The Masked Mage

[h1]follow my curator page [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33882793/]GenXPlayers[/url] for more retro and indie reviews[/h1] I was attracted to this game because the character reminded me of chakan the forever man on megadrive. It turns out the sprite in the promo video was actually ripped from chakan (it has been replaced since). There are possibly more graphics borrowed from other places. The game didn't start from steam because of a bug. I had to start it from outside steam, and then the menu doesn't appear unless you press "enter", then there is no explnation or ways to change the controls. Once you manage to play, the levels are almost empty and the rare enemies have really simplistic patterns. You just walk until you find keys to unlock new areas. If you're still tempted to buy, take a look at the game's discussions first.

The Masked Mage bills itself as "a slow-paced, peaceful metroidvania game," but the only way a player could actually interpret this would be as an aimless, meandering, empty platformer with vaguely metroidvania-like progression. This game consistently commits the cardinal sin of having the player walk extremely lengthy, empty areas, doing nothing but hold a direction for absurd lengths of time. Enemies are sparse (and poorly-designed), level design is haphazard and thoughtless, and combat is an afterthought - your weapon appears to do damage upon collision with enemies even if you're not attacking or swinging it at all. The movement feels tight and the pixel art is quite beautiful, but those are about all this game really has going for it. Upon researching this developer a bit more, I see that they also developed The Skylia Prophecy and the Citadale games, which are equally forgettable. I'm beginning to wonder if this developer is some sort of asset-flip factory that just cranks out garbage for a quick profit. I would generally recommend avoiding this and other games by this developer. Find more reviews and recommendations on my Steam Curator page, Indie Infinitesimal: https:/…

Looks great fore a retro vibe, but it was quite boring to be honest. Lots of running around with no platforming, monsters or anything to make it interesting. And you'd run one way for awhile, find you cant progress and run back (which is normal for metroidvania) but with the lack of content/stimuli ...doubley boring.

This game's main features if soft lock! Soft lock by using up your single use heal pickups while the enemies endlessly respawn. Using the heal button does not fill up X amount of health, instead you'd better hope your fairy friend is flittering close enough to you to catch some of the pixie dust. Sometimes it fills one tick, sometimes it fills five. Save points do not fill up health but they do spawn an invulnerable bad guy with homing missiles who can kill you in just a few hits, while you're trying to save. Soft lock because normal progression abilities use magic that refills incredibly slow but can be drained in just a few seconds by accidentally standing too close to a waterfall. You are a wizard who only has the smallest reach melee attack. While most of the enemies move along the floor where your attack is unreliable. The map is the strangest thing I've seen in a long time. You pick up pieces of hand drawn 3D diagrams but the line art looks like it was created at 100x100 resolution then blown up to pixelated hell. Almost every gameplay choice is baffling and counterproductive to an exploration adventure. Its a shame because the art and music are terrific.

VERY bare bones type of game. Your character is slow and has exactly one "bonk" move at the start at least and most of the time you'll wind up getting hit when you try to hit an enemy. Thankfully the enemies die in one hit so far anyways though. Healing is also jank because it relies on picking up pixie dust and having your little fairy friend sprinkle it on you... which very easily misses, and even when it does land it heals very little. Save points also do not heal either. While nice looking and has an interesting story premise so far I suspect it will be a slog to finish. I'm going to hit no on the recommendation only because so far I don't feel like it's worth 10 USD at full price, but I got it on sale at 90% off and as part of a bundle with The Skylia Prophecy which I already planned to get so I effectively only paid about 33 cents for it. I will certainly update my review once I complete the game as well, but as it is I certainly wouldn't pay 10 bucks for this.