Shadows of Zana

[b][i]Action-platformer-metroidvania with RPG elements. Embark on a dangerous journey and battle shadows to find the missing queen and save the kingdom.[/i][/b] Gameplay: https://youtu.be/21-avsf0SOc A dynamic, challenging game with unique mechanics for upgrading skills, changing the main character's class, magnet polarity, and moving between the shadow and color worlds. There is no full tutorial, so read the developer's guide: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2507000/discussions/0/600789889375975335/ You explore a large open world in two modes and in two dimensions. You move between locations on a large top-down world map (reminiscent of RPG Maker), and fight and explore the environment in multi-room locations with a side view. Additionally, in certain locations, you can transition from the Shadow Realm to the Colorful Realm. Your character can run, jump, dash, slide, slow fall, cling to certain walls and climb, attack with a sword and use a grapple hook, fire magic and perform various combos, and use health flasks and a magnet. You can change your character's class and improve combo abilities in towns. You can save your game at fountains. There are also checkpoints in certain …

At the point of this review, I do not recommend this game. The short of it is the bugs which leads to soft locks and major hit box collision issues. The second is the death knell of precision platformers. Examples of softlocks, I did a room that had the color switching mechanic only to realize the room has now permanently stuck on 1 colour and reverse the initial state which I entered the room which caused a block on the exit. Second I ran into a room which have canons which are on the road on the map maze that is for a black and white sequence but the cannons are not align correctly so the cannons just shoot the player character straight into death blocks. Then head back to the boss castle I beat earlier looking for a switch to reverse it to colour only to realize the black and white route has a cannon route thya causes you to be stuck at the ceiling when you hit it if you try to use air dash right after you hit it. Then even if you somehow mash your way using up dash and then air dash to get into the path, you don't have enough time to get to thru this sequence because the intention I guess was to use the air dash to get to the park but you simply can't. Would I still recommen…

The story begins with a missing queen and a strange portal that appears in the royal garden. The chief guard tasks you, special agent Fania, with jumping into the portal to discover what lies on the other side. Although there is no guarantee that you will survive the journey, the promise of promotion and riches is enough to convince you. Your heroine is highly capable and starts with many useful skills for both traversal and combat. She has a basic sword attack, a ranged fireball that consumes magic and slowly recharges, and a grapple hook that lets you swing from specific points. The grapple can also be used as an attack. For traversal, you have a decent jump, a wall grab that works only on certain walls but allows you to stay there indefinitely, a dash that lets you pass through narrow spaces and perform a running jump, and a move where you press down to bounce on objects. This also functions as an attack. It feels refreshing to have so many abilities right from the start instead of being forced to learn them gradually as the adventure progresses. You will still learn additional moves that improve the ones you already have. The adventure takes place in two modes, individual 2D…

This is a very good game. the controls are tight (tho I had 1 issue, more on that later) the graphics good and the levels tough. deserves more attention from people [strike] however, as it stands now it has a few issues first of all a game breaking bug, when getting the split shot I experienced a game breaking bug that trapped me, the route back had cannons but 1 is out of line meaning you hit skulls, so you cannot get past. So I decide to re-enter the castle and go another way, maybe its a way out or a colour swap, that way I hit the hardest room by far in the game, which I beat and next room had no entrance so I was trapped. as of now, do not go for the split shot in the mountain area until its fixed, check discussion for the thread [/strike] These appear fixed now I had hit and miss controls at 1 point (Think its part 3 of my videos) I'm unsure if it was the steam controller or the game, I had it a little before but never like that, I struggled on and in part 4 it started again, I rebooted the controller and it was fine https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG7AHn82td7Gp4wIlHzygiw1WP-HaJhut

Looked fun. Then I played it, and better than expected.

Swapping from shadows to full color made me realize how nice the game looks in color. A precision platformer that sits right on the edge of the controls being a bit to jank. In this genre it is super important for the controls to be smooth and reactive. There were a few moments where I felt this was not the case and caused me to fail a section. Not a huge deal since the screen resets were pretty forgiving. In later sections if the game gets longer sections I could see this becoming more of a problem. I get why the game starts in night mode but the color version is just much better looking in general and I kind of wished I could have seen it from the start. I recommend this to people who like dark and light gimmicks mixed with precision platformer mechanics.