bugs like that thing with the warehouse key. The game was neither too hard or too easy, especially as you choose if you want to be a glass cannon or a tank with your upgrades throughout the game. One more positive thing about the game is the pricing. The game is only 2.5 hours long and has a low production value but the price is just 33kr which is very fair unlike Return which is rather similar at 3.5 hours and costs 200kr. Finally, I have to mention that often the text gets cut off, very much highlighting the lack of a production value here. Despite this not getting a recommendation, it came really close to doing so and this has been the best metroidvania I've played since I completed Prince of Persia the lost crown way back in January.

This is a mini metroidvania-like (microvania) that took me 2.2 hours to finish. There aren't too many branching paths. You get these fairies that act like charms in other metroidvanias, each one giving some small bonus to a stat or helping find hidden passages, things like that. It's a fine enough little game for an evening. While pretty unremarkable (Like most other games of this length), this game does have a fair chunk of effort put into things, which is refreshing considering the shovelware you sometimes find when playing unknown short games like these. The art is nice, the bosses were interesting enough, it was a fine time. It's not without some issues: -Dialogue sometimes gets cut off by the text boxes, with no way to see what got cut off. -Steam achievements are not working. Its certainly a microvania-like I could recommend to others.