izigame.me

i bought this on a whim during the Golden Week sale, but as it turns out i would have been just as happy to pay full price! this is a super unique youkai-themed puzzle platformer with absolutely gorgeous graphics and an amazing soundtrack. it has one central mechanic that everything evolves around: there are numbered blocks all over the stage that will disappear if you touch them with the corresponding amount of coins. this single mechanic plus tight controls that are simple enough to use my usb NES controller for are combined in a staggering amount of different ways; you usually need to AVOID picking up coins, which goes against platformer instincts so much that i continued grabbing the coin and plunging to my death on the first screen until a ghost came and yelled at me to just NOT COLLECT IT! yet sometimes you do have to pick them up, and it becomes a really interesting dance of keeping your coin total at the right amount to reach secrets or move forward without collecting too much and plunging through the blocks to your death.
those simple ingredients make for a lavish feast of individually themed stages each with their own gimmicks that push the boundaries of what this single mechanic can do, while taking you on a ghibli-esque Spirited Away adventure through forests, haunted houses, youkai villages, hot springs and all sorts of other stuff.
it's a little on the shorter side as far as these things go, but i feel that that's largely due to the fact that there's almost no padding. nothing in the game felt tedious to me even when one challenge took a dozen tries, half because it's just so damn charming it's hard to be in a bad mood. add to that a whole bevy of fun little secrets and collectibles (each of which constitute their own additional challenge within a stage) and you've got a tight, rich, flavorful experience that i enjoyed every second of. highly recommend you pick this up for a change of pace from the mainstream, and sit down for a fun retro-youkai evening. great stuff

A wonderful puzzle platformer despite its weaknesses, but those are what holds it back from really being a masterpiece.

The art, animation and music are all gorgeous. It is amazing how much detail has been put into every sprite and how fluid the animations are. The music is absolutely phenomenal and gives the game a very immersive surreal atmosphere, especially when combined with the visuals and the consistent thematic design.
The puzzles are quite unique and enjoyable while the platforming is balanced and reasonable. It manages to uphold a very consistent level of challenge that is stimulating without being frustrating or unfair.
There are a lot of things to collect and the game has been designed to force you to replay the level multiple times to get them all, but the levels are each relatively short and so replaying them isn't even a negative experience. Often players have to approach the level in a different way to get all the collectibles which adds to the variety of the replay as well.

There is a degree of roughness to the polish of the game that shows up from time to time. Noticeable glitches every few levels, the Tanuki are way too mechanically unrefined in comparison to how demanding at least one puzzle is which requires you to manipulate them to progress. And there is that one jump in the dark caves, which requires the player to jump at an exact specific frame at the very edge of the block just to make it and progress.
The game explains very little to the player, and several things such as quest items and useable items are totally unexplained. Which makes it a trial and error process to learn what each useable item does, and you do have to buy another each time you use it. While the quest items remained completely unexplained. There are multiple secret paths which lead to entirely new levels, but you only unlock them by finding secrets in other levels nearby. So if you do not find the secret, you just miss out on the special level and or have to run around adjacent levels messing around looking for a secret that could be anywhere.

The second greatest weakness of the game is the boss battles. There are only four, and they are each very underwhelming. They try to incorporate the games existing mechanics into the fight, but totally fumble it and it just becomes a relatively easy lukewarm momentary pseudo fight. It feels like the developer literally just could not come up with any passionate, inspired ideas for boss fights and they just did whatever they could manage to come up with. The fights are extremely anticlimactic and just awkward while only providing slight difficulty; usually from the fight gimmick being unrefined.
The greatest weakness of the game though is the lack of any story. The game is so meticulous in building a vibrant, genuine world and yet the world is completely empty of characters or plot. A massive opportunity missed, players have no idea why the protagonist is running around doing what they are doing. And it ends with the player having no idea why they just did everything they did. The whole time, they never actually talk to anything and there is never any sense of purpose to what is happening. No conversations with interesting, quirky folklore characters and no weird child in a fantasy world plot unfolding from level to level. Two things that could have been done, and would of added so much onto the world and the overall experience, but were not.

For seven dollars the value is fantastic especially for such an intricate and detailed experience. But it is just so unfortunate that the lack of compelling boss fights and any kind of narrative creates such a giant hole in the experience. Absolutely devastating for a game that had so much potential beyond being more then just a generic indie puzzle platformer, but didn't take the steps to go the full way.
If you're interested in finding more games like this I've probably reviewed quite a few on my curator page here .

Rising Dusk is an excellent platformer with a unique rule: AVOID the coins in order to progress.
With that being said, the game isn't just simply dodging coins. If you want to progress through certain levels, and especially if you want to collect everything, you need to collect some coins. Which coins? Well, you'll need to figure that out.
The game very cleverly subverts video game tropes by challenging everyone's magpie tendencies with the promise of reward and adventure. Collect any small treasure you see and you lose the chance to get the bigger ones. It puts your mind and skill to the test in a way no other game has done before, and therein lies the true genius of its design.
The world is so charming. The 16-bit sprites of classic Japanese folklore are all very cute and detailed, and their animations are great. The sound effects are all perfectly evocative and the music is uniquely atmospheric and absorbing. Not to mention each level has its own theme. It's hard to believe a game that looks and sounds this good was all done by one man, but he really pulled it off.
Each and every level manages to feel fresh and new, in no small part to its music. Each one brings in a new theme, enemy or gimmick that makes it stand out amongst all the other levels. It keeps you guessing and never feels repetitive. Likewise, collecting each and every treasure is a unique challenge. Very few are easy-to-get and require you to wrap your mind around each one, but it rarely feels exhausting or tedious to grab a treasure. The game also never holds your hand; you need to rely on your own wit to gt these treasures. I managed to complete the game - all 60 Cat Statues and 5 Yokai Parts - however I'm still missing 5 Cassette Tapes and I'm honestly at an impasse as to how to get them.
The only criticisms I have towards the game are little niggles that don't detriment the game heavily, but would be nice if they were corrected. Like how most of the platforms in the game have rounded off corners so it's easy to fall off them when you land on their edges. Talking to characters requires waiting next to them for them to finish, which is a little boring. And admittedly the final boss was pretty... meeehhhh.
One thing I will say that I genuinely don't like however are the items. For the most part, they aren't necessary; you can beat and nearly complete the game without using a single item from Tesso's Shop. EXCEPT for one level - the Dark Cave Level - which absolutely REQUIRES both Coin items in order to collect 2 Cat Statues that are otherwise impossible to collect. This took me long into the aftergame for me to figure this out, after beating the final boss and clearing all the Temple Challenges. It seems very inconsistent to have the items only be useful until that one particular point into the game. Furthermore, the items aren't labelled, so you won't have any idea what they do until you use them, which is kind of a waste.
But with all that being said, I'm truly very impressed. At this point in my life, I rarely set out to complete a game on my first go anymore. But this is one of those games where I felt so compelled to collect everything, because the design is excellent, the world is charming and the concept is incredibly unique. This is right up in the ranks with Undertale, Papers Please and Iconoclasts for being one of the best games ever to be directed by one person.
Congratulations Lukas Stobie, you've done an incredible job. Looking forward to seeing what you'll make next. :)