Teslagrad Remastered

Pretty Janky and poorly made game. It just falls short in every aspect. -Art and animation had effort put into them but it's not quite up to standard. Visually it's a bit too sloppy and unrefined. it lacks in smoothness of animations and quality of individual frame drawings. -Clunky design that results in wasted player time, lacking basic QOL features and good design philosophies employed in other "metroidvainias". (e.g Map and UI is very bad at giving a clear visual of your location, exact paths, what you've collected & where you've been, objectives, items, ect) -Glitchy subpar programming, lots of physics jank. Glitchy boss fights, hastily thrown together mechanics, Character movement feels cheap and unsatisfying. not much care was spent on smooth cohesion between animation & movement. It had potential but due to a general lack of polish I didn't enjoy it and can't recommend it. (also I don't appreciate the ads on the title menu. I paid for this crap.)

This was a great game, that offered very innovative mechanics when it first came out in 2013. Twelve years later, it’s still a great game. The only pity is that it’s too short.

This review also includes the Remastered version. I have played both individually, both NG and NG+, so I can confirm that writing the same review for both games is totally valid since they are the same game. The game is awesome. I met it at AGDQ 2016 but for reasons I couldn't play it until now, and the game is as good as I remembered. Lots of smart and carefully crafted puzzles. The movement is so great and fun that lowkey makes me want to speedrun it. The story of the game is great (and I've played Teslagrad 2 so I know it gets deep later) but the best thing about it is how it's delivered, a perfec example of "Show don't tell". The art is amazing, and you can say that the remastered version is better at that, but this game's art is already great, and that comes from someone who isn't a big fan of the steam punk and old Europe style, but damn, the artists here know what they're doing. There are 36 scroll to collect, only 15 are needed to finish the game but you need the 36 for the best ending. Collecting all scroll isn't hard tbh, the hard part is to find them all. Some scrolls are really well hidden, and while it can be frustrating to find them, once you find them you realize that the location is actually smart and fair, they aren't random at all (like the Strawberries in Celeste) and it adds to the fun. The map is a tower and there is a simple way to go all the way up and down, which you'll need if you missed a scroll before the ending. I think the lenght of the game is good enough. I can finish the game in 2-3hs tops now that I know where everything is, but my first playthrough took me aprox 14-15hs in three days. If I had to say bad or at least not excellent things of the game, the first two boss fights are kinda meh, I would say those are the lowest points of the game. The map is a big tower and at the beginning you explore the tower's entire base, but as you play the game and go up you realize that there are massive blank spaces never visites, so I felt it a little dissapointing. Also with the map, there are some rooms that makes you feel like there must be something else to do there, but just there isn't (I'm looking at you gigantic electric golden bull!). Funny enough, I could say the same "bad things" for Teslagrad 2. Overall, I absolutely loved this game from beginning to end. It's now on my top 5 favorite games ever. 10/10 would recommend. Go give a hug to your dad.