Umbral Mantle

A really responsive game with  a fun elemental combination system that makes me want to tear my hair out!

Okay so this game made me so damn mad. I died at least 50 times just trying to beat level 3. I was CERTAIN that the giant water blub was weak to electricity so I kept dashing through it but for some reason I kept dying! I tired over and over and over again cos I knew it was dying but I was also dying and I knew it had to just be my dumb*** doing it wrong... Sure enough, I eventually killed it! Then immediately got ganked by 2 giant electric dudes. 

I rage quit. I literally rage quit.

I don't know if you will take that as a badge of honour or as an insult but this game made me nope out of my browser and I had to make my way back to your page so I could review it properly because damnit it deserves a proper review and just cos I suck and can't get good doesn't mean it's a bad game, because it's not!

*deep breath*

Okay so the game is very responsive and plays really well, I just wish the camera wasn't so zoomed in because it feels like enemies are already on my *** when I'm close enough to see them and it requires a very responsive player... which apparently I am not.

I wish the dash recharge had a sound when it was ready because my dumb*** kept walking into enemies thinking my charge was ready and it wasn't and I kept just walking into enemies. It felt like such a noob mistake like walking into the first goomba you see in MARIO!

The graphics are really basic which is fine but the effects are on a much higher level especially the spell combinations and the really fantastic level transition and CRT effects, they are so well done.

The audio has a great retro 80's vibe to it which in my opinion matches the artwork really well, it feels retro and with the added CRT styling it all fit together really well.

I wish I could get good and just get further in the game but I just suck at it and it frustrated the hell out of me. I hope you're proud of yourself, you monster.

(To be clear the game was great, I just suck at it I'm not genuinely upset this is mostly a joke...mostly.)

This was really cool! I found it to be quite enjoyable, albeit a bit frustrating (very) at some points! 

Let's start with the good. I thought the art was phenomenal, and I really enjoyed the CRT effect! The sound design was crisp and snappy, and the gameplay design (fundamentally) was very intriguing. There were a LOT of combinations, and I think they were highlighted well with the bosses requiring specific combinations to overcome. 

Here were some of my gripes. The hitboxes on some major enemies were VERY inconsistent. It felt like 70% of the time, I could dash through them and get a bit of damage inbetween making my skill combinations, but then the other 30% I would seemingly die while a few pixels outside of their hitbox. This ties into my second point, that I found some of the difficulty unforgiving. Being able to respawn at the start of that section was wonderful, but some bosses felt like you really needed to learn the spawn locations of each smaller enemy to get the combination in time. For example, the lightning bosses were WAAAAAY too fast in my opinion. It took me a good 20 tries to get it, and I felt like I needed to use a very tuned route in order to succeed. 

The camera POV could have been a bit larger, as some enemies with a dash (E.G the storm cloud and the earth enemies) could seemingly appear from nowhere and take you out, which was very frustrating at the end of a difficult boss encounter! 

The only bug I seemed to run into was if you dash through 2 enemies at once, it would only take the element from the first one. I think if this was working properly, it would have added a very interesting depth to the gameplay and strategy, allowing players to kite the proper combinations of elements to complete them faster. I as well believe the dash cooldown could have been .25 seconds shorter (or something in that range) as I seemed to be just a little off a LOT, and that led to a large amount of deaths. That could be a skill issue on my part though forsure.

Overall, I really enjoyed the concept, but found it a bit frustrating due to some of the issues listed above. I spent around 40 minutes and 100+ deaths to reach the end because I really wanted to give full and meaningful feedback, but if I was just checking it out, it might have scared me away from completing the game.

You still did a great job on this! I think with a few of these issues addressed, it could really unlock some of this games hidden potential :) Keep it up!!

Loved the mechanic