Rising Dusk Reviews

A really fun platformer with a bubbly artstyle and marvelous soundtrack. Fun to play in short bursts, getting a few levels done a night. Right level of challenging without getting ridiculously frustrating. Only issue I had is one of the levels had a bit of lag in it, but that might've been more of a problem on my end. Otherwise, would recommend.

This game deserves far more recognition and success. Seems like it is largely a one man effort, and that's amazing given the number of things it does par excellence. The gorgeous pixel art style, the heavenly and relaxing Japanese inspired music, the unique Japanese mythological theme, interesting puzzle-platformer game design with counter-intuitive coin avoidance and the reasonably long play time. The couple of things holding it back are the high difficulty level which is compounded by the sometimes weak controls for a game this reliant on perfect jumps. It doesn't help that games nowadays have lowered the bar in terms of difficulty compared to say the NES era, so many would not be patient enough to stick it through. Those who do though would find a rich and memorable experience.

Rising Dusk is an excellent platformer with a unique rule: AVOID the coins in order to progress. With that being said, the game isn't just simply dodging coins. If you want to progress through certain levels, and especially if you want to collect everything, you need to collect some coins. Which coins? Well, you'll need to figure that out. The game very cleverly subverts video game tropes by challenging everyone's magpie tendencies with the promise of reward and adventure. Collect any small treasure you see and you lose the chance to get the bigger ones. It puts your mind and skill to the test in a way no other game has done before, and therein lies the true genius of its design. The world is so charming. The 16-bit sprites of classic Japanese folklore are all very cute and detailed, and their animations are great. The sound effects are all perfectly evocative and the music is uniquely atmospheric and absorbing. Not to mention each level has its own theme. It's hard to believe a game that looks and sounds this good was all done by one man, but he really pulled it off. Each and every level manages to feel fresh and new, in no small part to its music. Each one brings in a new theme, enemy or gimmick that makes it stand out amongst all the other levels. It keeps you guessing and never feels repetitive. Likewise, collecting each and every treasure is a unique challenge. Very few are easy-to-get and require you to wrap your mind around each one, but it rarely feels exhausting or tedious to grab a treasure. The game also never holds your hand; you need to rely on your own wit to gt these treasures. I managed to complete the game - all 60 Cat Statues and 5 Yokai Parts - however I'm still missing 5 Cassette Tapes and I'm honestly at an impasse as to how to get them. The only criticisms I have towards the game are little niggles that don't detriment the game heavily, but would be nice if they were corrected. Like how most of the platforms in the game have rounded off corners so it's easy to fall off them when you land on their edges. Talking to characters requires waiting next to them for them to finish, which is a little boring. And admittedly the final boss was pretty... meeehhhh. One thing I will say that I genuinely don't like however are the items. For the most part, they aren't necessary; you can beat and nearly complete the game without using a single item from Tesso's Shop. EXCEPT for one level - the Dark Cave Level - which absolutely REQUIRES both Coin items in order to collect 2 Cat Statues that are otherwise impossible to collect. This took me long into the aftergame for me to figure this out, after beating the final boss and clearing all the Temple Challenges. It seems very inconsistent to have the items only be useful until that one particular point into the game. Furthermore, the items aren't labelled, so you won't have any idea what they do until you use them, which is kind of a waste. But with all that being said, I'm truly very impressed. At this point in my life, I rarely set out to complete a game on my first go anymore. But this is one of those games where I felt so compelled to collect everything, because the design is excellent, the world is charming and the concept is incredibly unique. This is right up in the ranks with Undertale, Papers Please and Iconoclasts for being one of the best games ever to be directed by one person. Congratulations Lukas Stobie, you've done an incredible job. Looking forward to seeing what you'll make next. :)

i bought this on a whim during the Golden Week sale, but as it turns out i would have been just as happy to pay full price! this is a super unique youkai-themed puzzle platformer with absolutely gorgeous graphics and an amazing soundtrack. it has one central mechanic that everything evolves around: there are numbered blocks all over the stage that will disappear if you touch them with the corresponding amount of coins. this single mechanic plus tight controls that are simple enough to use my usb NES controller for are combined in a staggering amount of different ways; you usually need to AVOID picking up coins, which goes against platformer instincts so much that i continued grabbing the coin and plunging to my death on the first screen until a ghost came and yelled at me to just NOT COLLECT IT! yet sometimes you do have to pick them up, and it becomes a really interesting dance of keeping your coin total at the right amount to reach secrets or move forward without collecting too much and plunging through the blocks to your death. those simple ingredients make for a lavish feast of individually themed stages each with their own gimmicks that push the boundaries of what this single mechanic can do, while taking you on a ghibli-esque Spirited Away adventure through forests, haunted houses, youkai villages, hot springs and all sorts of other stuff. it's a little on the shorter side as far as these things go, but i feel that that's largely due to the fact that there's almost no padding. nothing in the game felt tedious to me even when one challenge took a dozen tries, half because it's just so damn charming it's hard to be in a bad mood. add to that a whole bevy of fun little secrets and collectibles (each of which constitute their own additional challenge within a stage) and you've got a tight, rich, flavorful experience that i enjoyed every second of. highly recommend you pick this up for a change of pace from the mainstream, and sit down for a fun retro-youkai evening. great stuff

I don't know why this game doesn't have more reviews... It is charming all around, from the graphics to the music to the characters. It is a pretty straightforward platformer with a twist - you don't always want to get all the coins, because platforms will appear/disappear if you have a certain amount. I like that there is incentive to replay levels until you find all of the gold statues/other hidden secrets. I also love the town square level that you can revisit and give villagers things you found in other levels in exchange for gifts. This game is beautiful to look at, the soundtrack is great, but most importantly the gameplay is engaging and fun. Definitely worth $6.99 in my opinion!

This is a simple, back-to-basics platformer with the added benefit of having to strategize around how many coins your are holding and judging when to grab more or when to avoid them. There is some minor clunkiness to the overall design; I managed to find several secret level exits before I found the regular one, and had no idea until after I beat the final boss that I had not unlocked a few levels that would have been part of normal progression. That aside, THE VISUALS! And the MUSIC! The art is a crisp retro style, based on the many, many yokai and folk stories of Japanese mythology, and are 99.9% true to the source material with a little artistic liberty for fun's sake. The music fits the art perfectly and WILL get stuck in your head. Because of that, the only thing I could ask for is the soundtrack: it was a Kickstarter bonus that, had I known about this game when it was being developed, I would have backed to receive. Now I have to hope that Lukas Stobie will released it as a DLC. Overall, simple but fun, a refreshing return to classic platforming with a unique premise and style.

'Rising Dusk' is a clever and surprisingly deep puzzle platformer that takes a simple mechanic (parts of the level disappear when you collect a certain number of coins) and uses it to create very interesting challenges. The background environmental art is gorgeous, with clever use of dithering masking a surprisingly small colour palette. The levels are full of animation and movement, giving each area a distinct atmosphere and personality that screenshots don't do justice. Mechanics are introduced regularly but in an approachable manner, and the ability to rerun levels and take different routes mean that even messing up at the last minute isn't punishing. Also, as the other reviews mention, the soundtrack is fantastic; it's worth playing this game just to listen to the music in each environment. If you're after a relaxed and thoughtful puzzler, 'Rising Dusk' is very much recommended.

Don't let the graphically awkward large numbers on the blocks deceive you. This game is otherwise quite beautiful, and design-wise has good attention to detail. Progressing through the game is most often quite easy, but it is in collecting the optional golden cats and cassette tapes where the meat of the game lies. Great music, unique and interesting puzzle mechanics, lovely Japanese fairytale vibe. Some stuff I didn't like: - Too many auto-scrollers (forced speed through the level--and it's SLOW). Especially the vertical level near the end suffers from this, since you can die a lot near the top and have to suffer through the whole thing again. - You can collect quest items (and Yokai Remains) before knowing what they are even for, then when you deliver them you don't get the dialogue you would have gotten without them. Even after beating the game, I didn't even know [spoiler] Yokai Remains were required to beat the game[/spoiler] until I started looking at speedruns.

Brilliant, vibrant, adventurous game crammed full of ideas! Has a great overworld map that allows you to explore and discover new levels and secrets tucked away in all the nooks and crannies. Every level is distinct, with its own music and sense of place, and lots of different mechanics and structural setups. The world oozes charm, especially all of the cool characters you meet.

A wonderful puzzle platformer despite its weaknesses, but those are what holds it back from really being a masterpiece. The art, animation and music are all gorgeous. It is amazing how much detail has been put into every sprite and how fluid the animations are. The music is absolutely phenomenal and gives the game a very immersive surreal atmosphere, especially when combined with the visuals and the consistent thematic design. The puzzles are quite unique and enjoyable while the platforming is balanced and reasonable. It manages to uphold a very consistent level of challenge that is stimulating without being frustrating or unfair. There are a lot of things to collect and the game has been designed to force you to replay the level multiple times to get them all, but the levels are each relatively short and so replaying them isn't even a negative experience. Often players have to approach the level in a different way to get all the collectibles which adds to the variety of the replay as well. There is a degree of roughness to the polish of the game that shows up from time to time. Noticeable glitches every few levels, the Tanuki are way too mechanically unrefined in comparison to how demanding at least one puzzle is which requires you to manipulate them to progress. And there is that one jump in the dark caves, which requires the player to jump at an exact specific frame at the very edge of the block just to make it and progress. The game explains very little to the player, and several things such as quest items and useable items are totally unexplained. Which makes it a trial and error process to learn what each useable item does, and you do have to buy another each time you use it. While the quest items remained completely unexplained. There are multiple secret paths which lead to entirely new levels, but you only unlock them by finding secrets in other levels nearby. So if you do not find the secret, you just miss out on the special level and or have to run around adjacent levels messing around looking for a secret that could be anywhere. The second greatest weakness of the game is the boss battles. There are only four, and they are each very underwhelming. They try to incorporate the games existing mechanics into the fight, but totally fumble it and it just becomes a relatively easy lukewarm momentary pseudo fight. It feels like the developer literally just could not come up with any passionate, inspired ideas for boss fights and they just did whatever they could manage to come up with. The fights are extremely anticlimactic and just awkward while only providing slight difficulty; usually from the fight gimmick being unrefined. The greatest weakness of the game though is the lack of any story. The game is so meticulous in building a vibrant, genuine world and yet the world is completely empty of characters or plot. A massive opportunity missed, players have no idea why the protagonist is running around doing what they are doing. And it ends with the player having no idea why they just did everything they did. The whole time, they never actually talk to anything and there is never any sense of purpose to what is happening. No conversations with interesting, quirky folklore characters and no weird child in a fantasy world plot unfolding from level to level. Two things that could have been done, and would of added so much onto the world and the overall experience, but were not. For seven dollars the value is fantastic especially for such an intricate and detailed experience. But it is just so unfortunate that the lack of compelling boss fights and any kind of narrative creates such a giant hole in the experience. Absolutely devastating for a game that had so much potential beyond being more then just a generic indie puzzle platformer, but didn't take the steps to go the full way. If you're interested in finding more games like this I've probably reviewed quite a few on my curator page [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38950844-Anoemalous/] here [/url].