Sonace

Well guys, the school year is officially upon us, meaning I'm not going to have the time nor the energy to write reviews of the kind of length I was able to this summer.  Be warned, my weekday reviews are going to be more like barebones outlines than actual reviews.  As the old adage goes, I don't need em good.  I need em by Tuesday.

Sonace is a 2.5D Mega Man-esque platformer.  There's really only one interesting thing to talk about here, and that's the game's conveyance.  Like Mega Man, it tries to convey all of its controls by using the mechanics alone.  A worthy challenge to pose to oneself, I must say.  Certainly a great exercise for any aspiring game designer.

At the end of my playthrough, I had learned and mastered about half of the game's controls.  Not terrible for a game with no textual explanations for anything whatsoever, but it could have been better.

I will say that the game did a very good, if annoying, job at conveying the fact that pressing jump twice will allow you to hover Princess Peach style around the level at a constant altitude.  There's one section about halfway through that I think is impossible to clear without using this technique, so the player is guaranteed to learn it.  Also, the first enemies you face are all very high up, attached to the ceiling, so such a technique would be very helpful when aiming your default arcing weapon.  Only problem is that the enemies are just as easy to kill with a simple jump-shot, and are even easier to simply skip past, even without using the dash.

Dashing, then, is a skill I had no idea existed until I looked at the controls screen after my first playthrough.  There's no need to ever use it, so conveying it isn't really essential, but it makes the game a heck of a lot more fun to play, so why not create some kind of room where you have to dash through a section of floor or spikes come out of it or something?

Also, you can switch weapons, but why you would ever want to is beyond me.  Your secondary weapon is short range, and with the exception of the final boss, all of the enemies are fought at medium-long range, because if they get too close, they hurt you.  Even the final boss is easily defeated by the default weapon, however.

Or at least I think it was.  I honestly couldn't tell whether I beat the game or I died.  I was wailing on the boss for quite a while when my health got dangerously close to 0.  I kept hitting the boss, however, and suddenly the game just cut to the credits sequence, which makes it seem like I won...I guess.

All-in-all, it's an interesting game and a valiant effort to capture the genius of Mega Man's design.  Unfortunately, it does fall short, but that doesn't mean it's not worth checking out.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay afloat.

Links
So Nice: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=514