Deneb: Across the Stars
released on Sep 12, 2022
“Deneb: Across the Stars” is a mouse only, top-down, hardcore-platformer. Astronaut Vega crosses the stars to find her lost colleague Altair and save the dogs. Move carefully. A single mistake can lead to an endless fall.
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In the same vein as games like Jump King, this one features a vertical level design but with the caveat that the precision comes from the mouse instead. As a result, very subtle or unvoluntary movements such as twitches can lead you to re-do quite a bunch. Nonetheless, the to be rescued space doggos, the pixel art and the sole tranquil track make up for it.
Preemptive rating, gotta say I'm a little torn on agreeing with user steveRobo. I love platformers that challenge expectations of the typical platformer fan, many look at stuff like Spyro or maybe Chameleon Twist as 3D platformers that do stuff a bit differently, however most of those comparisons are tame; the most platformers tend to do is animate or convey a jump differently. This game goes farther, trying a control scheme that feels born straight out of the Flash games era from the early-mid 00s; but the difficulty curve in this is ridiculous and basically throws the player into 1-2 second tight sections almost from the get-go with an unbelievably awkward control scheme. A mouse control scheme for a platformer worked in something like Getting Over It, because it mostly made sense since you're moving a sledgehammer relatively; in this it feels like you're trying to pull something along on a string; but your center is constantly shifting because it's a goddamn mouse. The game not even having arrow navigation for menus is a little annoying too. Good presentation though, the music was very nice to just zone out to at one point.