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• Mecha P00

  Jul 12, 2023

  Hard, when I got the achievement for beating stage 3 only 8.2% of people had got it. But this game is very fun and overall pretty well made (Stage 4 mini boss sucks though)
• gamedeal user

  Feb 28, 2021

  This is a fun platformer that you can tell the developer really cared about. However, at this time, the jumping feels very stiff.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 1, 2021

  This game is very close to being a great, polished 16-bit-style platformer, but there are some major quality-of-life issues that render it close to unplayable. I leave this feedback in the hopes that it inspires the developer to make some improvements, because I truly do like the game that Ascii the Brave Cat is aspiring to be. The graphics are colorful and appealing and the overall game design is thoughtful and creative. In a nutshell, the game is too hard, not in a "Nintendo hard" throwback sense, but in a completely unnecessary and frustrating way. I say this as someone who, though I'm no kaizo mario master, finds most retro throwback games like Shovel Knight and Cyber Shadow to be far too easy. Overall, Ascii feels like a game that has only been playtested by the developer, who has first-hand knowledge of what to expect on every level, and not by any actual players. There are jumps that will almost certainly be missed the first time through, enemies that appear out of nowhere that cannot be avoided without memorization (and sometimes still not even then). This would be acceptable and par for the course in a game with generous lives or continues, but Ascii limits players to 3 lives max before game over. I don't mean that the game starts you off with 3 lives; I mean that you can NEVER have more than 3 lives maximum at a time. If you obtain a 1-up and you already have 3 lives, it counts for nothing. (You can collect gems and buy an upgrade that allows you to have 4 lives max, but that's it.) This is beyond absurd for a game that relies so much on trial-and-error experimentation; there are parts where you can accidentally eliminate a crucial platform block and thus create a dead-end, necessitating that you kill yourself and start over. Imagine playing something like I Wanna Be The Guy but you have to start from the beginning after dying three times. I honestly can't think of any other game I've ever played with this severe of a limitation on player lives. There are slot machine bonus games strewn throughout the levels and hitting the jackpot of three 1-ups is nearly always meaningless because of the cap on player's lives. A related problem is the controls. As another reviewer says, the jumping feels stiff. If a lot of retro platformers are too "floaty," Ascii has the opposite problem and feels much too heavy. After every jump you always feel like you've just barely graced the lip of each platform and even the most simple traversal can feel laborious. (I would never have guessed a game that looks as cute and lightweight as this would have my hands cramping as much as it has.) The game offers full controller support but doesn't feel like it has really thought through how it plays with controller vs. keyboard (and a retro platformer like this should be designed with a controller in mind first and foremost!). For instance, there's a ground-pound style move that is crucial for reaching some platformers by bouncing off floating enemies, performed by pressing "down" mid-air. On a D-Pad or analog stick, it's impossible to both hold down and give enough weight left or right to "steer" off of a ground pound's bounce. You'll need to remap one of your shoulder buttons to "down" for it to really work, but you'll want to also keep your regular down button, too, for climbing ladders and navigating menus. Maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal, but to me it exemplifies the additional thought that needs to go into the way the game controls. To their credit, the developer is active and responsive and seems to have an idea of the game's difficulty. They've offered cheat codes in the community board to mitigate some of the game's frustrations. But even these cheats themselves have frustrating and unnecessary limits. They'll "cost" you 500 gems every time, so you'll find yourself grinding for gems just to be able to afford to consistently restore your 2 or 3 available lives after hitting a tricky segment so you can keep progressing in a level without starting all the way over. All in all, I really want to play and enjoy this game. Even after getting frustrated and giving up the first time, I found myself back at it later in the day. However, when I caught myself grinding for gems just to be able to afford enough cheat codes to have a shot at beating the second level, I had to walk away. I only make these criticisms in the hopes that the game is eventually revised into something reasonably accessible. I will happily boot up the game and change my review when this happens. UPDATE 3.3.21 - The developer has very thoughtfully responded to my review and is continuing to work on the game. I'm going to upgrade this to recommended, because I believe it is at heart a fun game and that it will hopefully get even better and more accessible.