Sunblaze

I hate to be the bearer of bad vibes and totally repudiate people's favored opinion of this brave platformer...but I just couldn't get into it. It was on sale, I like platformers, and the female protagonist sold it. But it's just unjust. It's not fun to progress in the game. The scale makes it hard to feel like you've managed to accomplish anything. Unlike most platformers, it doesn't tailor the experience of experimentation. It adds a lot of hard levels instead with unclear solutions. I felt that the gameplay was trying to make up for the weak story. Not that I need a lot. It's a platformer after all. But the blood, the filter on screen and the very mundane dialogue felt like I was reading someone's thoughts instead of actual characters. Very hard to believe. It reminds of when I tried to 100% Hotline Miami, I couldn't do it on my own. I watched the guides and re-enacted it to get the achievement. That was not a fun memory, and I don't intend on return to Sunblaze anytime soon. Sorry guys, it just wasn't worth it for me.

I never thought much about the term casual but for this review I will be using the meaning in that anyone who plays up to completing the main story. For casual players I'd rate the game a 10/10. For anyone else I can do no better than an 8/10. The main reason for this is that the game is rather forgiving but only if you treat it as a puzzle platformer. The game gives you an instant death if you make a mistake but spawns you at the level where you died and you don't lose progress. You can also quit at any time or revisit levels that you have already completed. When played as a casual game it respects your time. Also, I must give high praise that this game does not have achievements related to the amount of times that you die. For one, dying is not an achievement and secondly if you plan on playing this game then you must not be afraid to die and achievements tied to deaths would teach the player otherwise. Now, if you want to play the "Hard" levels or wish to go speedrunning it ceases to respect your time. You should be aware of this. The biggest issue for me is when a game has got issues where the player dies or fails not because of mistakes made by said individual but because of game design. For example, in Chapter 5, levels 42 and 44 there are times when Sunblaze gets stuck inside of the starting platform and cause you to miss your opening jump. This is not that big of a deal for a casual run but if you are speedrunning then this can mess up your entire run. Level 104 of "The Lost Levels" had me confused as Josie did not appear on screen and a block fell out of the sky as soon as the level loaded. I could not replicate this but I did often "transition" into the level in front of an obstacle when I should be starting behind it and as a result fall to my death. For those thinking of doing a completionist run, I must warn you that the HowLongToBeat times at present (17.5 hours) for completionist are terribly off. The old completionist times were 70-80 hours.

This game provisde a lot of option, remap and cheat (they call accessibility), it's very well. I'm not a big fan of this stage rush game, but this game gave me the experience few years ago, the game felling like the time when I was school, simple fun, not too hard but needs some operations, the control, moving and enviroment settings are very CLASSICAL, very famillier. The restart processed very fast, save a lot of time, the tempo is standard to this type of game. I like this.

I've ran it in a few different Debian based Linux distributions. It works perfectly in Heroic Games Launcher running Proton. Great writing with replay-ability make for a excellent combo that will keep you hooked and coming back for more. The soundtrack is pretty sweet too. Reminds me when I was a kid in the mid 90's but with a modern controller!

It has really cute and well done pixel art graphics. Story is kinda soft and soyish. Music is bad and repetitive. Gameplay is heavier than games like SMB. Apart from that it's does what it is supposed to do and depends if you're into that kind of games. The difference with Super Meat Boy is that the ambiance was so good it pushed me to persevere even if it was really punishing. Here I really didn't feel like it.