izigame.me

I suspect this will remain a positive recommendation, but this is very much a placeholder. For now I will list my first impressions.
The game looks quite charming and even feels a tiny bit like Bloodstained: ROTN but with less depth to the combat and visuals more reminiscent of something like Afterimage. I just love the Christmas theme.
The game has spells, healing items and charms which you can equip, though so far these options have been limited and are a far cry from the plethora of options presented in those other games that I mentioned.
Despite some of these things sounding exciting on paper, the game actually feels very mid to me. I’m cynical that it can turn into anything special. The art style really is the best part so far. It's by no means a bad game and I'm relatively absorbed with it. Its quite competent, from the combat to the platforming, the items and exploration. ..it's just that none of it is particularly impressive.
The death penalty = Almost any progress you have made is erased (money collected/map explored). Oddly, it seems that you keep items found. This led to an unusual situation of having an ability that was gained from an area that was no longer mapped. I haven’t formed a real opinion on this death penalty yet. I died a couple of times and was able to recover fairly quickly. I’ve seen metroidvanias that pull off a harsh death penalty (Mortal Manor), but this system is largely unpopular in this genre.
Healing items take the form of consumables which are dropped by monsters and bought from merchants. I haven’t run out of these yet, so I am unsure how I feel about this system.
The map is similar to Ender Lilies, in that it connects the rooms with lines. While most things are marked (Save rooms, Merchants, Teleport hubs) the game doesn’t mark secrets or Quest NPCs that you may want to revisit, nor does it allow you to mark the map to compensate. The map could also benefit from a zoom feature.
There is no voice acting. Voice acting could have lifted the cut-scenes & NPC dialogue quite a bit.
There is a surprising amount of jank, but somehow these issues are only having a minor effect on my overall enjoyment of the game.
I'll list some of these minor problems here:
-Your character is supposedly wielding a cane, yet you can only make it out briefly during some animations, such as the attack and ledge grab. You’re walking around bare-handed. It’s disappointing that this was neglected.
-When passing ladders you will frequently accidentally use them, which is annoying when you just want to walk past them. To avoid doing that, I found that I needed to hold up/down (The opposite direction of the ladder) when passing by them. This gets particularly annoying when you are trying to fight an enemy in close proximity to one. The issue stems from the game picking up any slight up/down you inadvertently do when you’re moving around. It’s hyper-sensitive. It’s very easy to talk to NPCs by mistake as a result of this too, as the button to initiate conversation is UP on the control stick.
-If I press jump and attack at the same time, nothing happens. You can press attack right before or after pressing jump, though out of habit you will occasionally intend to jump and attack and nothing will happen.
-Screen transitions occur too early. You might be somewhat near the edge of the current screen and the game will think that you want to leave the area and enter the next one, when all you wanted to do was move across to collect a few coins. As well as this, if you jump toward the edge of a screen, you will hit an invisible wall preventing you from moving to the next screen. The game automatically drops you and then moves you to the next screen.
-If I scroll down the options menu during a game, the cursor vanishes entirely. It doesn’t come back unless I re-enter the menu screen. I also can’t select “Exit Game” which means to quit your session, you must force-close it.
-The controls don't appear to be rebindable. (A non-issue for me, as I found the controls to be comfortable)
-If you die underwater, when you respawn it still sounds like you are underwater. Opening the menu screen fixes this. There are some other sound bugs.. A common one: It sometimes sounds like there is a monster in a location, yet no monster is present.
-Entering elevators when taking damage, attacking, using forward dash (Doing pretty much anything) leads to some interesting bugs.
-Underwater monsters no-clip swim through the walls, they don't appear to recognise them as barriers.