Reventure

Reventure is a refreshing game to play. It's not the first time I see a game where you have to find 100 (or whatever) different endings. There were quite a few projects like this that were popular during the Flash game era, and this one reminds me of those. Small map, a single ending usually taking no longer than a few minutes... Of course, Reventure, being a paid game, and a very highly rated one at that, has a larger map, more endings, and a lot more polish and thought put into it than anything of the sort I've played before.

The first few endings come quickly, and they're usually ways of you dying. Go anywhere, do anything, if it's an interaction, it can probably kill you in some way. It's hilarious for the first 10 or so endings, where seemingly innocuous tasks (by video game standards or otherwise) can cause you to lose. I mean win. But then you'll start to learn the game's systems a bit more, and approach it with some more methodology, and I think that's where my fun first started to wane. Stab a friend, stab a guard, stab the king, stab everyone else you can find. You're expected to use everything you find on everything you see, and by itself that would make the game incredibly tedious because these items can be all over the world, and the intended targets may be on the other side of the world. After you get any ending, the game resets, so you will have to do everything again.
Luckily, Reventure is actually well made. For one, various endings can cause permanent change in the world, often streamlining future runs, causing you to spend less time on menial tasks, or even opening up brand new routes through the map not available before. Secondly, despite the game being very simplistic (literally only left, right, jump, and interact, you can't even switch your items, it's all contextual), considerable exploration depth comes from your items affecting where you can go. Mainly by each item causing greatly reduced jump height, but also by some items literally allowing you to traverse terrain you couldn't before.

While the game can supposedly be 100% in under 12 hours, I got tired around 3. Maybe I just haven't been feeling it lately and I would've enjoyed this game some other time. Because I did have fun even after the initial novelty wore off. Sure, I was spending more and more time finding ways to bring faraway objects to certain places, and surprises were becoming less frequent, but... arrogant as it is, I feel like I've played enough games where it's rare for something to surprise me. Challenge, easily, but surprise, much less so. Reventure managed to surprise and make me laugh far more than any game in recent memory, so I don't know why I didn't like it. Maybe the tedium had more impact than the occasional excitement. Maybe it's because Reventure stopped being an adventure game quite early, and became about collection, which I've never enjoyed either.
In the end, I can't recommend a game I only played for a couple of hours, but it felt so unique I also don't want to not recommend it. I guess that's like a partial recommendation - see if what I wrote about intrigues you, or if you care about the "overwhelmingly positive" reviews on Steam, which usually don't lie.

Electronic Super Joy 2

What the hell did I just play? Electronic Super Joy 2 is a... unique game, for sure. It's free, so maybe that's why I decided to add it about 3.5 years ago. Well, I certainly got my money's worth.

Electronic Super Joy is a difficult precision platformer. It's also very... flashy, in more ways than one. There are literal flashing neon lights, very upbeat music, weird silhouettes in the background making bad jokes (or serving as a tutorial), odd erotic sound effects every time you touch a checkpoint (and other times), fart sounds when trying to use an ability without having one... and a ton of other stuff you can see examples of on the Steam page, because I both can't describe them very well, and didn't actually get to them.

You know, I'm happy that some developers are more free in creating their games, but this style of... everything... isn't really my cup of tea. I mean, I also don't like precision platformers so there was really no hope for me with this game.
But hey, if you like weirdness in your difficult platformers, then maybe this might interest you. Other than that, my best guess would be that it's not even that great of platformer. Anyways, I generally wouldn't recommend it.

AngerForce: Reloaded

I just recently covered a bullet hell, and now I'm doing another. Something much less known this time - it's AngerForce: Reloaded.

AngerForce isn't too far from the basic bullet hell formula. Pick a difficulty, pick one of four characters, shoot, dodge... Each character gets the standard "emergency button", the bomb, as well as two unique abilities which cost energy to use. Energy is regained mostly by slowing down your movement, but enemies also drop it. The game has 3 difficulties, 7 stages, local co-op, and two game modes. The campaign mode is the easier of the two, since you get to buy upgrades between runs that make you quite a bit stronger. There are roughly 30 upgrades. Simple stuff like more damage or bombs, but also attracting pick-ups while moving slowly, or character-specific upgrades like gaining a shield every time you used an ability. In comparison, the arcade mode starts you off with no upgrades and only yields an upgrade between stages, as a selection of one from multiple.

Compared to some bullet hells I've seen on Steam, I think this one's actually pretty good and I'm surprised it's as unpopular as it is. The visuals look pretty decent, including things like bullet contrast, and there's even a bit of drawn story to be unlocked for each of the characters. I am, however, still not particularly a fan of bullet hell games, and this one doesn't do anything to surprise me. No really innovative mechanics, still no mouse controls, no enemy indicators, no autofire. It's both kind of basic as well as on the shorter side.
So, honestly, as much as I've played bullet hells, I'd actually recommend this to fans of bullet hell games. But in the grand scheme of games, as well as taking my personal preferences into account, I wouldn't recommend it.

CrossCode

I went into CrossCode wanting to like it. I remember this game being in Early Access for ages, and it still released over 4 years ago, so I've been waiting for a long time. I think it was the art and style that gripped me, and I must say, they didn't disappoint. Still, from the advertised 30-80 hours, I only got about 12 in. So, what happened?

CrossCode starts off strong, dropping you into a tutorial / gameplay demo that also serves as a hook into the story. There's some mysterious figures, someone dies, something big is supposedly set in motion. Things are left unclear. The pixel art looks great, both for the large upper-body sprites, as well as the small characters. The animation is smooth, combat is responsive. It looks like a good start to a game.
The story cuts to the actual main character. A so-called Avatar, named after basically being an avatar for an online game, being materialized. They appear as confused as you are, not knowing what they are, or how or why they are here. It goes into a slightly more in-depth tutorial / practice, which re-affirms all combat mechanics (except for using elements and abilities, which I guess is a reasonable chunk of combat content), while giving you a bit of background into the story.
Covering the story first, just the first hour or so, not going into any spoilers, CrossWorlds is basically an MMO, but taking place in the real world. There is a lot of background lore made up for the game (CrossCode), like how the game (CrossWorlds) is actually located on a moon owned by some megacorporation, and it's fully immersive by utilizing FTL information transfer to link all of the player's senses to their character. The characters themselves are made of "instant matter", which can be formed and re-formed instantly, making these Avatars technically immortal. But, their attacks are virtual, and instant matter is so light it can not physically hurt or obstruct any real people. On top of this CrossCode lore I just covered, which is true inside the game (CrossCode) there is also CrossWorlds lore, which is not real, not even in the game (CrossCode), but only in the MMO (CrossWorlds), but I won't go into that right now. Got all that? Took me a good amount of time to differentiate what was the real game lore and what was the game-game lore. But combined with the mystery aspect, this very detailed world-building was right up my alley. Some mystery Avatar seemingly breaking the game rules then comes to abduct our protagonist from outside the bounds of the game, but you manage to escape into the game proper, being told to just go play the MMO for the time being.
Now, to briefly explain the combat and game mechanics in more detail. You have a ranged attack that can also bounce from walls, a melee attack that is AoE and does more damage, a dash with a brief invulnerability period, and a frontal shield that mitigates damage taken. There's also a skill tree of about 40 nodes, plus 4 more elemental skill trees unlocked later. Aside from passives these can also unluck skills which can use charges to do special versions of your basic actions. Throw in levels, stats, equipment, and you have very decent character building for a game of this size. A lot (about half) of the game is centered around environmental puzzles, and to that end you also have a height system. There are a lot of walls in the game, and they're all technically walkable, but you can only jump up a wall with a height difference of one. You can then cross rather wide gaps by just running over them, and the character jumps with enough momentum to carry you across, allowing complex traversal paths in small areas. I found this to be a very unique take on platforming.

So, I'm 2-3 hours in, side characters are being introduced, I'm itching to get into it all... And... Nothing? Hours pass, and I feel very much like I'm playing the worst part of an MMO. Pointless character dialogue, fetch quests, kill X of some enemy. The excitement of learning more about this world and the mystery presented at the start wear off during 10 hours, replaced with annoyance at the grind, and how I can't visually distinguish these wall layers I mentioned. The game looks gorgeous and detailed, but perhaps in that detail, playability is lost, and solving these platforming puzzles is frustrating trial-and-error of finding some single block that allows me to get up a layer, and then backtracking multiple maps on this higher layer. And it's not just for quests or collectibles, some areas just require this pointless detour for me to access. Heavens forbid I forget where the entrance to the puzzle is, because I do. A lot.

CrossCode built up a very strong desire to stick through the story, and then battered it down hour after hour. The combat is good. The art is good. The music is good. The character progression is good. The story is probably good? It's just, with all these great components, they somehow manage to make a game that is just boring, tedious, even frustrating to play, and I am so sad at that. I really wanted to like CrossCode, but I can't recommend it like this. Maybe a partial recommendation. Maybe if you really like the MMO grind and environment puzzles, and then also enjoyed what else I mentioned about the game.