In adapting *Furi*'s first boss fight from a 3D-action battle to a 2D one, Sylph and The Game Bakers trade its original philosophical focus, which explores whether ruthlessness is justice, for a simplified scenario that gets straight to the point of killing the main character's first captor. Killing him still entails engaging with hack-and-slash and bullet-hell phases of the fight, albeit this time around they flow together smoothly, rather than cleanly splitting into separate segments. This increased dynamism comes at the cost of visual clarity and responsiveness no longer having a consistent presence, causing mental fatigue and unfair in-game damage, respectively. *Furi Demake - The Chain* would be a passionate, decent reimagining of the opening from a favorite piece of art of mine if that were the end of its problems. Sadly, it's not. The Game Bakers, who are also the publishers of this game, announced on 05/07 of this year that *Furi Demake - The Chain* would become a paid title after being free since 11/30/2023. They stated that this decision was made to increase its then-limited discoverability as a free title, gauge the amount of interest in it, and then, hopefully, help Sylph develop more boss battles*. I sympathize with a small studio wanting to bring attention to their game in a way that skirts Steam's crappy policies. Nonetheless, making it a priced title after so long is an uncharacteristically capitalistic choice when taking into account that its predecessor had, for example, a piece of paid DLC called *One More Fight* that was eventually made free for all players. *The Chain* could have been managed just as fairly by being made into a demo for a paid version of *Furi Demake*. Instead, it's now a tainted adaptation of a more reputable experience's introduction. *The Game Bakers' announcement regarding *Furi Demake - The Chain*'s change in price can be found on Steam, an announncement that, I should warn, **has a GIF with flashing lights**.
**Warning(s) for: censored language.** Even the really likable *Furi* has inaccessible **** that reeks. Stench of its sort originates from a motion-sickness-triggering effect that activates when hit by the attacks of The Scale, its fourth boss; certain bosses' visual effects that may trigger players who have photosensitive epilepsy; and a lack of fully remappable controls for controller users. Masking its scent to an extent are the options to fully remap keyboard bindings, to automatically complete quick-time events that may otherwise be too painful to deal with for some players, and to turn on its "Invincible Mode," which allows inaccessible battles to be bypassed by skipping them phase by phase. The scent still lingers since these options are half-hearted additions that don't do enough to keep interactivity intact for all players, and even though I really like *Furi*, as well as because of how I do, I will not remain silent and enable its inaccessibility.
I write this post so that future generations may come to know of but another of the 21st century's many tales of woe. It begins with a regrettable oversight of mine: forgetting to close Steam while playing *Enter the Gungeon* through another launcher. Failing to do so causes my PC to switch between recognizing my controller and my mouse and keyboard as my preferred control scheme, a well-known consequence, yet one that comes to pass again, nonetheless. Unwilling to risk facing further misfortune by way of future in-game doom, I close out this Rogue-lite mid-run to see if reopening it will resolve my technical dilemma. To my dismay, doing so leads to me uncovering a new, unspeakable truth. One that, dear reader, you likely already deciphered... I pray that fate will grant mercy to others and leave this cruel twist of it to the confines of my life alone.
Whenever certain actions are done being performed (e.g., healing), bright bursts of light briefly appear around the eponymous character, bothering my eyes. There exists no official option that addresses this issue. And, the only thing that I can think of to address it from my end, lowering this game's brightness, doesn't do anything to resolve it.
I played *Dandara* and found its default controller and mouse-and-keyboard control schemes to be a pain, literally. If more ergonomic control schemes which account for its demand for precision are not going to be designed, then it would at least be good to have remappable controls to see if a player-made scheme can be put together.
