First off, thanks to 'lpslucasps' for his recommendation for this game. He recommended it to me because I liked Wario Land 3, so maybe fellow Wario Land fans will enjoy this one, idk.

Anyway, the only other time I'd ever seen this game was once in a Dunkey video where he brushed over it. It also has a pretty low rating here, which sucks, because this is actually a really good game, dare I say a great one. It's a pretty odd idea: You can only jump in straight lines from ceiling to wall to floor and however else. And yeah, it felt weird initially, but the more you play it the more fun it is. You can tell they really worked on the jumping here, with several small details that make each jump feel right.

The combat is also really good. It's very deliberate due to needing to charge your short-range gun, but extra weapons unlocked along the way change things up really well. I got a decent amount of use out of all of the extra weapons here. No complaints in terms of combat.

Now, this game is indeed a Castleroid, so you may be wondering how it holds up in that regard. Well, let's start with the structure. The game is actually pretty linear. There is inter-area backtracking, but there's few moments where you're asked to travel further than just back out of an area you just explored. You can get get all of the stuff in every area first time through as well. The thing is, this is all probably for the best, considering you couldn't just rush through previous areas the same way you could in a Metroid or Castlevania game.

In terms of upgrades, this is one of my biggest issues with the game. Upgrades either consist of health or special ammo refills, aforementioned extra weapons, items that change the level design or how you interact with it, or experience points that can be used to increase max health, ammo, and how much the refills of each respectively fills. All of these are fine, really. My main issue is that very rarely do these actually mix up the gameplay or add to a feeling of progression. The items that change level design are an interesting idea, but many are just like, 'this platform moves now.' Many of the interesting mechanics don't really extend outside one area either, which was disappointing.

The game also uses the 'oops, you died! Now go to where you died and get your experience back or lose it forever!' system. If this game was less linear this would bother me, but it's fine here since usually I'd be going to the same area anyway. As it was, this only annoyed me a few times.

There's also the story, which was... I dunno, apparently this game was made by Brazilians and is inspired by Brazilian imagery (Which does look really nice, as does the rest of the game), but I don't really know if this actually informed the story in any way. Maybe there's a bunch of cool lore, but most of what I got was a pretty basic anti-establishment story with a few underwhelming 'Ooh, the characters know you respawn!' moments. Thankfully, the story is pretty easily ignored either way, so I can't hold it against the game too much.

It's in between a 7 and 8 out of 10, but I'll give it the benefit for now. It's really good overall and I recommend it to anyone who feels like Castleroids have become a bit too homogenized in nature.