Spindle

Super enjoyable classic zelda style action adventure where you are Death with your trusty steed Pig... yes, Death rides around on a pig, what of it? You are tasked at rounding up some wayward souls and find your lost powers, all while you try and find out who is trying to unravel the world. It's the typical gameplay from this genre, a overworld with some light metroidvania where you might not always be able to go everywhere without specific items or powerrs, secrets to find, dungeons to explore where you often get an upgrade and so on. The combat is fairly basic, the bosses where well designed and all had some unique mechanics to beat, but the rest of the combat was just alright, nothing groundbreaking, and most enemies goes down with 3-4 hits. The writing, the world and the pixelart grahics is what really sell this game. There are also "cheats" built in that you can turn on and off if you need them (including total invulrnability), always nice when devs do that, even if you never actually intend to use them, it shouldn't effect your enjoyment. It's a single player game, who cares if some players need some help at a specific boss fight or not. Also, definitly something to chew …

I enjoyed this despite some QOL issues. This is the kind of game that is going to have an absolutely amazing sequel IMO. Pros: Pretty neat story with Very real, very heartfelt subject matter and something interesting to say. Mostly fun gameplay. Nice succinct length, especially for an RPG. Cool world with lots of secrets. Fun puzzles that aren't too difficult. Awesome companion who's skills really play off the main character. Cons: Sluggish and clunky controls for the character switching and platforming. Pretty big difficulty spike for final boss. Several unskippable cutscenes, specifically ones that you have to sit through multiple times (boss intros). Some puzzles and some boss mechanics were opaque or used mechanics that had not been previously established.

A cute game with a lot of Zelda-feels, some fresh ideas. Music and presentation are solid, but nothing spectactular overall in the pixel adventure space. Controls and gameplay overall felt fine and smooth, the puzzle design around your duo's special powers overall was a highlight. The game was fun, but lacking a bit in final gamedesign polish. Combat is pretty basic and didn't really expand throughout the game, as your powerups or items do not really increase the complexity much. The weirdest part however was the overall progression: I basically was led through the story without even touching a lot of the side stories and hidden riddles and questlines, and the game still did feel easy enough to breeze through without dying once. What confused me the most was finding lots of powerups in the post-game, none of which were truly needed. That in itself is kinda sad, because the hidden puzzles had some air of mystery around them, but their rewards kinda lost all meaning with no gameplay to back them up. This game has multiple endings and enough closure to give some feel of accomplishment, but overall you will probably leave with "eh it's OK-ish" feel.

Fun game and a great story

I backend the game on kickstarter a while ago. The game ended up releasing when I was on vacation and it was the perfect experience on the go with my steam deck. A good zelda like and solid mechanics. It has some difficulty spikes with some boss that were a little bit frustrating but nothing that would let me throw my controller.

It's well-made overall, but a bit simplistic for my taste, in every regard. Feels like a game I'd enjoy 25 years ago. But now it's just way too obvious and easy.