Fans of Metroidvania style games, rejoice, and put on your virtual sneakers! SubMu Entertainment's latest release, Blockstachio, incorporates quirky, blocky graphics, and a soundtrack that solidly consolidates retro bleeps and bangs over the top of the heroic theme music that will drive you towards your goal. More importantly, it also packs enough platform action to keep you happily satisfied, while running and jumping your way through each level, in your pursuit to save the world.
Use the [WASD] or [arrow] keys to maneuver around and jump on the heads of your enemies, and to avoid the obstacles and traps that you will encounter, and [spacebar] to fire once you obtain the ability. Keep your eye out for upgrades and powerups, as some will allow you to explore new areas, and others will toughen up your character, to turn you into a more finely-tuned killing machine. Expect to encounter bosses along the way that are tough, but not unbeatable, especially as you refine your strategy while you play. Finish the standard game to unlock the impossible level, or store your progress at one of the many in-game save points, and attempt the challenge level, if you are feeling particularly ambitious.
With its perky graphics and easy to conquer style of gameplay, this is pure platform fun. The world needs saving, and it is up to you and your cubic hero to do it. Are you up to the challenge?
The inability for enemies to stay dead is driving me nuts. Also, I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I like the idea of having the game based around a large circular map instead of on a straight start-to-finish line - it reminds me a lot of Pieces - but if I'm not going from point A to point B, what am I doing? Collecting upgrades? To what end?
Just finished the game. It was too short, too easy, and it lacked any direction. After beating one of the bosses you don't get any reward for beating it, you just need a certain powerup to continue to the final stretch of the game.
I agree with you, ganondorfchampion. The game is way too short and easy, no secrets to find, only a bunch of hearts that make your life go up.
The only intersting thing, to me, was the Challenge mod, which was a great twist on the simple gameplay and was a bit of a challenge.
Either I've run into a bug, or I'm missing some ridiculously obvious trick...
I can see the upgrades - extra lives, etc -- but the character simply doesn't jump that high.
I've reloaded, played it on other sites, tried the w, the up, AND the z key -- which means that by about 4 screens in, it's a dead end and the game is unplayable.
Needs more railroading; I got to the penultimate boss with only half of the upgrades, because it was easy to miss them and keep progressing deeper into the dungeon.
@JustMe:
You need to survive on the "survive" screen, to get the double-jump power-up.
Just survive. That's it. The boss will kill itself.
@justme - No, you are not missing anything. There is a small (if you get the sequence of rooms right) sequence in which you have to accomplish a couple of pixel-perfect double jumps to jump just high enough.
Not that you should worry about that, however. This game isn't metroidvanian at all... just a bunch of mostly useless upgrades thrown around a few ugly rooms.
And, to top that, I had to play it again because on my first run I killed the ending boss even if I skipped a whole section of the map. And I discovered it was nothing to write home about anyway.
I started playing this game hoping it would be similar to Knytt and Knytt Stories (I know, my bad for making the association in the first place). Anyway, it's not. There was too much bullet dodging for my taste, and exploration felt dull and boring.
Bleh. What a dull platformer. Barely worthy of the "metroidvania" label.
I managed one better than dna: I beat the penultimate boss /with/ the upgrade I needed to progress, but didn't /realise/ because the description had been too short. I thought the
air boots
only allowed you to
jump once in the air - i.e. triple jump - rather than giving you unlimited jumps.
I also dislike the bullet-dodging platformer style. The last boss was too easy.
Railroading I'm in two minds about. I like it when a game lets you explore in different directions and lets you progress without all the upgrades. But it felt a bit too easy to accidentally fall down somewhere that was too hard to go back up from, when I was only meaning to investigate one of the possible routes.
Update