izigame.me

This game is riddled with too many problems to be worth the cost.
The game is frustrating to play and countless times I found myself genuinely angry after I lost a run to something that felt completely out of my control. Sure a lot of deaths are my fault, but plenty of them I honestly believe I had no blame whatsoever for what happened.
As an aspiring game designer, I've been trying to 100% this game and I've taken to writing down every problem I can find that I believe to be an objective game design flaw (since you learn a lot more from studying what doesn't work compared to what does work) and the list grows surprisingly quickly. I find something new every other session.

Just to give a few examples of the biggest problems:
Many hazards have no telegraph to alert the player that something will happen. Mainly applies to Flame Spewers, which unlike most games, do not have a tell before activating. Other games usually either make it flash or shoot a small puff to alert the player beforehand.
This also extends to enemies falling on top of you from offscreen. It's less frequent, but still happens plenty.
The 2 choices for what level to go to next are often forced, as sometimes you only have 1 option or there is no difference between the options. For example, sometimes they will have a sign at each path saying "this enemy will appear here", which implies it won't appear on the other path, but despite that it is very common for the enemy to be in both paths, meaning your choice had no effect on the outcome.
It is also quite common at the end of a world for the game to only give you 1 of the 2 possible world options. Since you only go through 4 of the 6 worlds in a run, the other world won't show up later. If you wanted to go there (like if you want to unlock the armor blueprint there) you're outta luck.
There is a spike variant that just instantly kills you. Drill Spikes only do a bit of damage, but Spike Spikes just instakill you. I believe that instakill mechanics in a roguelike must be very carefully used, like the Omega Saw which needs it to be effective as a "HURRY UP" mechanic. The existence of effective non-instakill spikes prove that instakill spikes are unnecessary and were probably just included because most platforms have them, and it's fine in those games. But with platformers, you get back up at a checkpoint and continue onwards. In a roguelike, you might be set back up to an hour and lose all your progress.
This says to me that they didn't think about what mechanics make sense for a roguelike, but instead thought of what mechanics make sense for a platformer. This makes me wonder if it wasn't always supposed to be a roguelike, but that's just speculation.
On the topic of the Omega Saw, the levels often do not feel designed around it's existence. Many level pieces force you to wait, like moving platforms, tanky/hard to hit enemies blocking the way, swarms of enemies, and that one time I fell into a hole you couldn't jump out of and got softlocked. I'm not even sure how that last one cleared QA testing.
Y'know, maybe that platformer turned roguelike theory has more to it than I thought, the Saw does feel like a bit like it was placed in after the levels were made...
Managing Follow Items (Keys and Eggs) can be a major pain. Taking damage drops the item in the back, and you cannot pick it up while in I-Frames. This often leads to dropping an item in a bad position which makes you take a ton of damage trying to get it back, usually leading in the death of the run. I've even had keys fall through the floor before on moving platforms. This becomes especially frustrating with the Relic Keys.
Relic Keys must be purchased at the START of a run and brought to a random point in the well to open a Relic Challenge (if one even spawns, it's not guaranteed) that will unlock a relic for your future runs. This becomes frustrating quickly as it becomes increasingly difficult to find a gate as you unlock them, and as you quickly run out of funds to buy keys with.
The "Email Us" button in the settings for providing feedback & bug reports doesn't work properly. I tried to use it and while I was typing my fourth word it reset back to my inventory. I think while I was typing I hit a back button but I'm not sure. Regardless, this is still a developer issue.

I'm genuinely disappointed at the devs for releasing this game. There are so many flaws that I think the only way to fix the game is to rebuild it from the ground up. That's probably why the promised QoL patch and 2nd free DLC seem to have been abandoned completely. It's almost been a year and they've been radio silent for all I can find. Maybe they actually are making big changes to fix the game and it's just taking a long time, but I wouldn't bet on it.
This game has definitely severely hurt my perception of both Yacht Club and Nitrome's competency as game developers and deeply confused me.
Nitrome was a legendary flash game studio, and S.K. Treasure Trove was one of the most popular indie tiles of recent memory, how did they mess up this badly?
At least the soundtrack is really good. Unfortunately that's all this game really has going for it.