Solus Machina

[h1] A solid precision platformer that unfortunately comes with some annoyances [/h1] [h3] Played on Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon, via Proton 8.0-5. Proton 9.0-2 crashes on startup. [/h3] Before I say anything about this game, if you like Celeste and how that plays, you will (probably) like this game. Solus Machina clearly takes inspiration from Celeste and games similar to that (which isn't a bad thing, of course). You got a dash ability, you can climb on walls and jump off them, there's even an equivalent to Celeste's strawberry collectibles in the form of batteries(?) that you can collect. So if this is your thing, or you even speedrun Celeste, then you will most definitely have a fun time here (and I did have fun for quite a while). But... just to preface here, it's not a carbon copy of Celeste with a coat of paint on it. It's really it's own thing here, and you can see that the passion oozing from this developer. It does some things different than Celeste, for better or for worse (we'll talk about that later). But for now, I'll talk about my main criticism of this game, which is it's too "precision-y." It's like each jump you make is near pixel perfect, which is incredibly fru…

This is a fairly well designed-alike Celeste platformer. I'm recommending based on the knowledge poured into the game by a singular developer. The game is pretty precise in what inputs you do which is fine. It's pretty gimmicky and hard, but the main concern is that it might just be too precise? A more accurate rating would be 'Mixed', but I'm more towards positive atm. Some of the things the game could also be improved is key binds, I'm sorry, Z/X/C is kind of awful. No controller supports makes also this way more challenging than it should be since pretty much almost all modern platformers are designed with it in mind. So with these issues, it also means the jumps are fairly inconsistent from my gameplay experience, it's fun that you have more 'opening' to it, but the stamina bar seems extremely annoying since it stresses your gameplay to be speedran. The game also suffers some bugs, one of which allows your character to jump with the falloff animation and also you can get stuck inside falling blocks with locks your game. Another thing that could be improved is showing a better pathing on where to go next. I had no idea you had to go up until I noticed skeletons that led to it…

Warning, this review contains vague spoilers about game elements and areas. A friend and I got this game and raced against one another for our first playthrough of the game, aiming for 100% achievements. Going through the game we discussed a lot of our likes and dislikes, making me realise I could probably summarise them in a review and help boost the game on Steam. So, for starters, the things I really liked about the game! The atmosphere and graphics were amazing, I absolutely loved the subtle world building shown too. The rooms were very pretty and the art style did it wonders. The sound design was interesting, a whole game with pretty much no music, only the ambience of the current room and the environment. It helped give a sense of something being wrong with the world. Gameplay was great, although suffered from a few issues I'll discuss a bit later in the review. The progressive linear difficulty was great, with the game getting harder as it went on. New gimmicks were introduced fairly frequently, to help avoid the gameplay getting stale, and there were always Power Cells for you to challenge yourself with. I managed to get all the Power Cells on my first playthrough, but …

Love the art style. A very challenging precision platformer with a fun atmosphere. Can be a bit difficult, but has a nice "Invincibility" mode to make it a bit more fair. Even with the no dying, can give you an unique challenge and some fun.