Review of demo as of 2025-09-14

Note: I played the whole game on an Xbox One basic controller. Sometimes the options wouldn’t work until I used a mouse to select one.

The game so far has a LOT of potential. I haven’t played too many games like this (I am reminded of Bastion a bit), but I had a lot of fun. The following review comes from a place of love and constructive criticism. I had a lot of fun and look forward to the finished final product.

Exploration: I love the open exploration, despite being a little confused about where to go next.

Spoiler:
--- Being told to go to the school, then blocked by a bear, blocked by a train, missing a water gun, going back to the block to get a block to get a needle to go to the school was a deep nest. I mean, I figured it out on my own, so it wasn’t impossible. Just really quickly complicated for a tutorial zone.
End Spoiler

Falling off the Edge: If this is just a result of where you are in development, then totally fine, but there were too many pointless places where I could just roll off the edge of the screen and take damage. Outside of the precision platforming parts, where I totally understand and agree with ledges you can fall from (like the rotating puzzle pieces or where you’re getting the train block), this does not add enjoyable difficulty. It is additionally annoying because there are cliffs within the terrain I can’ jump down where I WANT to jump down. With there being hidden treasures buried around the edges of the maps, it’s a cheap gotcha to just fall off the ledge while trying to explore the otherwise beautiful environments.

Aesthetics: Beautiful. I don’t have any complaints or comments with the environments. The enemies designed so far pop from the backgrounds and are very clear. I like the isometric angle

Menu: Clearer highlights and bolding on the options I’m highlighting would help find where I am. Also, I kept getting thrown back to the main menu list while trying to navigate the quick travel map and swapping through upgrade details on a controller. It was almost impossible in the graphics settings menu to see which row I was on when using an Xbox controller. It made a bit more sense when I used a mouse, but I didn’t during my playthrough.

Parrying: I love this and could see it being really fun with a few more options for parrying later in the game. That said, there was no perceivable time advantage when you successfully blocked an enemy’s attack with the umbrella. I was forced to stick to a hit-parry-hit-parry-hit-parry-roll pattern with the cymbal monkey. I kept finding myself wanting a couple advantage frames where I could’ve landed more than one hit.
Movement: My character’s motion all around felt a little sluggish. Turning and attacking feel like they’re a few frames too long to complete. I’d love them both to be a bit quicker. I’d love a side-jump feature when R-Targeting. Somersaulting away when I couldn’t block felt clunky.

Running: Initial Run speed felt sluggishly similar to the walk state (i.e. slow). After my first upgrade, I could very clearly feel the running. That said, is there a stamina gauge? I kept feeling like run would slow down / stop if I held the run button too long, but after I stopped and then started again, I could see the running again.

I don't particularly care for the run button being the same button as somersault, but I could probably and ultimately did get over it. It was annoying in the lily pad part where I had to run but I had to be precise. Speed and precision was not the problem: the rolling off the ledge because I couldn’t start dashing without rolling made it less fun.

Even when the motion blur was turned off, somersaulting does like an impact screen shake or something, and I don’t like that. It made me a little ill.

Pause: Definitely did NOT pause anything. Almost lost a wave battle because of that. Make sure you fix that for the final release ;)