A really cutesy hi-bit pixelart platformer game featuring a Magical Girl that has the ability to control an orb of light. The game artstyle, music, and sounds are really good and is well polished for its Magical Girl theme. However there needs to be improvement in the game mechanics and execution of the game play for this to be a complete game.
Magical Girl Concept: The main character Glimmer dresses as a Magical Girl and has only one magical ability of firing and controlling an orb of light, used only in lighting torches along a dark path. The Magical Girl theme is present but there is room for improvement in the character design and concept. I find that she could use more magical girl features like an offensive or defensive magical abilities/spells, have a flashy animation or be able to transform, or have a light familiar/fairy follow her as a companion.
Mechanics: The game utilizes some platforming movement controls and wall jump mechanics, which feels a little awkward at first but can be adapted easily. The player character run speed is comfortable for platformer of these types but a walk button will add a good deal of control for more careful players. As for the jump mechanics, the jumping feels good on the up direction but falling feels a little sudden or heavy. The jump animation corresponds well with the jump. However, there is some slight unresponsiveness when pressing the jump button and it happened in several instances in my playthrough where the character doesn't jump when moving. This seems to happen a lot on breaking platforms and when the character lands on a platform (seems to take a lot of time to register ground presence). The wall jump/slide mechanic is fun to use but one thing I notice is that at times the character animation for wall slide doesn't play correctly and defaults to the left/right run animations. Besides that, the character left/right hit box is off centered, causing some strange bugs when turning away from spiked wall, which causes the character to jump into the spike wall, or slip off edges when turning. I'm a little curious why the left/right movement key has an S key in the instructions. Other than that health and magic gauge mechanics are employed in the game while coupled with the the forgiving death mechanics, player character would restart their play through by spawning at an unmarked checkpoint. The magic gauge is used as a means of limiting how many light orbs can be fired and how long a light orb can be controlled which is a really neat setup. The consumption rate for the light orbs both firing off one and controlling feels reasonable enough. One notable mechanic is the ability to control the position of the light orb, which helps in lighting up certain paths and also to activate certain switches. Although this mechanics isn't a novel idea, but the developers manage to utilized it as part of an important mechanic in the game. However I felt that it can do more by doubling as an attack ability against enemies, since the melee attack ability feels somewhat odd and really redundant in this game. The melee attack seemed to be a two swipe attack which makes it feel overly long for a single button press and not closely responsive when the attack button is pressed. Although the enemy ghost would knock back (feels like a push back) when the melee attack occurs, it wasn't very exciting as there isn't any impact or hit indicator to tell the player if the enemy is hit. This goes the same for the Boss fight which was quite a let down (will explain more in Challenge/Engagement). I think the melee attack should either be improved, give a better feel to the enemy hit with animation/effects, or be replaced by the light orb which can naturally double as an attack. Another thing to note is the fixed camera tracking on the player character which feels stiff as the camera follows the player character. The camera movements and tracking needs a lot of adjustments and can also be used to address the "leap of faith" issue since this can be coupled with the light orb control mechanic. What I meant is that, when the right mouse button is held down, the camera could track the light orb or pan towards the light orb position instead, giving players a lot more visibility around the scene.
Visual: All the art and visual aspect of the game is done really well and the cute character design made the game very appealing to as a platformer. In terms of pixel art quality, everything is really spot on and is made with utmost care. The color choice and composition in the visuals really contrast the story and the character background very clearly as it highlights the main character, Glimmer in a really dark and possibly unforgiving world. Its know to be difficult to balance both the lighting and color especially when the background and world environment arts is set in a pitch black ambiance, so I would say the developer manage to pull it off without sacrificing the clarity of the artwork. As for the boss design, I find it well executed since the boss looks intimidating while has that mild scary sort of clown theme going on. I think the game is visually amazing since a lot of thought and effort must have gone into making it look so good.
UI: The game has a well laid out main menu and in-game menu but there isn't any exit button the in-game menu. There is a controller instruction screen which is helpful but the layout of each control keys seems really disorganized and it did not have any obvious flow or segmentation between each key control. I don't mind the creative instruction screen but having too much creativity to a point it looks disorganized makes it unappealing at times. Besides that, the UI used for the health (both main character and boss) and magic bar is simple and straight forward, so nothing to note. The dialog box has a character portrait display which makes it easy to identify which character is speaking at the moment. There are times when the ghost attack the character when dialog is being played, the ghost movement or AI should pause during such events as to avoid players from being harassed when reading dialog.
Audio: The original music adds a fine touch to what the game entails from the very start since the title screen and I really like how the title screen track creates this ambiance of darkness lit by a glimmer of light, just as the title's namesake. However, the platforming stage with the cave background doesn't seem to be playing any music track, rather just soft cave ambiance and it seems to last until the clown area. I think music should be introduced since the first ghost appears or when the first torch is lit so this way it lightens the heavy dreary feel of the dark cave which became monotonous after a while. (Spoiler Alert! Start) The music used in the clown area suites the intended message given off by the visuals and it became quite a relieve when discovering this area. Then there is the music track used in the boss stage, which gives that really nice exciting clown battle expected in this part of the game. Just like what the rest have mention in their comments, somehow the audio did not loop so was met with silence instead. Anyway, at least there is a rewarding but sort of melancholy piano track after beating the boss (Spoiler Alert! End). Besides the issues, the music composition suites the visual design aspects really well and it matches well with the environment the player is in. As for sound effects, the developers use a good selection of sounds effects and are used at the right moments in the game. Nothing of significant to say about it.
Theme: The game does fulfill the Magical Girl theme since the Glimmer has a very magical look to her and have the magical ability to manipulate an orb of light. However, the side theme wasn't really addressed well or is misrepresented because the developers picked conservation of energy as their side theme. They related conservation of energy to how "the light [brought] into the dark zones can light the way." and "There is no light except that which you produce", which to me doesn't ring conservation at all, rather it sounds more like "filling the empty void with hope of light" that sort of theme. My interpretation to conservation of energy in a game involving light would be like this: light is a precious magical resource in this dark world and any use of it will limit your progress into the game. So, in other words, whenever the player uses light the magic bar doesn't get filled until that light source is recovered, e.g. extinguish the light from lit torch to recover magic power, then that sort of interpretation molds well with conservation of energy. Obviously with the current story and design decisions made in this game, the developers can forgo the idea of this theme of conservation of energy and focus on telling a story oriented towards hope instead.
Challenge / Engagement (Large spoiler text ahead!): First of all, the game isn't very challenging, rather has several mild surprises when it comes to platforming, such as the broken platform and out of place canons. (Spoiler Alert! Start) The first part of the game (the cave area) is basically just to get the hang of the movement control and there isn't any excitement in avoiding environmental obstacles. The spike walls and sludge feels more like barricades or a means to guide the player to their destinations. The fire traps give a sense of dynamic level design but was poorly executed since the trap can be easily avoided with the right timing and player placement. One thing I would highlight is the use of torches as switches as puzzle elements to deactivate certain traps in the game. So far the only one puzzle I like is when you need to hover an orb of light under a platform and activating a switch torch (green lit torch). On to the next area, the clown area, feels the same as the cave area but bouncing beach balls fired off from cannons are dynamic obstacles which did give a little pressure to progress past it. Besides that, the ghost appearing at first in the cave area and several times along the way did not pose any risk. At first I assume they were not killable as I was firing off light orbs at them, while on many occasions I was able to out run past them until I started using the melee attack. As for the boss, the attacks pattern and decision for each attack style are done really well with predictable times to avoid the attack. What broke it was the confusion that whether lighting up the bulbs around its neck actually lead to defeating it, while after one point the center bulb couldn't be lit up anymore. In the heat of the moment, I was assuming that the player needs to cause the boss to falls down onto the ground by lighting up all bulbs in order to hit him on ground level but that seems to be the wrong way to fight him. So it seems that jumping and smacking him with the melee attack is the right way of fighting the boss, which is a big let down because the most important mechanic (the light mechanic) became something of an afterthought in this fight. So I want to say that a good challenge is in the level design and in how the player can make full use of the available mechanics in defeating the boss (Spoiler Alert! End). In order to make the level challenging, the game could use more dynamic obstacles, challenging wall jumping sequences, and puzzle elements. In other words, make full use of what is available and have it do a lot more than just being barricades and lighting torches. (Spoiler Alert! Start) As for engagement, the story is pretty engaging since the unexpected twist is in defeating the final boss and discovering the true intend of defeating the boss (Spoiler Alert! End).
Originality / Creativity: The story has some level of originality with the use of dark zones and how darkness is involved with magical girls. However, the developer might want to reconsider writing something that isn't based on a familiar magical girl trope that is known by the masses. Besides that, the level of creativity is substantial with the art and music put into the game.
Story: The initial cutscene story gave a good ground of what to expect in the game but then it felt quite odd since it wasn't consistent with what is depicted visually during the gameplay. I would expect Glimmer to be fighting against monsters made from pure darkness (you get a bunch of ghost clowns instead) while the final boss didn't exactly use any abilities that represents darkness. However, there needs to be some good deal of reassessing the story and lore within the gameplay. Besides that, the story created quite a mystery after the final boss is defeated. (Spoiler Alert! Start) Which it raises the question whether Glimmer is the only magical girl capable of defeating darkness, why are other Magical Girls involved and what made them monster in the first place (Spoiler Alert! End)? Anyway if the game ever gets further developed, the story direction could use some work and reconsideration because a good well fleshed out world can in fact keep the story consistent while making it believable during game play.
Overall: The game excels in its original pixel artwork and audio content. Their well to do light manipulating mechanics stands out as something that makes this game have its own identity. However, there are some game breaking mechanics and level designs that needs to be reconsidered if the developers wish to further develop this game or even the next set of games. Currently, I can see the mechanics are not fully utilized and how its being used is at bare minimum which means a lot more can be done with what is available. I'm not sure if the developer intentionally made the game too easy but I think there needs to be a lot more thought put into making the game a little more exciting.
Note: The breaking platform should reset after a set amount of time instead of forcing the player to KYS just to reset the level.