Chrysalis: Totally Cataclysmic Apocalypse Event!

Finally had a chance to give this one a try. I was really excited for it, and overall I did enjoy it.

The style is unusual, but surprisingly compelling. The environments are surreal and oversized, but combined with the grotesque enemies and eerie music gives the whole game a creepy, foreboding vibe. The bright, cheery magical girls and UI clash with that, but I think that's the point. I wasn't expecting story coming in, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's kinda cliche, but reminiscent of some of my favourites from jams past and works well enough to drive the story.

Ultimately, it's heavily let down by the gameplay. It's so, so clunky and unsatisfying. Movement is slow and strafing kills momentum in a way that just feels awful. Nothing has any weight or impact, not the floaty damage-on-hit enemies or your hitscan weapon or the bosses with more complex patterns. Having to farm kills from respawning enemies gets old fast, and everything just clips through most (all?) of the walls. The bosses aren't really difficult- basically circle strafe and hammer LMB- but some spawn you right in the middle of enemies, which just eats your health before you have a chance to react.

Amusingly, it's possible to flip the camera all the way around so everything is upside down and backwards, and the mouse look is so sensitive that I managed to do that by accident within 5 seconds of starting the game.

It does have a weird naive charm to it. It feels like a first person shooter re-derived from first principles without reference to anything else. At the same time, I think it would have been much more fun to play if it had avoided the mistakes it made.

This sounds like damning by faint praise- and yeah, it kinda is- but I do appreciate that the game doesn't overstay its welcome. I think parts of it could be fleshed out a bit more, but in its current state it's concise enough that the flaws don't get too grating and the game doesn't get frustrating.