Ikao The Lost Souls

I have somewhat mixed feelings about [b]Ikao, The Lost Souls[/b]. On the one hand, the game is a challenging platformer and I mostly had a great time with it. But the game is far from perfect. In is my opinion, the main issues are: [list] [*]The core game mechanics feel unpolished and would benefit from some tweaking. You play as two characters, each with a different skill set. The two-tailed fox can walk, jump, double-jump, and teleport (I did not particularly like playing as the fox). The ghost can walk, jump and fly (playing as the ghost is a lot of fun). These are basic skills you will encounter in many platformers. What I disliked was that the jumps of both characters (but especially the ghost) are always of the same height, there is no ‘short jump’ or something similar. This prevents you from jumping in a lot of places because you would instantly die on the spikes above. [*]The double-jump is not very responsive, if you try to double-jump too quickly after the initial jump the fox will not respond at all to your input. [*]The fox will insist on completing his jump-animation (a roll) first before doing the double-jump, so the fox hovers in mid-air for a split second. This prev…

A painful platformer with an aesthetic identity crisis. A masterclass in how imperative it is to give the player control over their jump height, as well as the necessity of mid-level checkpoints. It is also missing basic QoL items such as the ability to remap buttons, downsize the window, etc. I have to close the game in order to use ANY other applications on my computer, alt+tab mysteriously not working. Do you miss the buzzsaws of white palace and path of pain? Do you want to listen to the same two songs over and over until you hallucinate long enough to beat the game? Then go ahead and buy this. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who isn't a masochist.

I give the game a cautious endorsement, but beware of an issue with this game regarding refresh rates. Set the refresh rate of your monitor to 60 Hz, or you will have a bad time. The characters movement speed is chained to the refresh rate. The higher the refresh rate of your monitor, the faster they will move. At 144Hz, the game isn't playable.

First off, the game wouldn't let me tab out at all, which I consider kind of necessary. Like a lot of small games, there's no options menu and trying to set windowed from Windows and Steam launch options doesn't work. I had to use DXWnd to force it to a window. Works okay once you set up all the options, but it looks like that prevents Steam from tracking in-game time. There are some other smaller issues, but I still enjoyed the game. This is one of the few games where I didn't hate the [url=https://i.imgur.com/7jf8p7R.jpg]Helicopter[/url]-style controls. It feels like you have way more finesse than you usually do. Those sections are hard, but at least it's [b]not[/b] because the controls are awful. The platforming parts are pretty fun too, I liked the moveset. And the aesthetic is great!

It's a good platform game, it looks like a lot of fun.

Beautiful illustrations and challenging gameplay make this side-scroller a fun and engaging game. Each level presents new challenges and new ways to overcome them. The soundtrack is superb. Its smooth tones help to balance out the stress of passing each level. I prefer to use a controller for this side-scroller but a mouse and keyboard work all the same.