Belle Boomerang

A retro 2d platformer that's really punishing. Played 100% on Steam Deck L. (+) Tight controls with simple gameplay that works very well (+) Retro difficulty is quite punishing but didn't feel unfair (+) There are some good secrets to find here (+) Enjoyable boss fights (-) Terrible visuals that are very very confusing and do not present the layout properly, that's my main gripe with the game. You can't really tell if the scenario is a platform, an enemy or if you'll fall to you death. This is the biggest source of frustration of the game. (-) Due to the bad visual indicators, during some fights you are really left wondering what are you supposed to do.

I felt frustrated at least once per level up to the point I reached some ice level where I just quit outright. You walk so damn slow and jumps give a lot of height but don't cover a lot of ground so movement is really clunky. As a result, any time you die and get sent back to the last checkpoint it takes forever to get back to where you died. This is a reasonably common problem in games and it makes me so mad. Even if you technically start playing again nearly instantly, since you have to get back to the challenging moment that killed you, you have to slog through trivial stuff you've already beaten. Going back to the ice level, it isn't particularly hard, but you get jumped scared by new mechanics like 10 times in that one level and if I die to each one once, then I'm stuck crawling through the first stretch of the level 10 times. Not really sure who this game is for. The movement isn't fun or flashy and the combat is 99% using a boomerang with a range so small (even after 1 upgrade) that it may as well be a melee weapon. It's cute but that's all it has going for it.

Enjoyable, well made platformer. I downgraded the difficulty from retro to newcomer, while I was able to play the retro mode without any issue the frequency of checkpoints made me switch, though this had the additional effect of decreasing enemies numbers and health which I wasn't happy about, since I am sure I can handle that combination of enemies, but I don't have the motivation or the time to play with that amount of checkpoints. If you are interested I would suggest starting with the retro mode, and if you change your mind you can change the save file difficulty, but it is one way only. You can downgrade only!

Fun little game. I just wish the ending of the game wasn't such a stark difficulty contrast. For some reason I struggled a lot to finish the final boss and second to last level on first completion, but it felt fine on subsequent playing. Plays more like a puzzle platformer and that's pretty cool :3

Got this for free from a giveaway on narwhalnut's bluesky. It's a nice lil' 2D platformer, has collectables as an incentive to redo levels, if you're unsure on whether you're feeling it or not I'd give it up to the waterfall level. There's tricky platforming challenges from there onwards but nothing unfair. The pixel art is pretty and you can fullscreen the game on PC. Its also available on Switch I think? If you're wanting some 8bit gameboy nostalgia. Dunno about the Switch2 as I'm unfamiliar with that newer console. Plot is a simple 'stop the bad guy' which works for the genre the game is referencing. (Retro 2D games) If like me you can't initially understand what key does which and mash them going aaaa when opening the game figure out which key is the down button, go to options and change your keybindings to whatever makes sense for you.

There is a lot wrong here. I don't know why some of these retro inspired games want to keep crummy outdated controls. The level designs are not all that inspired. The extra abilities aren't very fun. This was a total miss for me.