Very well designed in ways that aren't obvious. "Randomly generated endless runner" is one of the most incandescent red flags in existence, but the game itself generally leans far enough into its strengths.
Each level is a handful of prefab obstacles strewn in a line as conducted by the seed of your save file. It attempts to keep a sense of theming by isolating new mechanics to individual acts in the world map, lending a very clear and deliberate sense of progression and escalation of difficulty, but it just can't help but be dragged down by the completely random nature of its design - destroying the flow, potentially placing the easiest obstacles in the pack after some of the hardest. The game at its best is constantly reinventing itself with a plethora of absolutely ingenious design decisions and obstacles that make the always-moving endless-runner aspect feel less like a mobile game necessity and more a very cognizantly respected direction for the levels to follow.
My personal patience for trial and error has waned over the years. Any game that has me being able to die- respawn-die-respawn with the haste of, say, Hotline Miami, absolutely never leaves me feeling satisfied to have eventually overcome the trial. It's like growing callused after punching the brick wall of the level. I slowly chip away at the challenge, bit-by-bit progressing through trial and error, but the callus forms and I unfeelingly break through the goal. The reward of hard work, but an endpoint I'd assuredly have gotten to anyway by grinding away for the time anyway. I've never quite been able to put my finger on why this type of thing doesn't feel satisfying to me any more, but "callus" feels about right. Expect to die a lot in SMBF, and not often for reasons that were telegraphed to you very well. This is a game of running headfirst and blindly into obstacles you can't predict, the satisfaction comes (I guess) from memorisation. That Boshy shit.
Oh well, the game's good. The production values are kind of insane and if you have the patience, go for it.
Each level is a handful of prefab obstacles strewn in a line as conducted by the seed of your save file. It attempts to keep a sense of theming by isolating new mechanics to individual acts in the world map, lending a very clear and deliberate sense of progression and escalation of difficulty, but it just can't help but be dragged down by the completely random nature of its design - destroying the flow, potentially placing the easiest obstacles in the pack after some of the hardest. The game at its best is constantly reinventing itself with a plethora of absolutely ingenious design decisions and obstacles that make the always-moving endless-runner aspect feel less like a mobile game necessity and more a very cognizantly respected direction for the levels to follow.
My personal patience for trial and error has waned over the years. Any game that has me being able to die- respawn-die-respawn with the haste of, say, Hotline Miami, absolutely never leaves me feeling satisfied to have eventually overcome the trial. It's like growing callused after punching the brick wall of the level. I slowly chip away at the challenge, bit-by-bit progressing through trial and error, but the callus forms and I unfeelingly break through the goal. The reward of hard work, but an endpoint I'd assuredly have gotten to anyway by grinding away for the time anyway. I've never quite been able to put my finger on why this type of thing doesn't feel satisfying to me any more, but "callus" feels about right. Expect to die a lot in SMBF, and not often for reasons that were telegraphed to you very well. This is a game of running headfirst and blindly into obstacles you can't predict, the satisfaction comes (I guess) from memorisation. That Boshy shit.
Oh well, the game's good. The production values are kind of insane and if you have the patience, go for it.