CUBOY Reviews

Impressive how a game so simple can be so good!

This is my first "rage" platformer game I've ever played and while I think it's nice being really simple and fun to get into, it unfortunately has many issues. You can exploit landing early on walls and making jump buttons jump higher than intended, which the developer seems aware of the latter but it definitely opens the portal to completing levels faster. There's also an unobtainable coin in level 27 (which are fun to collect but don't serve too much purpose) which requires you to reset the level, resetting your coins. Funny enough deaths do not reset your coins. Unfortunately my journey ended on level 45 (although I somehow managed to get an extra level unlocked by accidentally completing one level twice, never managed to replicate it) with an obvious broken boost mechanic, same with 46. I believe the biggest critique for this game is while the mechanics are very simple, these little exploits almost feel like they need to be explained to the player. Maybe some clarity is needed to help distinguish what are the mechanics actually meant to be in the same and bugs that shouldn't be there at all. As on the development side, it was the lack of play testing that ended up making the game unfinishable. Having a mechanic that is mandatory to finishing your game not work is way more than just a simple oversight. I hope fixes will come in the future to help make the game completed as I believe there is a lot of potential from this small, simple platformer game but until that happens, I won't be recommending but will change once it's possible to complete.

Well... while this minimalist platformer is a lot of fun and has a great difficulty curve, it is unfinished. I leave a very hesitant thumbs up. There are glitches throughout in the form of holes in the walls and floors, one of which makes level 42 unpassable.

I've played about 3 hours into the game and I'm two thirds of the way through the game at the moment. The tl;dr is that I would give this game slightly positive praise in its current state, with some caveats. The first and biggest caveat is that this game has no music. A set of simple 8-bit songs would really go a long way to selling this game's vibe, which is that of a slow paced platformer you might find on DOS or on an Atari. I really like the super retro vibe here overall. The second caveat is that the game is very slow paced. This might not be for everyone. I think if you approach the game as a very difficult, slow paced precision platformer that's going to offer you a sort of meditative experience, it's definitely worth a try, especially for its asking price. I think there are a number of ways the game could improve on the experience it's trying to deliver, at least as I see it: -add music to the game. The sound effects are wonderful, but I think 15 or so quality 8-bit tracks would really sell the experience of the game. -Increase horizontal player speed slightly when the player is in the air: right now the player moves at the same (or very close to the same) speed as the projectiles. This means that the only way to avoid collisions with the bullets is by jumping towards the bullet, which is not always viable. Increasing the horizontal speed would give the player more options to avoid the projectiles in the game. -Increase the vertical fall speed significantly, but allow the player to use the current fall speed by holding a button (fast and slow fall). I love that this game doesn't have a jump button. Thinking about how to use the springs to traverse the level and thinking about when you should mount a spring to avoid obstacles is a lot of fun. However, once you are on a spring you are kind of sealed in your fate because you lose control over your vertical height once you are on a spring (in most situations). Having two fall speeds that the player can control would give the player more options. -Either eliminate the wall clips from the game, or adjust how the arrow tiles work after you have clipped onto a wall. Currently there is a mechanic in the game where if you hold the direction into the wall, the player will stick to the wall. I say mechanic, because the level I am on (71) does not feel possible to complete without slowing down your speed with a wall clip. I think it is likely that the developer is aware of the clips and has incorporated it into their level design. This is fine (and it gives you much needed control over your movements), but I would suggest making a couple of changes if this is the case. The first is that if you ride the arrow tiles into a wall and get a clip near the top of the arrow tiles, you currently sit on top of the arrow tiles with no way to gain momentum; this causes multiple soft-locks in the game. I would suggest that if you interact with the top of an arrow platform with zero speed, that the arrow tile give the player a negative speeds so that the player can sink down to the ground, allowing the arrow tile to accelerate the player again. The second suggestion is you add levels early on that require wall clips to progress. It took me until level 71 to feel confident that this is a mechanic embraced by the developer. I should feel confident that the mechanic is intended by level 5. -Decrease the acceleration that arrow tiles give you considerably. Currently, two arrow tiles stacked on top of each other gives you so much momentum that you slam into the ceiling, but one arrow tile doesn't give you that much momentum to really work with. Decreasing this acceleration would help the game's precision considerably. -Decrease the waiting time throughout the levels. The player's ground speed is very slow. This is fine, as you aren't running on the ground very often or for long periods of time. However, there are some levels with a long period of running to the first obstacle. This is unnecessary and just adds waiting time on every death. Another thing that could help with the waiting time is to reset the on every death. Some obstacles only have 2 configurations that are really viable, which means waiting a long time for an opportunity for the player to make their move. If the levels reset on death, this would ensure that the player arrives at the obstacle at the same cycle of the obstacle's animations every time. -Make the collectible pellets meaningful. Right now the game does not tell you if you have collected all of the pellets in a level. Adding an indication that you have collected all of the pellets to the level menu would be a good way to encourage the player to engage with these collectibles. I like the idea that pellets don't reset on death and that you can sacrifice some lives to get pellets. There is one level early on (level 27) where you cannot die once you collect the coin. Adding a gun that can shoot you at that location would be good so that all levels can have all coins collected in one play session. -improve the level menu and the in level menu. There is a level early on in the game where the level menu did not open at all (the game did pause though). That definitely needs to be fixed. The level menu should track which levels you have beaten and should start on the most recently unlocked level. At one point my level progress got desyned and there were two levels I hadn't beaten yet that were available to play. I don't know how that happened, but you might want to track that down. -This one is more of a personal preference, but make the death effect a pixel animation instead of a particle effect. The rest of the game has a beautiful retro aesthetic, and the particle effect is a bit jarring. A wonderful explosion of bloody pixels would be fantastic. :) Overall I think the developer has done a decent job so far in making this game. The game definitely has good bones to make a really fun game. It just needs some polish. :)