Lollihop Reviews

This is pretty rough... Don't get me wrong, you can have some fun playing it, but this seems more like a game jam demo than a retail game to me. You get 4 fairly big levels, all of which you can finish in under an hour. There's basic collectibles in each level. You can see how many you got out of the total in the level when you finish the level, but there's otherwise no way to tell mid-level, or even in the level select. There seems to be no reward for getting all collectibles anyways, so I didn't bother with them in the latter half of the game. Speaking of indication... the game has practically NO UI. The most UI you'll see is the basic pause menu and level names in the level select. As soon as you start the game you are put into the first level immediately, no main menus, cutscenes or introductions to speak of. On that note, there's not a single bit of story here either, unless you want to make up your own. That also means that once you beat the final level, you get... nothing. You just get sent to the level select. The physics are really janky for such a simple game. Instances of jank include: sliding over edges, not being able to attack multiple times in the air (this becomes a problem with a particular mechanic), and even getting stuck in level geometry resulting in SOFTLOCKS, forcing you to restart the level! That last bit almost made me quit the game. But what probably bothers me the most? The fact this is a VR game. There's pretty much NO reason this game requires VR. It's not particularly immersive, and playing it sitting results in VERY awkward camera angles. Controls aren't relative to your position, so when your character is not dead center (which happens a lot) the controls feel awful; your character feels nigh uncontrollable at times. On the note of controls, this game requires a gamepad for some reason? Even though the controls just need a joystick and a couple of buttons?? Which most if not all VR setups have available?? WHY do you need a gamepad?? This game just suffers from too many problems for me to recommend it. It's not like its all bad. The music is alright, though perhaps a bit generic. The graphics are bright and nice, but the use of the same assets over and over makes it feel monotone. The level design has some neat ideas... but it also has some really bad ideas. The sound design... is kinda bad. Get used to hearing the jump sound non-stop. Overall, the game feels like a beta or demo, and even then it needs A LOT of polish. For the price I wasn't expecting a AAA experience, but I was also expecting something that would warrant any sort of price tag. Sadly, this didn't meet those expectations.