Zapling Bygone

It's fine. - Controls like absolute ♥♥♥♥ - Not one of the hitboxes in the entire game is where it should be - Its design very disjointed and pretty nonsensical - Narrative push is limited and that makes the world uninteresting - Exploration is deeply unrewarding as the currency is almost totally useless, the mutations mostly come with drawbacks that outweigh their benefits, and the skulls don't change gameplay much at all All this makes it a fairly difficult game, but not because it's hard to figure out or because you're bad, it's just not that well made. Like a sticky Rubik's cube made of pieces from 27 different cubes. But its fine.

really cool, simple metroidvania obviously a bit awkward in places but for a solo developer, more than acceptable very good yes yes

I'd say I came out of this positive, despite it being really short. The highlight was definitely the bosses, each one felt unique and had enough attacks to be interesting.

Somewhat fun, somewhat frustrating with instant death mechanics (spikes n similar). Many of the equipable skulls just feel like.. filler? they have a unique look but with the "charms" you can equip most just dont have the slots to be worth using at all

Overall very good. Interesting art, responsive controls, open exploration. One of the best games I've played in a while. Nothing felt too difficult or too easy. Very well balanced overall. High on my list of short/compact metroidvanias. Definitely worth your time, but by no means perfect. There were a few issues with the map/character GPS being off, but it wasn't a huge problem until end game. My main problem was that the game provides no method to discern completion/comb through the map in end game. When a game has a 100% achievement, I think this is a poor choice. Soured the end of my experience a little. Some sort of biome completion rate, item detector, etc. is always my preference. I just don't find wandering aimlessly to be fun when I have zero clue what I am missing or where it might even remotely be found. Still, if you don't care about completion like me this game was so so cool and felt very fresh to me.

fun little game