Severed

Now we'll be looking at Severed

Severed is a first person action adventure game, You play as a girl with a missing arm, trapped in a surreal world, looking for her missing family.

The game plays like an old school dungeon crawler, solving simple puzzles and going deeper and deeper into this desolate world, while fighting monster with a touch based combat system, highly reminiscent of fruit ninja, upgrading your character with the severed body parts of your enemies while looking for your missing family, and maybe meeting some other interesting characters.

This game is brimming with quality, the visuals are colorful, highly detailed, even disturbing at times, but always amazing to look at. The soundtrack is outstanding, with haunting pieces that flawlessly transition into a more aggressive tone when a fight starts. The story and lore are very pleasant, even when subtle, it's an important part of the game too, because it really sets the mood of the adventure, and gets you wanting to know what happens next.

The game was a blast to play, and i highly recommend it, but i do have some mixed feelings about it.
Taking a look back at Ninja Smasher, the game i talked about yesterday, the game just feels...empty.

While ninja smasher doesn't have near the same production values that severed has, it had some extras to keep you playing outside of the 4 hours the game's last, while Severed has pretty much none. The game has 2 difficulty modes, normal and easy (for the nintendo releases at least), and its achievements are just basic stuff you do while doing a 100% run, so when you complete the game in about 6 to 7 hours, there's no reason to come back again immediately, unless you do some sort of self imposed challenge.

That leaves me with a conflict, quantity or quality ? quality of course, but was it too hard for the devs to add some extra content ? speedruning options, harder difficulties, more interesting achievements, a sound test, a bestiary, or an infinite battle mode to test yourself, not to ask for even higher ground like different characters with different play styles or a post game. But of course, you paid for a game, and a game is what you get, but i can't help but feel like that with so many games filled with extras and stuff to do.

And for 15$, its harder recommend (harder, but still recommended), considering there are some good cheaper and longer games, and with a more casual appeal, in the end Severed is a fantastic game, I just wish i could play it more.

Ninja Smasher

Let's get started with a fun little game I just played

Ninja Smasher is a pretty nice action-exploration game that takes a lot from classics like Super Metroid and the Zelda series.

You play as a ninja on the mission to save a princess from an evil tengu king, theres no dialogue in the game, but it isnt needed anyway, in the other hand, the graphics are pretty simplistic and "retro" styled, the pixel art isnt even close to the likes of Shovel Knight, but they look decent and well made and the music is pretty standard and repetitive, but not ear jarring for the short 4 hours the game lasts.

Were the game really shines is on it's gameplay, the ninja controls pretty much flawlessly, After you kill an enemy on the air, you also get a tiny impulse, and soon after the first zone you get a doble jump ability, which recharges after you touch the floor or kill an enemy, so you can keep yourself in the air bouncing from enemy to enemy, clearing entire screens without even touching the floor. You also got a dash attack that can be used as long as you have a jump left, and some other abilities you get from completing zelda-like dungeons, like clinging on walls or throwing fire.

The game is not amazingly designed, but the level design is decent and not too frustrating or hard, with a pretty good difficulty curve that may get you killed once or twice in the last zones if you are not careful.

The game isnt anything spectacular, but something I admire is the efforth to make something enjoyable, the game isn't great on any aspect aside from the gameplay, but it doesn't do anything inherently wrong either, and the asking price isnt too high (3.99$).

Also the game also has 3 different playable characters with different starting weapons. The ninja robot has a short range machine gun that can shoot in 8 directions and dash like the ninja. The sickle chain ninja can attack like the normal ninja, and can grapple to enemies, walls or ceilings, even reaching zones you shouldnt before time. The female ninja moves faster, attacks faster, and can shoot long range knifes for minimal damage, but can't dash or grapple.

Lastly there's achievements too, related to the completion level of a run, the time, character and control scheme used (theres a touch based control mode after you finish the game, but its pretty mediocre). These are pretty simple and straight forward and there arent any on enemies killed or other feats like that, but it doesnt do any harm either, so it just keeps track of your speerunning abilities.

In any case, you're getting you money back with the surprising amount of content tighly packed in the game, so i recommend it a lot if you like action exploration games, or "metroidvanias", if you wish.