An excellent metroidvania in just about every way. Tells a light story, with mystery and intrigue that will keep you curiously engaged until you've seen the finale. NameBrand.

Picked this up lately because I realized my experience in the metroidvania genre was almost exclusive to the Metroid games, which I adore, but I was pleasantly surprised by this game! The collectible weapons and items were fun to use and interesting, the areas were unique in theme and design, and the environmental storytelling was perfectly coated in mystery.

I was really impressed with the "glitch" mechanics... corrupting enemies to make them into some additional variant, was super fun, and getting a new reaction was cool every time. I also think the game glitching out every so often was a nice touch, making me feel like I was playing something forbidden to our reality. Really cool stuff!

The story is serviceable enough, I think more than anything it paves the way for interesting and unique world building exposition, which gets continually built on with little lore notes and small cutscenes throughout the game. I didn't find myself particularly attached to the main character, and while I'm pretty sure the "odd speech" from the machines is intentionally done, it comes of more like I'm playing a game with a bad translation.

The movement in this game feels good enough, traversing the environment calls for a lot of engagement from the player, so learning how to optimize your route through the world helps you feel a bit quicker with each pass. I did find myself quite lost at points, which made me do the thing where I go to every part of the map over and over and over again just to find the one point of entry to the next area that I'm missing... And while I think that's a staple thing of the genre (I did find a lot of power-ups and upgrades because I got lost), It definitely added a few hours onto my playtime that really didn't need to be there. I think had there been just a quest marker or something that would have shown me the right direction (not necessarily the exaction location) to go, that would have incentivized me to explore the map on my own, rather than accidentally exploring the map and feeling relief that I was finally going the right way in the new area. That is my one major critique of this game.

I think a few minor critiques I could say would be: Some of the bosses are really easy (got em on the first try), and some enemy attacks feel absolutely unfair and unavoidable, even with a full arsenal and knowledge of where they are and their move sets... The last thing is, is that I don't really think it pushed the genre in any way... It had unique powers and abilities and mechanics that set it apart, but nothing completely wow'd me like I thought might happen, the way I've heard about this game.

Overall though, I really liked this game! I think it's a perfect embodiment of the original metroidvania formula, and as such I am happy to recommend it to anyone who may be itching for that kind of fix. It doesn't break the bank with your money or your time, and with its options to randomize, become more difficult, and speedrun, I think it definitely has its fair share of value under the hood.

I was very excited because the idea of this game had everything I love:
- Hard Sci-fi
- Pixel Art
- More metroid than vania

But the execution is ok. Traversing the map is not fun, and sometimes is really hard to understand where you need to go.

The weapons are very nice and varied and the gameplay is fun. Overall a solid game, but expected a little bit more

A lone developer's love letter to Metroid ends up being an awe inspiring, yet flawed experience. Here's what this game did right for me.

Art: I don't want to call this category graphics because let's be honest, there's only so much ground to break in the realm of 8-bit graphics. However, the art of this game is fantastic. Each area felt distinct and unique without seeming cheesy. I was very pleased with the artistic presentation of this title.

Music: I have to preface this with the fact that I am a fan of synthwave and retrowave music, so it's no surprise that this soundtrack hit the mark for me. The tracks vacillate between upbeat and energetic to ominous and tense. I was feeling this soundtrack.

Gameplay: Overall, the controls on the Switch port felt tight enough. This may vary from the other platforms, but my experience on the switch was that the d-pad and joystick were plenty responsive. The game is an homage to a classic, and as such largely plays like a more modern version of said classic. I had no complaints with the core gameplay.

Design: This is the part that kept me from scoring this game higher. I also need to put a disclaimer here and say that for this title to be a solo work is absolutely amazing. Tom made a fantastic game that did the source material proud. That doesn't overshadow the glaring issues that the game seems to accumulate as you tread into the deeper waters. The layout of the maps start off feeling quite good, but towards the later areas it starts to seem like we were seemingly putting things wherever. I couldn't understand why sometimes you would go for several frames at the middle area of the game, when it gets the most grindy, without seeing a save room but at the end they start to appear with a frequency that was near baffling. Some of the area design that fell flat with me left me thinking that if there was more than an army of one tackling this title some glaring issues could have been outright avoided. That's not to say it's all bad, just that what might seem like a nag at first quickly establishes itself as a multi-instance issue that just feels like a bad design oversight.

Overall: I loved the game. I want to score it higher, but I just can't despite the background that went in to making it. Sometimes bad design is just that. I heard he's working on a part 2 and I will definitely pick that one up and play it to completion. For a first title I think it's a fantastic accomplishment and a great game overall. The negatives are serious enough to hold it back from being an all-time classic within the genre, but the foundation is strong enough that this franchise could easily head that route. We'll just have to see.

Very good Metroidvania with a lot of super creative and interesting power ups. The pixel art was really good too, especially for the Rusalki (although the main character sprite is nothing special). Unfortunately it's brought down by having to collect power nodes which increase your damage output; this is fine on paper, but if you don't really try to find them bosses (and even regular enemies!) felt much harder than they needed to be, especially with so many of them spamming hard to dodge attacks. It's a Metroid game to play if you've run out of actual Metroid games.