I have very mixed feelings about this game.

The game has appealing art and music. The mouse controls do take some getting used to but in the end I had fun with them. For such a low price, you get lots of levels, and most of them are satisfying to beat and don't outstay their welcome. If you like hard platformers, and don't mind skipping some of the levels, it's not bad.

On the other hand, the difficulty ramps up too much after level 30 until the end of the game at 50. These levels introduce anti-gravity zones where you have to rapidly hold and release the mouse button to stay afloat, which is exhausting. The horizontal movement in these zones is also slippery, which adds to the frustration. Instead of being in control of the character, it's a constant fight against physics. The worst example is level 37, where you navigate an anti-gravity maze with extremely narrow deadly walls. I stopped having fun in this level and had to give up.

I didn't have any technical issues playing, but there are some obvious quality of life features missing. There is no save, so no way to tell which level you completed last. The only option is to look at achievements, because for some reason (almost?) every level gives you 2 achievements with no real names or descriptions. It's way too much. At first I thought the second of the two achievements was for getting the extra collectable in each level, but the collectables are required to open the door. I would much rather have a proper save system and few, meaningful achievements.

Overall, hard to recommend but not the worst way to spend a couple hours. Hopefully the developer finds my criticism constructive.

If you've ever played, thought about playing or heard of a point and click game in your life, just play it. It's free. You won't regret it.

Loved this demo. I found balanced mode the perfect difficulty-- I was fighting for my life in some of those battles. The art, the music, all great. I often don't like the characters and dialogue in games, not the case here. Nice and intuitive JRPG stat system as well.

If I had to give one gripe, it'd be how easy it is to miss my character's low health, causing them to drop unexpectedly.

All in all incredible work by Ash and friends. Play it!

Another snappy platformer like the first, with added flair in background set-pieces. Each of the 3 levels explores its own concepts after teaching you fluidly and with no need for exposition. Despite good ideas, I find the bosses too simple to cheese, whereas some of the enemy combinations in the levels present a surprisingly complex challenge--a mixed bag on difficulty.

Either way, play both games, they're free and well worth the short time investment!

Cave Crawler is a simple, fun experience worth playing. It's exactly as advertised from the screenshots. The movement is responsive and fair, and with its completely standard move set, you won't have any trouble learning. The game will take you 5 seconds to download and 20 minutes to 100%, so there's no reason not to. The rest of my review is intended mainly for the developer.

Only the bonus level felt like a good challenge to me, so I was disappointed to see that only 3% of players completed it. I think I accidentally skipped the ending cutscene, so if there was a message saying "you unlocked the bonus stage," I didn't see it.

I'd like to see achievements that aren't just based on progress in the game, because they give better replay value and an optional challenge for the more determined players. As it stands, I don't see any reviewers with over 30 minutes in game. Short and sweet games are great, but you could also get creative with challenges, for example:

• Perfect Run: complete all 5 stages without dying.
  
• High Roller: rack up over 10,000 points (assuming the score carries over between stages, which I don't think it does right now)
  
• Sugar Rush: finish a stage without stopping

The art style is good, very reminiscent of some other games I've played like Downwell and Gato Roboto (both amazing, by the way). I like the player's run cycle and the crabs in particular. The subtle red particles that hint at a trap are clever. For full immersion into the primitive graphics style, it would be nice if all the graphics followed the (hypothetical) limitations of the system, like aligning lasers and particles to the pixel grid or avoiding alpha blending. These are very minor points, of course :)

I hope this feedback is helpful, and congratulations on your first release! :)

Any physics platformer should have a very strong control scheme, and I think Glyph achieves this. The controls are easy to understand yet take enough practice to master, which is perfect. Getting 100% in this game has been a welcome challenge, though there is no requirement to do what I did and happily get to the finale. The game presents few brainy puzzles, but does require creative approaches from different angles (literally) to grab all the loot and get home safely. I mostly ignored the story, but if you like lore this game does have some (albeit entirely exposition).

The only issue I have with Glyph is its balance. Each level is rated 1 to 5 stars in difficulty, and the scale seems wonky. It feels like there is a huge gap between the 3rd and 4th stars, so that 3-star levels are a walk in the park and 4-star levels can be almost impossible. One level in particular was a time trial where you're given 12 seconds for gold (IIRC) and I passed with milliseconds to spare after at least 50 attempts-- by far the hardest level in the game, and I don't even think it was rated 5 stars. The 'Dragon's Tail' achievement is another tough one, but like a speedrunning trick, part of the fun is experimenting to come up with a reliable setup to give yourself a few chances.

The game is good fun, and if you feel confident in your dexterity, you should give it a go. I may have rushed through my completionist run, so it did feel a bit repetitive in the middle for me, but if you don't play every level for every collectible in order there's plenty to discover and options for players with both average and high skill levels.

Gato Roboto is a Metroid-like platformer with standard shots, rockets and spin attacks. I thoroughly enjoyed every part of this game. The graphics are charming, the music is ambient and fitting, the controls are tight and there are lots of places to challenge yourself with rocket jumps and precise timing to reach extra collectables and powerups.

The bosses in the game are tough at first, but you should be able to get them within 5 tries if you're fairly skilled. There is a considerable amount of difficulty but the game gives you the option to explore for health powerups so you can last out a particularly difficult boss.

On a first casual playthrough, Gato Roboto offers between 2 and 4 hours of playtime. I have seen people claim to 100% the achievements in 6 hours, but I doubt it. The challenge runs are difficult and I spent about 15 hours on everything. The speedrun achievement is the hardest (finish the game in under an hour). I only managed 54 minutes by reloading the checkpoint from the main menu every time I died, and skipping dialogue by holding the Eject + Jump keys.

There are very few negatives in this game. The only thing I found frustrating was Kiki's (the cat's) floaty movement when outside the mech: it's too easy to overshoot a jump. This is only really annoying when you're going for the speedrun achievement as most of the cat-only areas aren't too dangerous. Check out Gato Roboto! And if you like the art style of this game, also check out Downwell, another great platformer published by Devolver.