Never played the originals, or even the 2.5D sequel from a few years ago, but this one seems like a promising 3D platformer. My only concerns are that the ball form is kinda hard to control and that level 3 doesn't do a great job of letting you know ahead of time that the only way to cross the bridge in time is by using the ball form's extra speed, so I ended up having to redo that segment.

Kinda like Steamworld Dig where you have to dig for materials and head back to the surface to unload them while also avoiding the occasional spike or enemy. Not sure I'd buy a full version of this, but the demo is okay.

Level design is pretty simple, but again, not bad for the price of free. The motorcycle skeleton boss is pretty tedious if you try to avoid damage, but goes down pretty quick if you tank a hit or two to get multiple hits in yourself.

Oh hey look, another Celeste clone. If you leave a room too soon after collecting a Yin-Yang symbol, it doesn't actually count as being collected, and if you're too close to a teardrop when you dash, it won't actually give you another dash like it's supposed to, but everything else worked fine.

Solid fixed-camera 3D platformer, but there was one optional left-to-right segment with forward/backward-moving platforms where the camera was too low for you to judge their depth properly, making it much harder than it otherwise would have been. Levels are fairly linear, not unlike Super Mario 3D World, but it still has collectathon elements with the candies, and the demo doesn't give clues or unlock alternate starting positions for players who beat a level and want to go back for any candies they missed.

Between the lengthy cooldown your powers have and how long it takes for that one character's amulet to activate mechanisms, this game is REALLY slow at first. However, if you stick with it, the levels start being designed more around these elements so their sluggish nature isn't as big a problem.

A metroidvania that tries to have both real time shooting combat and Undertale-style turn-based combat. As you might expect, those genres don't exactly blend well with each other, so you'd need to be able to enjoy both gameplay styles separately to appreciate this game. I also had some control issues, but according to the game's announcements, many of those issues have been fixed.

The emphasis on speed definitely gives this game a different feel than the first game had. Jumping also felt shorter, and I think that's a combination of the camera being zoomed out more and the level design encouraging charged jumps, which ironically kills the intended fast pace since you have to hold the down button for a second to charge it. Levels still have three coins, but the HUD also displays a white square that I was never able to figure out what it was for; my best guess is that you get a stamp there for beating the level fast enough, but I'm not doing that. Also, apparently, one of the demo's two levels is gonna be exclusive to the demo and not in the full game, which is…a choice.

Decent controls and solid level design, but no stage select, so if you skip a collectible, you've missed it permanently. Also, the cyan hexagons that are supposed to let you keep jumping in midair can sometimes be finicky and not work when it looks like they should've.

This game shakes up the Celeste formula by also making you pick up boxes and throw them onto switches to open the path forward. Plus, the boss's chase sequence is broken up by fixed-position rooms where you actually have to go hit a switch or something while avoiding the boss's projectiles, though it's kinda cheap where the path opens up, but the game won't let you go forward, and then suddenly the boss zooms across the screen into that path (even though it just got shown retreating into that path), so you'll get hit and die if you're already there trying to progress.

The first GB Studio platformer I actually had some fun with, though it was still pretty easy, and it wouldn't surprise me if the full game just stalls out and spins its wheels after this.

The first boss was kinda cheap at times, and the demo ended right before the second boss, but the level design was pretty good, utilizing its color-switching mechanic and grapple ability well. I probably would've bought this game in the current winter sale if not for my backlog ballooning from free games over the past couple months.

A promising platformer, though I'm a bit concerned about its approach to puzzle elements since the hub area at the demo's end has a blocked off area that is NOT opened by pushing switches that correspond to the three numbers a few levels prior.

The graphics can make it kinda hard to tell what's where, and the jumping mechanic is a bit too physics-based, but if you can get past that, the demo isn't too bad.

A simple platformer (so simple that you always jump the same height no matter how long you hold the jump button), but it has a fair bit of challenge in it. I did have some trouble when trying to wall jump away from walls, though.

An okay platformer where you can also rotate the room 90 degrees. The only "puzzle" elements are the fact that everything is monochrome, so you'll sometimes have to look around for a bit to figure out where the safe spots will be after rotating the room.

Almost skipped this one because the mouse-over preview didn't show any actual platforming; I had to click it to open its store page and watch the full trailer to see that. This one lets you flip gravity, even in midair after jumping, but you have to collect an item to flip gravity again before landing. No enemies, but it does have moving spikes, which might make it too dynamic to be a pure Celeste clone, but the full game could still easily head down that road anyway. Also, the intro scene is kinda slow.

A decent first-person 3D platformer, though I'm not too keen on the standard running mechanic being replaced by bunny-hopping; it's kinda gimmicky and doesn't exactly improve the experience. Also, I'm pretty sure the game never tells you that you can double-jump, which changes things.

A Metroidvania with level design that can be a bit too simple at times, but it shows promise and the boss is okay. Plus, it has some good humor.

An okay 3D collectathon. Something neat it does that I haven't seen another game do is that you can simply walk away from NPCs mid conversation to cut the cutscene early, but if you talk to them again, it picks up right where you left off. Unfortunately, this means if there are enemies nearby that you didn't notice, you can get attacked mid-conversation and end up missing that line until you manually finish the cutscene and talk to the NPC again. Also, you don't actually get the ability to collect the Stamps until you bypass seven of them and speak to the postmaster.

Level design is kinda flat with the occasional cheap pitfall trap, but is otherwise not too bad. Enemies can be damage sponges, but the only time I remember having to fight one was the world 1 boss, so you can just jump over the rest. I didn't like how the optional level in world 1 was just a harder version of the world 1 boss, though, so I skipped that level. It was also kinda annoying having to backtrack to that one NPC each time you pick up a single mana globule for the first few levels, but the levels themselves are designed so that you never have to do too much backtracking as a result of this mechanic (such as how the NPC in question shows up again in later parts of each level).

A solid 3D platformer where you can only perform your 3d-Sonic-the-Hedgehog-style homing dash attack by pushing the correct button in rhythm. Only things I didn't like was that level 3 could sometimes be a bit confusing as to where you needed to go, and the boss makes you wait 8 seconds between each of its six phases, which is too much waiting. Hopefully, at least that last one will be fixed in an update.

Although many rooms make you kill all enemies to open the door to the next room, the game is still fast-paced and fluid since all enemies die in one hit and you attack by dashing (which can be done in multiple directions, not just horizontally). Disappointingly, it ends in a chase sequence instead of a boss, and the chase itself is kinda long and easy, but the demo is still pretty fun overall.

Tapping the jump button keeps you flying upward, but you have limited stamina and no stamina meter to show exactly how much is left, just your character flashing red when it gets low. Level design is decent, but some levels can go on for too long without a checkpoint. The boss is also a notable drop in difficulty.

A 10 Second Ninja clone. Moment-to-moment gameplay is responsive and fast paced, but end-of-level rankings could be streamlined a bit, and there's no full-level preview before starting a level.

Fast-paced momentum platformer where you can shoot away from the direction you're moving to boost your momentum further (no enemies to shoot at, IIRC). Sometimes, you end up moving too fast to have time to react to what's coming, but levels are short and respawns are quick, so it's not too big a problem. Each world introduces a new gimmick, so the full game could end up being kinda gimmicky.

Yet another decent platformer. Some minor things every now and then didn't quite work, but it's pretty good overall.

I can't help but feel that the full game will be another one of those where you'll have to beat the whole game with a limited set of lives/continues. The demo is fine, though, even having short challenge missions that do save your progress on a level-by-level basis.

An okay Shmup, though the camera-twisting can be a bit disorienting. Bosses are designed around being not-damage-spongy when you don't have any bombs, but this also means they go down pretty quick if you even use just one bomb.

Another continue-limited Touhou clone. There's always a couple of these that show up each Next Fest, but unlike the demo for CORA, I actually made it to the end of this one instead of losing all my lives/continues and getting sent back to the beginning, so this is the demo that gets my recommendation. Still, the knowledge that this same thing could happen in the full game is what prevents me from buying them.

This game is basically a boss rush of Touhou-style bosses, but it makes each boss phase its own level, each death only makes you redo that specific phase/level, and clearing the phase saves your progress so you don't have to beat the game (or even that boss) in one sitting. There's even a stage select so you can retry specific phases without starting the game over, and you even get a different-colored stamp if you beat a phase without using your equipped defensive item. Plus, it has quite a bit of content for a free demo. Heck, the different difficulties are actually meaningfully different with alternate shot patterns instead of just giving the bosses more HP or making them faster! Sure, the whole game is just boss phases instead of having any normal Shmup/Bullet-Hell levels, but ever since I realized how so many Shmups are stuck with that outdated 1980s mentality of limiting lives/continues and forcing a total restart if you lose them all, I'll always praise a Shmup that does the bare minimum of having proper save points.

Still, as much as I like this demo, there are some downsides. First, each world (or "day" as the game calls them) ends with a level that just makes you go through all the world's individual-phase levels in a row, defeating the entire reason why I like the game. Thankfully, though, those levels are optional, at least in the demo (in fact, you don't even have to beat all the individual-phase levels to unlock the next world). Next, the difficulty starts at easy, and although the banner at the bottom says to push L+B to change the difficulty, this doesn't work. I played through almost the entire demo on Easy before I finally figured out how you actually change the difficulty: hold LB and push RT! The game is well-made enough that I still replayed on increasingly higher difficulties and mostly enjoyed my time doing so, but I started noticing some cracks in the facade as I did: when replaying on Normal, I noticed that bosses would often have more health than they needed, so the bullet pattern would loop multiple times and start getting repetitive before they finally went down. On Hard, I noticed that the game freezing on death doesn't actually help you figure out what killed you like I initially thought because not only does the game keep going for a split second after death before freezing (so you can end up overlayed on a completely different bullet and get mislead on how you died), but the specific bullet that kills you DISAPPEARS! I like challenge, but being able to figure out where I went wrong on death is kinda crucial to make the challenge enjoyable. Finally, on Lunatic difficulty, I figured out the real reason the bullet hell genre is so notoriously difficult to get into: the small light on your character that indicates the location of your hitbox…doesn't indicate the size of your hitbox, which is actually way smaller than even that small circle. There isn't even a smaller circle within it to indicate your actual hitbox's size; you just kinda have to figure that out yourself while getting swarmed with bullets whose gaps are less than 1/6th the width of your already-small hitbox indicator. Between this and the issues I noticed in previous difficulties, there were three phases I just gave up on in Lunatic difficulty (1-6, 2-5, and 3-6).

That said, I still highly recommend playing this demo on Easy or Normal, at least.

The moment-to-moment gameplay is pretty good, except for that one part where I had to fight a bunch of sheep while surrounded by TVs; that part was repetitive and boring. I'm also not too keen on the fact that it's a roguelite, but it has a precursor that's a normal twinstick, and that game's demo is also pretty good (though its levels always loop before you can get enough gems to progress).

The small early levels made me think I could only move pipes one space at a time, but once I realized that wasn't the case, I had some fun.

The sequel to Cosmic Express that also improves on it since while it still has a new mechanic in each world along with a generally low difficulty, previous worlds' mechanics continue to be used in later worlds. Also, there were a few pretty tricky puzzles in the demo, so it's an improvement on that front as well.

This is one of those games where you have to navigate a level using a Chess knight's movements. I can definitely see the subgenre getting old if you've played a bunch of them already, but for this one in particular, I found it to have decently tricky puzzles without getting too obtuse too quickly.

This one has some tricky puzzles, but it can also be gimmicky at times, which doesn't bode well for the full game.

An Advance Wars clone where you can buy and customize special units in advance, then take one or two with you into missions (you can't buy more during missions like you can with regular units). If a special unit gets defeated, it's unavailable for a few missions.

Despite visual similarities to the GBA Fire Emblem games, this one does NOT have hit-chances, which automatically makes its gameplay better. It does have dice that can give you or the enemy +1 ATK/DEF, so there is still a bit of randomness, unfortunately. It also has this weird turn-order system where you can pick any one of your units to move, but after moving that one, one of the enemies gets to move, and then you pick one of your unmoved units, and the cycle keeps going until all of one side has moved, at which point the other side gets to move all the rest of its units one after the other; only then does the turn end and both sides get access to all their units again. Also, the grass biome has some tiles that looked walkable but were actually walls, which annoyed me.

A hybrid Hack 'n' Slash/Shmup, not unlike Nier, though I feel this demo is a bit heavier on the hack 'n' slash side of things (projectiles don't really show up outside the tutorial and the one boss fight). There's also a bit of platforming, but the jumping controls felt kinda off.

This one's not technically a twin-stick shooter since you have to go pick up your dice before you can throw it again to attack enemies, but it is a roguelite, which is always frustrating. Still, I had some fun with it, and if you like card games, it also includes a slight variation on Solitaire, completely optional and separate from the main game.

A Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker clone. The boss is annoying since there are moments where it'll abruptly become invulnerable so it can slowly hop to the center and do a scripted attack that takes too long, but the rest of the demo is okay.

Roguelite turn-based tactics. You have your standard normal attacks and resource-consuming attacks (though ranged abilities can only be used in the four cardinal directions, which can be annoying at times), but what sets this apart is that the further you move in one turn, the more dodge-points you accumulate, which reduces damage taken the same way staying on a shield/cover tile would. This means that you'll sometimes be able to take no damage from attacks if you can get your combined dodge and cover high enough. It's a unique mechanic that's executed well. Plus, there's no miss-chances or fog-of-war, so you can focus on the main tactical gameplay.

In fact, a lot of the individual components of the game are well made; my main issue is that it's a roguelite. Besides new team members (whose unlock requirements pretty much demand you to beat the game first anyway), the only permanent unlocks you get are the chance for new upgrades to show up during future runs; other than that negligible detail, a single failed mission makes you lose all your progress, forcing you to start the entire 5-8 hour campaign over from scratch. Plus, like you'd expect from a game without fixed progression, the difficulty curve isn't too great, either: on my first run, I got wrecked by a tower miniboss on the third level, and on my second run, I never encountered a single miniboss at all--and that was the run where I beat the game. There were "survival" missions in the late game where I managed to defeat all the enemies and just had to wait for the turn counter to run out, in contrast to the early game where I actually had to survive for the set amount of turns.

However, the worst part was when I finally beat the final boss, only for him escape and the game to cut back to the base without any kind of epilogue or staff roll. Turns out (according to this reddit post at least), the only way to reach the actual ending is to do FOUR MORE RUNS, with each unlocking exactly one new boss fight that wasn't available before. Yeah, I'm not doing all that. If that's what it takes to truly beat this game, then I give up.

Overall, this has the makings of a solid tactics title, and it deserved better than being a roguelite. I wouldn't recommend trying to get 100%, but if you're okay with just finishing one run, I'd say wait for a good sale.

Platformer. Left stick moves, A double-jumps (though the second jump isn't nearly as high and it also kills your forward momentum), X does a spinning attack that not only hits enemies and objects around you, but it doesn't lock or interrupt your movement like so many other games. Bosses even have checkpoints between each time they allow you to deal damage to them, which I greatly appreciate after having to play wait-to-attack bosses in one-hit-death games that don't do this. That said, the game can be a bit gimmicky with how spread out the introductions of each mask power and new character are, as well as how underutilized they tend to be. Heck, the side characters often don't even get full levels to themselves for their limited appearances, with the levels' second halves switching back to Crash/Coco for a harder version of one of the main levels (and exactly how much harder they are varies greatly, from "way harder" to "almost no changes"). Still, level design as a whole is pretty good for the most part.

There were a few moments where it felt like enemy hitboxes were too big and I died from hitting the space beside them, but the bigger issue for me is that checkpoints are sometimes spaced about twice as far apart as they should be. Keep in mind that this is a one-hit-death game, so there's no pretending that this would increase the difficulty; all it does is make the game more tedious by forcing you redo a bunch of stuff you've already cleared before you can retry the part where you died. If there's one trend I really hate about modern games, it's this. I remember seeing the video of the Celeste dev talking at GDC where he tried acting like this was a valid way to design games and would actually make the game harder, and even back then, I remember thinking to myself "No, you're wrong; stop using your platform to make games worse." But lo, Celeste made a lot of money, so the industry blindly follows without thinking about whether its success was because of certain details or despite them.

Plus, you can tell the devs/publisher truly believed that fewer checkpoints was real difficulty because if you trigger the built-in dynamic difficulty by dying enough times, one of the things that changes is an extra checkpoint is placed where there should have been one from the beginning. The other thing that changes is you start with an extra hit before you die, which sometimes makes the game easier, but other times has no effect due to the section's hazards all being instakill stuff like pits. Still, I would have preferred a way to toggle off dynamic difficulty and just make the extra checkpoints permanent from the start.

However, the game is at its worst with how it handles optional stuff. For example, I'd always try to break all the crates in each level, but out of all the main levels, I only managed to do it in one of them (the second level); for all the others, the game would keep telling me that I missed a few somewhere, even when I was confident I'd checked everywhere. On top of this, there are bonus platforms in many levels that'll take you to a short, optional challenge segment (which of course has its own set of crates that count to the level's total). The early ones are decent challenges, but for a few of the late-game ones, I couldn't even figure out what actions the game expected me to do to get through the segment at all, let alone get through while breaking all the crates. Turns out, the tutorials really don't tell you all the controls or mechanics: it isn't until world 6 where the level design shows you that sliding off a platform keeps you hovering in midair until the slide is over, and the game never tells you about the Triple Spin until AFTER YOU BEAT THE GAME. Who knows what other mechanics those bonus segments require that I missed entirely?

And that's just for breaking all the crates. The game also has a set of short, optional levels called Flashback Tapes that you can only unlock by reaching a certain point in each level without dying (so again, more tedium). I only unlocked four of them legitimately, with the rest being accessed by using the Everything Unlocked mod, and ironically, many of these levels are better designed than the main levels. No enemies means no hitbox issues (challenge is still there due to pitfalls, timed blocks, and exploding TNT/Nitro crates), their shorter length means dying doesn't usually make you redo too much, and their linear 2D nature makes it harder to miss crates, so I even managed to get 100% in most of those levels. Unfortunately, when these levels falter, they falter hard. The timed blocks are fine when you're running against the clock, but then the game also sometimes makes you wait for them to disappear, so if you're having trouble on a segment after the waiting but before the checkpoint, you have to redo that waiting each time. This is so much worse than redoing segments in the main game because not only is it boring to have to do all that waiting each time, but Flashback Tapes don't have any grace checkpoints to alleviate the tedium if you die too much. Oh, but the waiting isn't limited to timed blocks; this also includes waiting on fruit-crates to break (they take five jumps) and Flashback-Tape-exclusive bounce-crates to transform into destructible Nitro crates (three jumps for each one). Almost every Flashback Tape where I didn't break 100% of the boxes, it was because I got tired of waiting on the same stuff over and over in order to regain my progress. The only exception was the final tape, which I gave up on entirely because it demanded way too much precision compared to what the controls reliably allow you to do: you have to land on the edge of a bounce-crate while moving away from the spring so you don't die to the Nitro Crate above you, then pull back and do the same thing again for the bounce-crate/Nitro-crate combo above it. I'd sometimes manage the first, but I could never do it twice in a row.

And then there are the four colored gems. The Everything Unlocked mod doesn't actually unlock the gem platforms, so you have to get the gems yourself if you want to unlock those segments, but when I looked up how to get them, it was bad-Adventure-game levels of "how was I supposed to figure that out?" and since I'd already given up on the final Flashback Tape, I just didn't bother with the gems at all.

Overall, I definitely wouldn't recommend trying to get 100% on this game, but if you're okay with simply beating games and skipping the optional stuff, wait for a good sale.

I didn't really notice this until my brother made an off-hand comment about a year ago, but there's been a new subgenre of 2D plaformer for some time now: Celeste-clones. These are distinguished from ordinary 2D platformers by having no real enemies or combat of any kind, with challenge based pretty much entirely on avoiding pits/spikes and with chase sequences instead of boss fights. Also, while they start with a decent amount of challenge, they also don't have much of a difficulty curve, just like their patron game. Sure, Celeste does a lot right, so these games usually won't be too bad, but because they also blindly copy its formula without really thinking about what worked and what didn't, they also inevitably copy some of the problems Celeste had, so they can never be better than just okay.

Between all these games copying both the general formula for Celeste as well as its lack of a difficulty curve, they all start to feel the same--not just within themselves, but also as each other, and this game is no exception. The main gimmick this game does to try to stand out is that pushing RT pokes the ground with your stick, which causes you to jump higher than a regular A-button-jump on solid ground but will stick you to red-cushion ground so you can launch yourself left/right, but this isn't enough to give the game its own identity; ultimately, it just got me confused sometimes where I'd accidentally push one button when I meant to do the other button's action and I'd get killed because of it.

Another way this game tries and fails to set itself apart from Celeste is by giving you new abilities that you can take back to previous areas to get collectibles you missed. The problem here is that this game isn't a metroidvania; it's a very linear Celeste clone, and it misses the point of why Celeste doesn't let the player take the double-dash into other levels: to help showcase that all optional collectibles can be obtained the first time you see them. No matter how hard it is to get that strawberry, you can get it with the knowledge the game has given you beforehand. In contrast, if you're having trouble getting a golden music note, it can sometimes seem like there's no way you can get it at all…because there isn't; you HAVE to bypass and backtrack for it after getting another ability. Sometimes, the game has an optional room in a split path, and in those cases, it'll even display a message explicitly telling you that you have to come back later:

As for the backtracking itself, the game does give you a fast-travel ability you can do by pushing X, but each section only has three fast-travel locations at best, so you'd still have to replay a bunch of rooms you already got everything in before you can try to get the golden notes you missed. Sure, it's better than Celeste having zero fast travel points, but it's a downgrade from Super Meat Boy letting you go directly back to the level with the warp zone you passed up. Oh, how quickly people forget the past…

By the way, even though I took the time to get around 2/3rds of the golden notes, I still beat the game in only around 2 hours and 30 minutes (not much longer than the Steam refund window), so on top of the game not really having much of a difficulty curve, it's also quite light on content.

Overall, it's not a bad game, but it's very much not worth $20 USD. Play the original, free version, play the free demo for this version, but the full game? Even if it were half price, I'd say wait for a sale.

Fast-paced Hack 'n' Slash with slow, Shmup-influenced enemy projectiles. I've never been a big fan of the hack 'n' slash genre, but having movement-based challenges instead of reaction-based ones combined with enemies only taking a few hits to die really helped this to be an enjoyable experience for me. Granted, it's not always enough to encourage fighting enemies when the game doesn't go into lockdown and force you to, but even running away still results in some challenge since you have to avoid all the bullets being shot at you (it may even be harder to run away in some cases).

The game is somewhat nonlinear. Not only does the map have many winding, interconnected paths, but quite a few of the areas and bosses can be tackled in any order (though there are a few progression upgrades you'll need to access certain places). The downside of this is that it can be hard to figure out which path is forward and which path leads to an optional upgrade, so you'll sometimes find yourself teleporting back to the previous respawn/fast-travel-point to see what's in the other direction.

If I had to say one problem with the game, it's that not all attacks have sufficient warning. For example, the Shmup elements sometimes don't account for the fact that this is a hack 'n' slash: you're often gonna be right next to the enemy/boss to attack them, yet bullets appear and move immediately. And sure, some attacks have red !s pop up to warn you, but others seem deliberately designed to trick you, like how some enemies shoot immediately after landing from a jump despite most enemies just having normal, non-shooting jumps. The worst example is probably the boss Grief: it tries to incorporate your recently-acquired digging ability into a boss fight, but there's no spot to dig in the boss arena at first. What the game does is subtly spawn a dig spot during one of the boss's attacks that spawns thick crowds of spikes across the arena, then its next attack hits the whole stage, so you only have a couple seconds to 1) realize it's even there in the first place since it's graphic isn't all that stand-out, and 2) perform the jump+ground-pound move wherever it spawned to get to safety. Even after you know what to do, it can be a bit challenging, but going in blind, it's quite a cheap hit.

…and if I had to say two problems with the game, it's that postgame super isn't worth it. I tried it since there weren't many other Game Pass games I was interested in, but it just reinforced my decision not to do other games' postgames. Not only does the game suddenly take a turn into arbitrary riddle territory just to gain access, but even after you figure out how to light the cat statues, you still have to find the upgrades needed to light each statue in the first place, and without a walkthrough, that's it's own aimless chore. Plus, the postgame itself is pretty bland and disappointing: the entirety of it consists of 1) a quiz about different story/gameplay details, some of which are rather obscure and easily missed/forgotten (you have to fight six enemies for each question you get wrong), 2) a series of lockdown battles ending with one that's way too long--easily 8+ waves (it's not even in the top 5 hardest lockdown battles in the game; it's just pointlessly long for no reason), and 3) yet more basic platforming across crumbling blocks that isn't meaningfully different than the jumps the game has already been making you do (the enemies here don't even shoot at you, so it's honestly easier). Plus, the cutscene you get after finishing those segments is rather disappointing. The dialogue fits the characters, but it's short and nothing really meaningful or even funny happens.

Wait for a sale.

Solid Donkey Kong Country clone that also does a couple unique things to stand apart. Small issue is that if you don't already know from prior Donkey Kong experience that you can jump mid-air after rolling off a cliff, that one enemy in the waterfall level is absolutely not enough to teach you about it (but then again, I don't think that specific maneuver is required). Another issue is that the bramble level (unlocked after getting 100%) is WAY too much of a difficulty spike that also simultaneously requires you to learn new mechanics and pull them off with precision; I actually gave up because I was convinced a certain part of the level wasn't working right. Still, the rest of the demo was enjoyable, and the devs did promise to build up to that level of difficulty better, for what it's worth.

Once you get past the tutorial, the entire demo consists of just four very short levels, like <1 minute short (and there are some story moments like a choice that you can immediately go back and change to unlock the other path). Those levels were fine, though.

Not much platforming in this platformer at first, and it's easy to forget you can double-jump off of certain projectiles by the time you first need to do it (and lockdown/enemy-wave rooms are always a pet peeve of mine), but the demo does pick up a bit afterward. Fine for free, but not sure I'd pay for a full game of this.

This one leans a bit too far towards atmospheric hallways, but when it does have some actual platformer challenge, it's not half bad.

The game has a bad tendency to put optional items in areas you either can't reach or won't learn how to reach until later (including requiring items that aren't in the demo), but the level design is okay and the bullet-controlling gimmick is pretty fun. Side note: apparently, they redubbed the voices from the original anime, yet the voice acting here is kinda bad.

Decent platforming challenge and backtracking that is actually meaningfully different when going the other way. Only real issue is that jumping felt slightly too quick and ball-form jumping could be a bit finicky sometimes.

Enemy attacks can be iffy, but other than that, the level design is okay, even when taking account branching/looping paths when you need to look for collectibles to progress.

Despite what its description might lead you to believe, the game is actually an open-world take on the Super Meat Boy formula, and you never NEED to use the death platforms despite them being the main selling point (with the game even having a dedicated suicide button so you can make mid-air platforms). Level design also isn't too bad, though checkpoints might be a bit too far apart.

Despite only having two enemy types in the whole demo, the game still manages to have solid Metroidvania level design and fair challenges. It did bother me that enemies could only be stunned, not killed, and a couple lines of text could use some clarification, but it's still enjoyable overall.

Jumping physics feel a bit off in this Celeste clone, but it doesn't take long to get used to it. After a bit, you'll get the ability to grapple blocks, but the game never tells you it won't work on single-tile platforms, which threw me off, but overall, it's worth trying the demo since it's free.

The limited ammo/reloading mechanic and the Dark-Souls-style "hold button for long enough to use healing item" mechanic are two of my biggest pet peeves in all of gaming, but the level design is solid enough that I can recommend this free demo in spite of that. It also bothered me that this metroidvania demo blocks off content several rooms from the nearest save point, meaning when the full game comes out, you'd have to re-retraverse those rooms.

Level design is decent, but the hub you access the levels from is a very open, very empty metroidvania, with only one level per large room (and some of those levels are locked because it's a demo, so you just have to keep wandering forward until you find an unlocked one). Plus, you can't fast-travel to unbeaten levels; you can only go to designated fast-travel spots that are quite a ways away from each other. That'd be one thing if this were an actual metroidvania, but this is really just a bloated hub world. Also, I couldn't get the turn-things-pink item to work.

Oh, and the game never makes it clear which spikes you can pogo off of and which you can't. You just have to figure out on your own that some spikes can be pogo'd off of.

This fixes practically every problem I had with the first game: seesaws stop before they get too vertical (and the game won't suddenly drop a box on them to screw you over), levels have fast-travel points so you don't have to retraverse the whole stage to get a collectible you missed, bosses don't make you pointlessly wait for no reason nor do they have bloated health bars, and you have a map screen that shows exactly where each collectible is, so you have a better idea of how to reach them. My only real issues are that the map doesn't pause the game (you have to pause first and then bring up the map if you don't want to be cheap-shotted) and that using a fast-travel point doesn't bring up said map to show where you're going; you just have to go by the text description and your own memory of the level. Still though, highly recommend this one. Say hi if you read this.

The first level here is rather flat and dull, but the outer-space ship level picks things up quite a bit.

The first, second, and fourth levels aren't too bad, but the third level has a darkness gimmick and also requires abnormal precision for getting below underwater spike pillars. Checkpoints could also stand to be closer together.

Nice little platformer, though you do get a new power every 5 levels, so I'm worried the full game will just be gimmicky and monotonous. For these short 20 levels, though, it's fine (though the last level required some tight timing).

Despite the tag, the demo doesn't really have any puzzle-solving going on, but maybe that's for the best since the action-platforming is pretty good. Only issue I had is that the lighting changes at the end, making it hard to see the ropes you need to shoot.

Controls and level design are okay, but I'm really not a fan of how you have to beat earlier levels fast enough to unlock later levels. Even for the demo, I couldn't access the boss fight at the end until I went back and shaved a minute off my previous times in the first two levels, so I'm not exactly looking forward to the full game.

It's mostly boss fights with SHMUP-inspired bullet patterns, but their attacks are varied and rather fair. The last boss in the demo was quite a difficulty spike, though.

Attacking forces your character to be completely stationary, including causing moving platforms to move out from under you. However, there's never a situation where you'd really benefit from doing this, and the rest of the game is designed fairly well.

Decent SHMUP/Bullet Hell, but there's only one level, and the boss fight was pretty damage-spongy (and the dev would only "consider" reducing its HP). Also, apparently, 60% of the full game is going to be Adventure-Game-style exploration and riddle-solving, and this is not represented in the demo AT ALL; it starts at the beginning of the Bullet Hell level and ends shortly after you beat the boss. Not promising, but at least the demo itself is still fun to play.

The demo has one level that's pretty fun to go through, but it also very blatantly has a lives and credits system, so as far as the full game's concerned, you might be better off emulating the PSP port so you can use savestates to avoid being sent back to the beginning of the game on game over. I hate how so many otherwise-well-made SHMUPs have limited continues.

A twinstick-shooter where you can only move via gun recoil (and a dash move). It starts off kinda bland, but the demo does have some levels that don't make you kill all the enemies to progress, and I was having some fun by the end.

Once again, the single available level is fun, but the game has a lives system despite having zero reason for one since it already sends you back to a checkpoint when you die! Forcing progress loss beyond that is just pointlessly punitive.

Unlike the dev's previous demo, this doesn't let you play any of the levels; you only have access to a 5-minute "caravan" mode where bosses appear rather frequently. What's available is very well made and polished, though.

A rare example of an arcade-style SHMUP that saves your progress between levels! Unfortunately, enemy waves are randomly selected, so sometimes you'll breeze to the boss with no trouble, and other times you'll lose all your lives just a couple waves in (and yeah, again with the lives system, but at least you only restart the level).

You know how, when a lazy dev is tasked with converting mouse input to a controller, they'll just make it so you drag a cursor around the screen with the control stick? This game's default controls make you do that even when you're using keyboard/mouse! It's a mindbogglingly counterproductive decision, and the dev knows that many people would hate it since there's an option to switch so that the arrow keys/right stick snap your reticle between the boss's weak points instead (surprisingly no option to map it to the freaking mouse, though!). Once that option is enabled, though, the game is pretty fun with some tough bullet patterns.

A pretty fun bullet hell where you teleport through bullets and hazards to power up your own shots. Story is kinda weird, but maybe it'd be funnier if you knew about 1800s Japanese history. Only three levels in this demo, but they're well made.

Pretty tricky puzzles, though your magic vision doesn't always show which obstacles are connected to which switches because those icons can still somehow be blocked by other stuff sometimes.

The gimmick here is that there are arrow tiles on the ground that enable/disable your ability to move in certain directions, and they even affect other blocks so you can move them on their own instead of pushing them. No music, weirdly enough.

The main levels in the demo were kinda boring, but the postgame levels were a bit tricky.

The NPC moves in the opposite direction as you, and you have to bait him to the goal. There's no undo mechanic, but at least the puzzles aren't that long.

You can pick up cards on the ground to increase your stats, but enemies can do the same thing, so you have to figure out which cards you can allow them to take and which route you need to bait them towards to kill all enemies.

More decent puzzles, though the difficulty curve is a bit off since 5-1 is harder than any level in world 6.

The puzzles are pretty easy at first since you're just clicking and dragging tiles, but they start to get a bit tricky near the end of the demo.

The entire first world is quite easy, but the six available levels for worlds 2 and 3 are fairly challenging (except 3-3; that one went back to being fairly easy).

An Advance Wars clone with some minor differences here and there, like tanks costing more or injured units still dealing 10 damage to enemy properties. I didn't like how planes couldn't attack; they can only "spot" units to decrease their defense slightly. However, I REALLY didn't like how the demo doesn't save, because it meant I lost multiple levels of progress when I went to take a break, so consider this recommendation tentative as I didn't actually finish the demo.