The game describes itself as an action-adventure, but the whole “action” part is very…underdeveloped, and I’m not just saying that because you don’t have combos and stuff like in hack ‘n’ slash games. Each of the game’s four levels only has one enemy type throughout (except the last which just reuses the previous 3 enemies, and not even at the same time), and there’s no level design to make the fights any different from each other. Instead, the game is more focused on its switch-hunts, some of which are so basic they’re basically just padding (instead of “go across the bridge,” it’s “go two steps past the bridge to push a button so you can access the bridge, and then go across”). There are a few brief moments where the game starts to have actual puzzle mechanics, but they all fall victim to the “abandon gimmick before it’s fully explored” trend, some not even making past tutorial difficulty before never being seen again. Worse still is that the game is slow; slow movement can work if the levels are compact, but the game likes to have long paths with either nothing or a single switch-hunt item. This even affects the action parts, since the level 3 enemy type can jump pretty far and pretty fast, while you can only shamble after them (and if they happen to jump at you, that’s damage you won’t be able to avoid or react to).

You’d think bosses would be more on the action side, but the first boss is just more switch-hunts, only now you have to bait the boss to attack certain things to progress. The second boss has more direct attacks (having flasks fall on different points of the arena, even foreshadowed by, well, drop-shadows), but you also don’t fight this boss directly; you just wait until it starts stomping, then you bait it into stomping the gears. The final boss has more projectile-focused attacks, and while I do think it’s the best boss in the game, it’s still pretty basic and another “wait until it’s vulnerable to attack” boss (and once you notice that, you’re not gonna get hit).

Speaking of the final boss, it’d honestly be quicker for me to point out what few moments I liked. The third level’s enemy is a spider that’ll shoot you, and while most of the time you just fight them head-on in flat, empty arenas, there are a couple parts of the game where they’re on separate platforms and you just have to avoid their shots, meaning the game does have some level design here and there. Unfortunately, since they always target you, you can literally just keep moving forward to avoid their shots, resulting in little variety from all the other empty halls in the game. Similarly, the clock-hands in level 3 and the shooting flowers in level 2 are notable as being “when an action-adventure almost had level design,” but the flowers are just used for a quickly-abandoned mirror-reflecting gimmick, and the clock hands are never used with anything else, so you’re just waiting on the slow hand to get around so you can move through without getting hit.

Not recommended.

P.S. There are some optional collectibles in the game, and while I admit I didn’t get all of them, I blame that more on the game not making it clear that they’re there than them being hard to get (many are on what appear to be ordinary split paths, and going the wrong way just has you go forward with the campaign). I was easily able to get all the ones I noticed.