Velocity Noodle Reviews

When I first tried this game earlier this year, I experienced the following bugs within just the first few levels: [list] [*]Sometimes after clearing a level, the next level loads suddenly, and your time for the level you just cleared gets erroneously saved as your PB for the level that just loaded instead (even if you've never played it). [*]Same as above, but this time, the flag that keeps track of whether you've found the collectible in a level gets erroneously saved to the next level instead. [*]Sometimes if you press or hold certain inputs while a level loads, the level timer will already be running before the countdown timer finishes, the countdown timer itself will slowly drift to the right off the screen, your character will spawn in the wrong place, and/or your character will appear stuck in an animation until you start moving. [*]Sometimes after clearing a level, your time will overwrite your PB even if your PB was faster. This can cause you to [i]lose[/i] trophies. [/list] I reported some of these bugs after playing, but they remain unfixed. Today, I tried playing the game again while being careful with my inputs so as not to trigger any of the bugs, but that didn't work, and I actually discovered more bugs instead: [list] [*]Sometimes after getting a PB on a level, the time that gets saved is 0.01s faster than the time that appeared on the clear screen. Maybe a rounding discrepancy? [*]Often, when pressing ESC to exit a level, the level select screen and main menu will appear on top of one another and can be navigated simultaneously. The Start button on a gamepad doesn't have this problem. [*]While writing this review, I tried replicating the above to understand the bug better, but the game crashed when I pressed ESC. This happened again later after I reinstalled the game to see if that would fix anything. [/list] I have no idea what game the people who left positive reviews played, but I wish I'd played that one instead. The game I played is comically dysfunctional. Even if you somehow manage to avoid the bugs, the game has other issues: [list] [*]When you jump onto a wall, there's a short delay before you actually latch onto it; so if you try to jump off the wall too soon, either it won't work or you'll waste your double jump. This makes jumping between two walls feel awful. [*]If you fail to slide under an object and are instead stopped by it, you have to back up a bit before you can attempt to slide under it again. This also feels awful. [*]It can be hard to distinguish foreground objects from background ones. [*]The writing is awkward and contains several mistakes. [*]The developer appears to have left an entire buffet of debug features in production without any safeguard in place to prevent them from being triggered by accident. Just press 1 to toggle visible hitboxes, 2 to toggle the HUD, 3 to toggle... something, 4 to toggle debug mode, 6 to toggle [i]infinite HP[/i], and F2 to instantly reset the game. I checked to see if it's possible to update your PB on a level while infinite HP is enabled, but the game crashed when I tried returning to the level select screen after clearing one. (I relaunched the game and found that my PB did indeed update.) [/list] This game probably has the highest problems-encountered-per-hour ratio of any game I've ever played in my life. But I hope I'm coming across as laughing [i]with[/i] rather than [i]at[/i] the developer, since I like the game's idea, controls, art, and music, and hope they continue to pursue their creative passion. Until some of these problems get patched, however, I'll have to leave this review here. (Remind me never to play a game recommended by Jarvis ever again.)