Helix (2021)

Arcane action!

Firstly, I think you should take out the part at the beginning saying people shouldn't expect it to be good because you're 15. No one likes self deprecation and it seemed to take value away from the game before I even hit start. Be proud that you made a game that's on steam at your age and let the players determine whether its good or bad, otherwise you'll have a self-fulfilling prophecy on your hands and the game won't really take off. Other than that, it really is a solid game. Rage platformers aren't really my wheel house so I failed a bunch, but you took the gravity mechanic and ran with it. You made short, yet complicated levels based around the gravity ability and overall did a great job making the game. The art is pleasing to the eyes and the music doesn't get annoying which is good considering the fact that you die often and have to replay levels. Keep on making games if its what you enjoy, and make sure that you truly believe in what you're making because it ALWAYS shows in the final product. :)

The sound/visuals are good, but the gameplay does nothing for me. It's just so basic only being to move left/right and press a button to change gravity. Plenty of games have used this mechanic and give you the option to jump and other stuff.

Agreed with the previous reviewer about the age disclaimer at the start - made me think to expect the worst and I think it does the actual quality of the game a disservice! As for the actual gameplay, Helix draws heavily from other gravity-flipping 2D platformers like VVVVVV, but it's got a decent grasp the mechanics and physics that make those kinds of platformers enjoyable. I must admit that I am absolutely awful at the game, but that being said, I do think the difficulty ramps up a bit inconsistently and it is quite a brutal learning curve. The game is a bit slow to restart which makes it all the more frustrating. So I appreciated the assist modes, but I felt like something like checkpoints would've been made it a more enjoyable grind through the levels. The coin upgrades kind of work...? But it's not the most elegant mechanic (and I'm not sure the Speed Increase upgrade is useful, it made the game much harder, but maybe that was the point?) Where I feel like the game really shines is in the aesthetic - character and level designs feel fun and well thought out. However, things like the UI could use some more work - I encountered a few overlapping menu issues etc. Overall, enjo…

"Helix" is one of literally thousands of retro 2D platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere... and I'm not kidding. Searching for "platformers" on the Steam store page yields over 17,000 results! Is this one of the best of those? Absolutely not. This is a rather generic and pointless platformer where you're in a (possibly asset flipped) set of cave tiles and you get some upgrades (which you lose when you die, but nobody played this long enough for that to happen). There's a gravity inversion mechanism that's been done a hundred times or more, all better than this. Platforming is an old, mostly dead genre, and this lacklustre experience, while it doesn't have an upfront cost, isn't saving the genre... it's no surprise this failed to capture any attention from gamers in the era of immersive 3D gaming. This features really godawful pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks much worse than most other games because of…

[h1]Before I played Helix, I had a small pp, no friends, no gf, depression, and no life. These things havent changed, but the game is pretty good[/h1]