Smith and Winston

A short but fun overhead shooter with an emphasis on voxel visuals and destructibility. It took me a little over 3 hours to finish in single player and the trailers on the store page don't mislead you, what you see is what you get here. Most levels have you hunting for a prerequisite amount of power cubes in order to finish, though you don't know the exact amount until you find the end portal. Aside from that you're blowing through bits of the environment looking for the cubes and fighting enemies along the way. Some level navigation can be a bit annoying due to the number of portals and needing to remember where to backtrack upon finding keycards, but generally it's simple action fun. If you enjoy games with destruction gimmicks like I do, I'd say it's worth your while.

There are a lot of good, fun things in this game (see lists below) but first of all I have to highlight two phrases in the listed Features: "Metroid style exploration" and "Casual Game Play". Smith and Winston has neither of these, and if you were expecting a casual metroidvania style game you will be disappointed. Death is frequent and has penalties. There are many things that instantly kill you, including missing a jump and falling off the level, or digging through the bottom of the level. This discourages players from exploring or digging too much - a lot of the time I was thinking "There might be something over there, but it's not worth maybe losing a life to check it out and having to repeat this section again". Punishing the player for exploring and experimenting isn't "casual" or "Metroid style". Worse, there are no "Metroid style" upgrades granting permanent new abilities and not even suit health/energy upgrades. The only things you pickup are weapons/ammo, and the occasional extra life (max 5) or health point (maximum of FOUR!). As four hits from the weakest attack will kill a character who was on 100% health, this makes extended combat and boss fights repetitive and fru…

In order to destroy most games, you have to play around with corruptions, or data mine them, or use glitches, or speedrun them. This game lets you destroy practically all of the game dev's hard work in level design, go ahead! It's part of the fun! You can rush through the game, or you can dig around and find all of its secrets. It rewards you for dying as little as possible but also doesn't punish you heavily. You can come back infinitely but using a continue wipes your score. It brings back the fun of arcades in going for high scores. If you enjoy platforming, twin stick shooters, destroying the environment, and collectibles, this is easily worth $5.

Tried this at EGX Rezzed a year or two ago. Bought it shortly after but, as ever, didn't play. Just tried it and yep, great fun! Loads of secrets and deadpan humour coupled with plenty of blasting and no hand-holding. Yeah I'll admit I got a bit lost a few times trying to figure where I hadn't been but I soon found my way. All in all, great fun. Look forward to my next session :)

This is NOT a metroidvania, it's more akin to some arcade platformer since progression are broken into stages. Every stage has keys specific to the stage and get lost when you move on. The only persistent thing is the gold cubes you collect which are needed to exit the stage. It is a pretty decent game to waste some time on every so often. The world is entertaining to destroy and the voxel art is pretty nice although generic. Aiming could be smoother and could really use some indicator of where you are aiming but it does the job since the enemy patterns aren't that complex. Kinda wish collectibles were more interesting and that the explosive items were more noticeable. I also tend to fall through the floor every so often when voxel destruction occurs which is weird since shooting and destruction can't be done on the y-axis.

So...first of all...grabbing this game at a -75% discount...seems okay to me, it's about Rm 6 for me ( let me give you a references...it's about the price of 2 packs of snacks....) I had noticed that...this game is made by some Indie developers, so I wanna try to be "that guy" that do what I can if I like their product Pros: 1) Twin stick shooter...fun? yeah, i think it's fine 2) Funny NPC (AI) giving comment from time to time 3) Destrutible environments... but it caused lag for my potato...fun if you have better setup 4) Tons of achievements 5) Tons of collectibles 6) Tons of "Hidden stuff,gold,points etc" Cons: 1) So the death mechanics, you fall off edge? You die! then reset your points... 2) Maybe it's for...your own discovery fuzziness...so stuff are not highlighted, you may missed some extra "Keys" to open the other portal (but i guessed that's equal more "replayability" 3) So...lack of loots, skill tree, weapon variety, gadgets 4) So...the Jetpack... it don't have some indicator on "how many % left" before you fall to your death 5) Oh...also, the "Turning speed" of the camera....oh god, I had motion sickness when I am using it...lol, Beware 6) Also the...torchlight? The WH…