Insect Adventure

Just not seeing enough to get enticed by. It's ugly, stuttery scrolling, movement and the abilities could feel better to use, more polished (The grapple in particular). Level design, charms, abilities, map all seemed quite fine.

Definitely give it a shot-- despite its unassuming title, the game has a decent amount of depth. The art style might not be for everyone, but I can say from experience that it grows on you. I've bought it for two other friends too!

Better than silksong

This game is in need of a few fixes, as it is a little bit of a mess when it comes to glitches and the like, but it's playable. It's mostly visual, but the game did also crash on me something like five times, and there were a few times where I was getting hit from afar. It's a bit of an odd one, but has its charm. There are some significant changes from the demo: you always run, having no option to walk; combat now locks Bugsy onto the enemy that he is striking with the hammer, rather than how most metroidvania melee works; and you can now switch between Bugsy and Mayo (who just straight up has a gun). It's also pretty cool how you can do so much out of order. I sequence-broke twice on a blind playthrough. There's even a spot in the extras menu, enticing you to try for a special ending (or a graphic, at least) for beating the game with 6% or less found items. Some of the music is pretty good too.

The blurb says "high speed" and they aren't kidding. Your starting ability to sprint, combo enemies, and zip around is faster than some metrdoidvanias' endgame, and you just get faster and faster from there. The map is full of hidden tunnels and interesting secrets, and although I sorely missed something like screw attack to tear through enemies during the cleanup stage of the game progression is well-paced and interesting. It's been a few years since release so I hope the dev has something else cooking because a second pass at this foundation would be phenomenal.

Heard about this game via word of mouth and I'm so glad that I checked it out! Insect Adventure offers some unique avenues for combat, that are so satisfying and yet simple enough to let good old-fashioned metroidvania exploration shine through. The combo meter mechanic was executed wonderfully - as your damage is dependent on how high your combo is, it's actually very rewarding to keep your combos going, and a bunch of the game's upgrades play around that. I won't lie, this game is janky. After replaying the game a bunch of times to get all of the game's achievements, I've seen a lot of funky stuff happening. But I wouldn't want that to scare people off of playing this game! Outside of one of the game's consumables (the Dragon Whistle) not working as intended half the time, it's very rare for the jank to actually get in the way of my enjoyment of the game. In a sense the game is encouraging you to break it - there are so many skips and secret routes available, and secret techniques to give yourself an edge. Finding them all will allow you to try the most prized and difficult run in the game, the low% run, where you can beat the game with as little as 4 out of the game's ~100 main…