Battow - Mages And Monsters

So many of the pictures moved. All my friends had simultaneous heart attacks.

The core gameplay loop of clicking somewhere to launch a projectile attack and hoping it ricochets in the right way to hit the enemy is not fun. There is no tutorial and nothing is really explained. For example, there are "gems" or something floating in the level, and if your bullet hits them, the gems disappear. What are the gems for? Do they give you points? Are they required for a secret ending or something? I haven't been able to figure it out. Similarly, there's also a treasure chest which, if you shoot it, opens. But what the consequences are of doing that still elude me. No idea if I've unlocked something by doing that, or if there's a hidden score counter somewhere that I've incremented or what. There are also angles where if you click there, the bullet spawn and then immediately collides with you, causing you to die. That is to say, you can't shoot "behind" or to the left of yourself, because any attempts to do so will immediately kill you. Beyond this, the game has no real redeeming qualities to make up for the lackluster gameplay. The art, for example, is rather jarring, and it's not always visually clear what counts as a wall (and thus would reflect your bullets) and …

Weird game that feels like it was meant to be something much bigger, but instead ended up quickly cobbled together from whatever assets the developers had available. You notice this immediately from the welcome screen, which only has a couple of very simple buttons. One of them, the exit button, literally has the word “button” written across it. There are no settings or options either, so the only thing you can do is press play. Once you start, you’re greeted by five mages that represent the game’s chapters, with each chapter containing four stages. Progression is completely linear though, so you have to clear everything in order. Every stage is essentially a fight against a single enemy repeated five times, but at least each of the five characters faces different opponents. Overall, the mechanics are extremely simple, even if the game barely explains anything and some elements initially feel pointless. Each stage takes place in a single screen with your character on one side and the enemy on the other. The goal is to hit the enemy with projectiles, but there’s always some kind of obstacle blocking a direct shot. Because of that, projectiles can bounce, so the idea is to aim at a…