I really wanted to like this game. But there are simply too many tedious and exhausting design elements that negate the positives and suck all the fun out of it. The art is well done. It's pixelated and cutesy. It's fun to look at, your eyes don't get bored. And you constantly get a new thrill from turning the world around and seeing something new. The 2D-3D environment is a neat mechanic. It makes you think of levels in a different way. And then the problems..... Warp gates only work one way. You essentially finish and area and warp back to a hub. The problem is that this game requires more than a little back and forth. You are constantly platforming to get here or there and it gets repetitive real fast. This game really could have used some kind of area select function or at least let you freely warp to areas you got a gold border around so you can cut out some of the trip. The macro puzzles are fine. Push these blocks, turn this crank, etc. But the secret puzzles are often not at all intuitive and require more thinking than a game like this seems to call for. Some would opine that this is "depth". But there is a point where it can get annoying trying to figure out whatever random thing the game is trying to communicate to you through cryptic tetris-like glyphs. I'm not really sure I will make the effort to finish the game. It's a shame because it obviously took a lot of thought and care to make the game. Just a few things slipped through the crack. Unfortunately one of them happened to be endless repetitive platforming through areas you've already beat. And that makes the game a slog just a little too often.
The game can be fun at times. There are a few areas that are really challenging to find the solution. The problem is that most of the time is you repeating things due to the spotty targeting and the character movement. Combined with the slow movement, it feels like it's artificially extending game play length at times. There could be more levels and more variety of things to do within levels. I do feel like I paid too much. This title should be more like $7.99-$9.99 USD. $15 is just too much.
Game acts differently during a chase section than I am seeing it play out on youtube. Prevents me from completing it. Would be easy if it acted like theirs did.
