kikones34's Profile

Send a PM

Joined on: Jan 23, 2020

I've submitted:
1 Rating!
1 Review!
0 Screenshots!

Youtube Channel
Report this user

1 Game

GameDifficultyUser's Rating
I Wanna Escape Into My Mind 50.0 8.2

1 Review

kikones34
For: I Wanna Escape Into My Mind
Very good game! It is well-designed and has unique interesting gimmicks. The concepts are also well introduced to the player, starting with easy examples so that you quickly get what they're about, and then making them more complicated as you progress. I really liked the bosses too, they were generally fair, had good telegraphing of the attacks and were pretty fun.

The game is heavy on timing-based obstacles, and I feel it was generally well-balanced. In almost all of the rooms, everything is placed so that there's good cycles if you just go right after resetting, so you don't need to stand there waiting every time you die. You sometimes do have to wait for certain cycles after the first few obstacles, which can get a bit tiring if you reset a lot, but it wasn't that big of a deal for me. It was also clear to me that the position of everything was quite deliberate to create interesting challenges.

As someone who's gone through a gender identity crisis, the story resonated with me. I also liked the symbolism of the stage elements and bosses. I do think, however, that execution-wise the themes were a bit overdone. I get the feel the dev wanted to transmit, but in my opinion some parts were edgier than they needed to be, both style-wise and music-wise. There were also some questionable stylistic choices that made seeing certain elements a bit difficult, which felt unfair, although they were few and far between.

As for the music, I did generally enjoy it, but some of the songs had a way too strong start (e.g. second phase of the final boss), and it was giving me a headache to listen to it over and over again after resetting. The full song may be fine because it calms down later, but listening to the start on repeat, not nice. I do think though that all the SFX were very well chosen and satisfying.

The hand-drawn graphics and animations are very good, and it's really refreshing to see some original art in a fangame, honestly. In fact it's refreshing to see this many original elements in a fangame in general. It does use some assets from other games, but they feel more like cool references. It also adds to that feel that the dev made the whole thing in Unity, rather than using the classic GM engines.

Now, I have to say that stages 1 through 4 were very good, but stage 5 fell a bit flat for me. It starts promising, mixing gimmicks from previous stages in cool ways. But then, it gets dragged on for SO long, it gets to a point where I feel it's not adding anything to the game, it just feels like padding. I think the game would've benefited from a shorter stage 5 that only kept the most interesting gimmick combinations. And then, the last boss was a bit hit-and-miss for me, some of the phases were good, but others were a bit underwhelming or unfair. All in all my least favorite stage, and it's a shame that it's the last thing in the game.

There's also one nitpick I have about the engine that others have already mentioned, which is that The Kid completely stops after a room transition, even if you're still pressing the buttons. It doesn't get too in the way though, as there aren't any moments in which you need to go back and forth quickly between different rooms.

All things considered, I really enjoyed playing the game and it's obvious that the dev put lots of effort into it. Totally recommended!

Read More

[3] Likes
Rating: 8.2 82       Difficulty: 50 50
Oct 20, 2023

1 Game

GameDifficultyAverage Rating# of Ratings
I wanna be a famous explorer N/A N/A 0
User's favorites list is empty!
User's clear list is empty!