Even mechanics, as well as the passage between screens is extremely basic: the protagonist can jump, climb or roll under the obstacles where planned and, as you proceed, unlock some small attacks that will facilitate the path.
Unfortunately, however, controls are among the defects of the game: despite the fact that there are minimal action possibilities and memorized at once, the movements of the protagonist are extremely woody and in some cases are likely to make sequences more difficult than they should be.
Let’s have examples: there will be routes where, trying to jump during a climb, you will end up plunging vertically like a lot of potatoes because once you give the input for the jump (not exactly accurate, especially if you play by controller ) it is no longer possible to change direction in any way.
Even the controls marry a retro style, even if the choice is not always effective and will risk, from time to time, to make you cheat on the monitor for that too much step, the roll that did not respond to your stop in time or the that you’ve finished in a ditch of mechanical blades because managing the length of the jump is pretty much an enigma to decipher.
Taken into account the difficulties represented by the control system, after a few hours you will be able to master a bit better (but not entirely, as you will drag more or less random mistakes to the bottom of your adventure), overcoming the different levels. The ability to launch small attacks from the distance will be of great importance for the boss battles, which are regularly proposed along your route.
The challenges are generally demanding but pleasing, except for the times when, In Crash Bandicoot 2 , but in 2D, you are required to escape from any trackers. In this case, you can not move faster than the horizontal tread that frames the level, which means that you will face the hectic escapes practically walking – pain, go blind and die about a thousandth of a second.
The writing that will accompany you in your path is never taken seriously and is spicy. The general atmosphere of Illusoria and his narrative is at times grotesque, also featuring black humor that appear in front of the player’s mistakes – seen atrocious deaths and cartoon smearing that will touch the wretched character of the protagonist. It is a style that is pleasing and can give the title a further personality, which is definitely not a little for an indie project. We also note that the game is available only in English or Spanish, so not familiar with one of these two languages will make it much more complex to enjoy some of the surreal events you come across.
Good ideas, rough execution Accepting unsuccessful controls, it’s on another big topic that Illusoria faces the most obvious difficulties: the level design. If the mechanics put together by the developers could offer interesting ideas, the way we are asked to use them within scenarios is almost never brilliant.
The abuse of the recycling game, giving the impression that some screens have almost been inserted to lengthen the broth . We can make an example: in a first screen, drifting to a level, you have to dodge a rotating knife that moves vertically. Successful in the business, in the next screen you will find three, and in that after five.
Patterns are, in fact, evident until they are naive and show off repetition, progressively increasing difficulty but forcing them in short intervals to do the same and exactly the same thing. The risk is that the fun comes to the background, even because the game wants to offer a good challenge and its checkpoints are often well spaced.
Dying on the third screen where he was trying to dodge the rotating blades to break away from the first, in short, he could spit his nose and frustrate some players. In addition, it is worth noting that there are no second chance or bonus vouchers: at the first shot of any kind, the protagonist will die, forcing you to start from the checkpoint.
In the version that we tested, the subtle Illusoria experience it was mined by bugs and some design decisions of a disarming superficiality. As for the bugs, we can mention that the fact that we were hanging on a boss while launching the end-of-video video with a boss did mysteriously vanish our avatars into a finished movie, making it invisible. Unable to go to the level exit, we had to reload the game back to the main menu, just to find out that the challenge with the boss was to face it.
