Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

This is a really impressive entry, but at the same time, I didn't really enjoy my experience with it as a game.

First and foremost, it looks great. I'm not generally a fan of this style, but it's well executed here. Sharp, visually appealing models, clean textures, and smooth animations. It looks like night without being a super dark crushed mess where you can't see anything.

Although the city isn't bustling like One Summer's Wings, it's still an impressively large city, with lots of (random?) encounters that pop up. I liked the little details like the portrait health gauge in the UI, and the death animation that reminded me of Grand Theft Auto.

Locomotion is impressive. It was a bit finicky at times although that might be because of the issues I encountered (detailed below). But being able to transform into smoke and race up the sides of buildings was really cool. I didn't find the smoke rocket thing that useful, but it sure was fun to fly around.

I managed to start one race and ran through the first checkpoint, but the second one seemed to be on the other side of the city and I couldn't find it.

Combat, though...

For the longest time, I couldn't figure out how to attack. Eventually I figured out that I had to lock on and use the smoke stream. I found this really finicky; it was hard to tell when I was locked on, and I often went flying. I also found the camera dizzying when locked on, but that might be related to the other issues I was having.

This ran absolutely terribly for me. I played this on my gaming rig, with a Ryzen 5 5600X and RTX 3080 10GB, and it was a stuttery mess. I think the framerate was okay generally, but the audio and input stuttered, and while the game was running the whole system lagged. I can't discount the possibility that it's some weird incompatibility with my specific hardware and software setup, but I don't think I've ever seen this happen before.

As a game, the biggest issue for me is the complete lack of a narrative. I'm not asking for a deep interactive storyline about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, but it needs something. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing or why. I think for some people, a satisfying enough sandbox can work on its own, but that doesn't work for me, and I feel that in that case it still needs to give at least a little direction and the mechanics definitely need to be polished more so they can hold the line on their own.

There seems to be dynamic music, but it didn't really transition smoothly and neither track was that good to be honest.

All in all, except for the performance issue this was really impressive as a tech and mechanics demo, but as a game it just fell flat for me.