I used my Microsoft Rewards points I got from using Bing to get another month of Game Pass, though there are only two games this time I’m really interested in (the rest of the games in my list are maybes). The first was DC League of Super Pets, though that game ended up being overly easy. Seeing and avoiding incoming attacks wasn’t always fair, but your health bar is so large that even if you get hit by damn-near everything in the level, you’ll still reach the end and get at least a B rank. The only time I actually died was against the first boss…because I forgot the game has a dodge mechanic. Also, levels have long stretches of nothing, presumably to justify the speed-up mechanic (hold the A button to fly faster).

As for the other game…

Platformer. Standard left/right movement, but jumps are always a fixed-height (no short hops). You can also wall-jump (both to scale the wall and to do a long-jump away from the wall), but you have to wait for your character to start descending from your fixed-height jump before you’ll actually cling to the wall and be allowed to keep scaling or jump from the wall. Normally, these aren’t huge issues, but when the game starts having more timing-based challenges (like in chapter 5 especially), you’ll soon realize that these not-completely-responsive controls mean you have much, MUCH less time to react to sudden changes than it seems, since you can’t do a short-hop to get just a bit more altitude or wall-jump in the middle of a previous jump despite still being right up against the wall.

One of the first things you’ll notice is that this platformer takes quite a bit from Celeste, not only in which chapter-exclusive gimmicks appear where (chapter 1 has platforms that quickly move on rails when you step on them, chapter 2 has you being chased by an unkillable enemy, the final chapter gives you a mid-air dash, etc.), but also because the difficulty curve here is equally nonexistent. Level design is okay, but the only reason you’ll die more on certain rooms is because they last longer without a checkpoint or because you’re still trying to figure out their gimmick, not because they’re harder. Optional rooms can be more difficult, but this is also partly because the game doesn’t prepare you for what you need to do, making them unintuitive. One optional area in chapter 2 can only be reached if you push the jump button after walking off the platform–blatantly triggering Coyote Time–and an optional room in chapter 3 can only be completed if you figure out that the block launchers keep you on the about-to-be-launched block, even if you jump to an edge of the launcher that’s still sealed shut! The more I learned, the more I decided going back for the optional rooms I overlooked/gave up on wasn’t worth it (doesn’t help that you can only go back to three fixed points in each chapter instead of the exact room with the secret you missed).

Then, you’ll start to notice that the graphics in this precision-platformer aren’t always clear. It starts off simple: in chapter 1, the edge of thorn-covered platforms have the thorns darker and harder to see, which can kill you even if you’re 90% on the moving platform beside the vines. Then, chapter 3 has spike-covered terrain, except some of the spikes are large and stick out quite a bit further than their hitbox, to the point where you obviously have to fall through them to progress. Chapter 5 has a similar issue with its white foam sticking out further than what’ll actually hurt you. In chapter 4, the game introduces a pink flower that acts as a bounce pad…and places them among spikes, so they look more like decorations than something you can actually interact with. EDIT: Also in chapter 4 are wind gusts that you need to jump out of before they crush you against a wall, but parts of the background are white, which can make it easy to lose track of your white character.

Still, the worst parts are the time-limited segments in chapter 5. Not only do you have to deal with the aforementioned control issues, but there’s a baked-in delay for all the launcher gimmicks: the yellow boxes move with you for a bit when you land on them before finally ricocheting, the conveyor belts make you run on them for a bit before jumping will actually launch you forward, and the on-rails blocks move slowly when you step on the blue light, only boosting back to their start point when you jump off. On top of the obvious problem of forced-waiting in a timing-based challenge, this means that if you mess up (like, say, you jump too early on the on-rail block and it reaches the end and stops before your forced-full-jump gets you back on the platform), you often don’t have time for a second attempt before the hazard catches up with you and you die. Worse, the last few timing-based challenges in the chapter introduce hazard sparks that travel along the outline of platforms–which would be fine if they didn’t appear the instant you LAND on the platform, giving you no time to react and sometimes killing you outright if you happen to land on the unindicated spot where they spawn!

Oh, and despite everything, that’s not the final chapter; there’s one more afterward, though it goes back to chapter 2 difficulty. Even the timing segment at the end of the game never comes close to how difficult the chapter 5 segments are.

Overall, this one’s hard to recommend, especially since Steamdb is saying it never goes on any good sales (heck, it apparently got a price hike about a week ago!). If you’re looking for your next Celeste fix and haven’t played Sunblaze yet, definitely do that instead; it’s a better game and has better discounts. The only thing this game does better is story.