Violet Wisteria Reviews

An absolute love letter to 90's gaming. It's challenging, has a beautiful art direction, a fantastic soundtrack and the attack colour mechanic really leads to some interesting strategies. in the later stages

So I've admittedly hardly touched this game and haven't made it past level 1 yet, but I gotta say, it's actually pretty fun! It gives me the same kind of vibes as something like Touhou; it's (presumably) a short, arcade-y experience that you can really see yourself running over and over again to get good. The game also looks gorgeous, the background art and monster designs (again, only level 1 here) are SUPER nice. Again, I'm hot garbage at it, but I genuinely think this game could make a nice palette cleanser after something more intense. Despite the difficulty, it's fairly calm once you get a rhythm down. Looking forward to getting good at some point! I do have one suggestion, though. Please change up either the font or the background on the options menu; it's kind of a mess at the moment and makes parsing things a bit too hard.

This game really needed more time in the oven. It needed to be play tested much more rigorously. The designer was too in love/invested with the 3 elemental rock/paper/scissors mechanics of the game that it completely took away from the immediacy and feel of the game. I would suggest that the developer test the game outside of his social group or fans. This is not a broken game but clearly a lot of the players/testers(community members/fans?) who played the game are giving it a free pass despite all of its issues. And, I'm going to be much more of a Debbie-downer here, but the music... well the music sounds kind of broken. Discordant. I dare say not good. Especially the first stage BGM. For a first attempt I'd say it needs a bit more polish, and maybe a discerning eye to help push it along.

This a challenging retro style game taking inspiration from Japanese action platformer Valis. I recommend this game only if you're ok with a challenge. If you're like me and thought 2023's Sifu wasn't hard despite being voted hardest game of the year and want to devote yourself to being patient and learning a game's mechanic, get this. I'm saying this as someone who doesn't like action platformers much too. The game's action platformer gimmick is a 3 color mechanic that forces you to change colors to respond to defeat enemies or use them to your advantage. Enemies are killed by their enemy color, and you can boost off enemies using their own color. Hitting the enemies the wrong way will bounce off, which can either be life threatening or necesssary. I had to play the game on easy with color hints on, and as such it made hitting hte wrong color all the more punishing. It never felt like the game was ghosted like ghost and goblins on the NES, but rather my own fault and something to get better at. The tones also fit the era the game harkens back to. Random graphic details like organic stage settings or eyeball are on platforms, blood drips from the ceiling. Music reminds me a lot of the cute 2000s/90s. In all, I watched KaniPro showcase development over the years on YouTube. I finally have time to play this now, and I loved this, despite only being able to get to level 3 thus far. The negative reviews seem to focus on older builds or the flaws which are more so due to its difficulty and flaws or the era the game is from. Again, I would only recommend this to people who want to revisit action platformers or try a more game.

First off I highly recommend this game. It's very enjoyable and is a lot of fun. You play as Wisteria who has to save her people from an evil invading their land. It main hook of the game is it's color attack mechanic where depending on the color of the enemy you need to use different attacks to defeat them. You are also able to use the same color attack against an enemy to rebound off them to vault over holes or to reach higher than your normal jump can reach. It's an interesting mechanic that tries to put ag spin on the familiar platforming and hack n slash gameplay. This is a loving tribute the the Valis Series of games and that is series I am a big fan of. From the cut-scenes, the Music and the Graphics you can see that inspiration all over this and it's very well done. Only complaints I have are that you can't reconfigure your controls at all. The game was built for the Xbox controller so you need one of those. I normally play games with a PS5 controller and when I tried playing this game with it the controls were all messed up making it hard to play. I tried my Xbox controller and it worked great! Also I get that the color attack system was an attempt to make this stand out and lead to different gameplay possibilities but I'm not feeling that at all. I find it more annoying than fun. Maybe it'll eventually click for me. There is a power up that lets you use any attack to defeat enemies and when that is on the game feels great! Without it then it becomes a little more difficult than needed at times. Like i said that's more of a me thing and not a game quality thing. Again I can't recommend this enough. It's a quality title that has a lot of potential to go far. I hope this sells well and we see a Violet Wisteria 2!!!!

If you want a challenging early era SNES/Super Famicom style action platformer, this is the game for you. It draws a lot of inspiration from the Valis games, but has its own unique twist. This game isn’t for everyone, but if you’re into this style of game, it is a lot of fun. You can tell that a lot of passion went into making this feel like an authentic experience from that time. Would love if there were scanline and color options to make it look more retro.

Terribly hard and rewarding. The game is fair, yet still pisses me off. Music is great. My thumbs hurt. 10/10

Awesome 90's inspired game that's similar to the Valis series. It has a strong challenge and good music so I highly recommend it to gamers looking for a retro platformer fix.

TL;DR: This isn't a bad game, it will appeal to a niche for sure, I think it was always gonna happen that way. The color mechanic crippled my enjoyment, however, and I don't think I'm too interested in this title at the moment. 90's style platformer, similar to Valis, but with an added mechanic that hampers my enjoyment. The color mechanic is what is holding me back. The way it's used in game just didn't feel natural. You have to attack enemies with their contrasting color (Red-Blue/Blue-Red/Red-White) to defeat them, and the same color to bounce off them. The bounce mechanic is used pretty extensively, but I just don't dig the color mechanic on the whole for one reason: The enemies colors aren't fixed. Each time you start a run the enemies will have a different color weakness. The same enemies will appear in the same places, but their color weakness will change. This makes the game frustrating and unfun cause you never know what to expect. Generally not a bad thing, but here it caused me to game over on the first level multiple times. If instead enemy types always had the same color, it'd be a matter of learning the stage. As it is, I died a lot trying to remember not only which color to attack with, but reminding myself to match the enemies color to bounce for platforming. Having to attack the enemies with their CONTRASTING color is extremely confusing, as we'll recognize the enemy, then it's color, THEN it's weakness. It's simple to explain, simple to execute, but in the game, in the middle of a level, it's just not fun to have to recall this information. This is an action game after all, you mostly won't have time to remember. (probably why the attack inputs are all on the pause screen) It'd be a different story if they were weak to their own color, but that added step to each encounter doesn't make combat more interesting if I'm being honest. Instead it makes combat frustrating, I spent a while bouncing off enemies, and didn't quite find a rhythm. The controls for color switching are strange too, up for Blue, down for Red, and neutral for White. Why not just have 3 attack buttons? It'd really help alleviate some of the confusion. I don't know if it's related to the control scheme or something but sliding takes a second, Wisteria just won't do it if you aren't crouched for a second BEFORE inputting a jump command. Also I think the first Minotaur is bugged, it stopped responding to attacks for me. No damage, no bounce, nothing.

A throwback to games like Valis, Rusty or Psycho Dream and it fits the bill. For enjoyers of obscure, jank yet stylized and charming action platformers from the 90s Violet Wisteria should be played. Game designs great, with creative mechanics and every playthrough is unique. Stages are linear but none of it feels scripted. Enemy weaknesses and attacks are randomized. Progression feels earned, bear in mind its unforgiving. Limited lives and continues, stages that require pinpoint timing. It's a philosphy we don't see often in games these days, even retro inspired ones. Some will criticize it for being dated but preserving these design philosophys give Violet Wisteria a place.