Ageless

I’m honestly very torn about giving this a negative or positive review. I do think the mixed score is deserved if “mixed” meant an average score instead of half-good/half-bad, which unfortunately isn't the case. This game is by no means bad. It has some pretty good ideas and enjoyable gameplay, but the price is WAY higher than it should be. At $15, when Celeste is $19, I'd honestly just buy Celeste instead. I've also played free browser games like Pause Ahead that are puzzle-platformers and feel more polished, so personally I'd say $5 is about the maximum I'd pay for this. This game not getting ANY patches ever was its biggest sin. If they had patched out the bugs and control issues, I genuinely think it could've easily been a deserved positive review, I don't want to give it a negative one but steam doesn't have a neutral recommendation. [h1][b]Gameplay[/b][/h1] This game is clearly inspired by Celeste. You can tell from a mile away, but it does put its own spin on things. It even copies a few mechanics almost one-to-one with its own twist, like 8-directional dashing. You have to be touching a “live” creature, aka something you can age/de-age. When you dash, the creature gets sent flying in the opposite direction and de-ages one stage, with babies getting flung further. The main gimmick is “Aging.” The protagonist can age or de-age anything alive. Almost every creature has 4 stages of life, and each stage does something different, so you have to play around with them to solve puzzles. This is by far the coolest thing about the game. This game is HEAVY on puzzles. I'd say it's way more of a puzzle game than a platformer. The main challenge is figuring out WHAT to do and interacting with the environment in the right order rather than executing precise inputs. I found this game relatively easy compared to Celeste, which I also 100%ed, but I do have a strong background in puzzles and precision platformers, so your experience may differ. If you're good at this kind of game, I'd say around 8-9 hours depending on how quickly you figure things out. Every zone introduces a new mechanic, and it took me a little over 6 hours to 100% it. Even the VERY LAST stage introduces a new mechanic, which is probably my favorite. It's such a shame you only get to use it for such a short time. You get the ability to [spoiler]create portals using Vi's power[/spoiler], which is super neat. I also loved [spoiler]swinging Vi around and throwing him because his arms and legs are broken[/spoiler] to reach the next screen. It's some really creative stuff. [h1][b]Progression & Exploration[/b][/h1] The game is pretty linear, with each zone introducing a new mechanic. I really liked how some puzzles allow for multiple solutions. Most have a clear intended solution, but depending on how familiar you are with the creature interactions and dash mechanic, you can sometimes pull off some REALLY interesting stuff. I often found myself doing something extremely difficult, only to realize the solution was probably WAY simpler. I still want to praise the game for allowing that kind of creativity. The relics are basically the equivalent of Celeste's collectibles, although they're much more obvious. There's usually a secondary path somewhere in a level that contains one, and they generally provide a somewhat harder challenge. HOWEVER, if you want to 100% the game, the relic system can be extremely frustrating. If you miss one, the game doesn't tell you WHICH one you missed. The stage select only shows how many relics are available in each zone and how many you've collected. The stage select is also pretty bad to navigate unless you use a mouse IMO. So if you're missing one relic, you basically have to replay the entire zone and search for it yourself. Luckily, I somehow managed to miss exactly ONE relic in every zone, which is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy, and they were all early enough that I found them quickly. If the one you missed is near the end of a zone, though, have fun replaying the entire thing unless you know it's near the end and can spawn at the last checkpoint. [h1][b]Story[/b][/h1] The story is honestly a mixed bag for me. Early on, it really feels like it was written by a kid, but later on it starts picking up and becomes genuinely interesting, especially after [spoiler]Vi picks up the core from Vestige and fully turns into a pseudo-villain that can time travel at will.[/spoiler] The game also didn't give me the closure I was expecting. Maybe that's intentional, but I really would've liked to know what actually happens with Alia, considering she's basically the main driving force behind the story. [h1][b]Issues[/b][/h1] The controls are indeed horrendous. I know most people complain about mouse and keyboard, but I'm complaining about CONTROLLER. If anything, I think playing with mouse and keyboard is probably BETTER, which I tried after 100%ing the game. The controller auto-snap is HORRENDOUS. It looks for the closest thing in the direction you're aiming and snaps to it, with basically no way to correct it. It might aim at the edge of a creature instead of where you want to shoot, and it almost never snaps directly to the center unless you're directly below or above them. Controller does have bullet time, which mouse and keyboard doesn't have, or at least as far as I'm aware. So they genuinely feel like two different games. Controller gives you slowdown and a vector line showing where your arrow will go, but has the horrendous auto-lock. Mouse and keyboard gives you smooth, full control and a reticle, but no vector line or slowdown. Then there's the physics. They're ALL over the place. It feels like Celeste on crack, but in a bad way. You wall jump ridiculously fast, and you can gain or lose momentum extremely quickly with things like the leaf spring creature. Sliding technically carries momentum, but it's virtually useless because your momentum is already insane. The tutorial telling you that you can carry momentum with sliding is basically worthless. Hitboxes are also all over the place. Sometimes you can squeeze through tiny gaps, sometimes you instantly die near a spike. Sometimes you can touch traversal enemies from weird angles, while other times you can shoot your arrow at them to trigger their mechanics, like the shield guy or ceiling scorpion, and it completely misses and ages/de-ages them instead. I also encountered quite a few bugs, especially towards the end with [spoiler]Vi. He would get stuck in weird places, get pushed by the shield guy and then just stay floating in the air. I also encountered a bug where spinning him around and throwing him caused my character to jump at the same time, launching him WAY farther than he should've gone.[/spoiler] If this game had received even the MOST MINIMAL amount of patches or bug fixes, it would've been much easier to recommend. But it clearly never got that kind of support. [h1][b]Presentation[/b][/h1] The game looks alright. It clearly tries to emulate Celeste, but it definitely has a bit of an off vibe compared to it. Still, it's not terrible. The music is also okay, but there are a lot of places where the music just cuts off completely, probably another one of the hundreds of bugs the game has. [b]TL;DR: I really liked the aging mechanic and puzzle design, and I had a good time figuring things out and finding some of my own solutions. Unfortunately, the controller aiming, physics, hitboxes and bugs can be REALLY frustrating, and the game never got any patches to fix them. The story starts off weak but gets more interesting later, although I still wish it had given me more closure. I 100%ed it in a little over 6 hours, and while I don't regret playing it, $15 is WAY too much for what you get. If this game had received some actual polish and bug fixes, I genuinely think this could've been a positive review. As it stands, I completely understand why the reviews are mixed.[/b]

Creative mechanics can't overcome my platforming limitations Ageless has one of the most innovative mechanics I've seen in years. Aging creatures forward and backward to solve environmental puzzles is genuinely brilliant, and the emotional story about finding purpose in life hits surprisingly hard. The pixel art is gorgeous, the sound design is spot-on, and every puzzle has a clear logical solution. The problem? Actually executing those solutions requires precision timing that had me rage-quitting after an hour. I knew exactly what to do but couldn't pull off the tight platforming sequences. Spent forever on single puzzles not because they were unclear, but because I couldn't nail the timing. If you love challenging puzzle platformers like Celeste or The Messenger, buy this immediately. The aging mechanic alone makes it worth experiencing. But if precision platforming makes you want to throw controllers, maybe watch someone else play it. Great game, just not for players like me who prefer strategy over dexterity. 7/10 - Excellent for its target audience Playtime: 1.2 hours

I need to point this out right away: If you don't like Mouse + Keyboard controls, you are not gonna like this game. It gets precise at times and if your hands strain easily, this game will not help. That being said, I really loved gameplay using the Time Arrows to makes certain plants/creatures younger or older. This made for some interesting puzzles like the one pictured here for the A collectable that was such a brain twister when I first saw it. I also thought the story was pretty cool, having to deal the stress of wanting to be helpful in life and feeling like a failure every time. Sadly, the presentation is pretty amateur at time and does feel like a Unity game. The menu button UI looks pretty bland. I also wish the music went on longer than 20 seconds for the levels because they had potential to go very hard with the soundtrack. Such a nice hidden gem that could have had better presentation. Just glad the story and gameplay was fun.

Interesting mechanics and good difficulty curve

If when i finish this, i find something worthwhile, ill edit this review. As of now, its a "no". I have just finished the first world. I hate precision platformers, but i have found SEVERAL that made me go "awesome to perfect game", THIS one falls too short of anything near those games. As the tags show, this is a difficult, precision platformer with a female protagonist. Now, none of that is really a problem or a fault, but the way those tags are earned in THIS game is. The "precision" part is unreliable and frustrating and the "difficult"y feals cheap, mainly because A- mostly due to the timing element. You know what you have to do, but if you are late or early for a fraction of a second, you will not actually fail the room, but you will have THAT thing you needed ONE step further misplaced and the only way to get it were you need it will be to restart the room. B-Also, the controls for the special moves are unintuitive and when you (often) have to do several things at the same time or in quick sequence, you end up failing because you touched the wrong key. For instance, there is a dash movement, which you normaly use to move in the direction you want to go, except sometimes, you use it to proppel something OTHER than you in the direction you want while you are shot in the opposite direction Up to this point, fine, git gud, BUT.... C-the hitboxes are insane, and some spaces very narrow (speacially while you are suffocating in some underswater level), couple that with the jankiy movement of the sprite and what you get is a game about trial and error WITH a death counter, AND a grading system YAY!!! is it meant to annoy you? does it do something for the story? who knows? who cares? The part of the "female protagonist" is bad too, but not in the way i have come to expect. Normally, that tag means girlbossing, preaching and insufferable story telling with very obvious self inserts (there are SEVERAL exceptions in the gaming world, but that IS the norm). So far that didnt happen with this game and while there is a possible self insert here, the game does the tag dirty by way of having a bland main character, a cliche story with hints of self therapy from which you are taken away because of the frustrating gameplay..... i mean, if you were gonna do that, what was the point in specifying theres a "female protagonist"? In a note related to all the points, at the end of the first world, there is a "boss" section which consists of you actually running from the boss, while you manipulate your surroundings to put obstacles in his way, and open a way for you, the bad controls, the timed precision nature of the game and the awful checkpoint placement for the section make it fee like a chore mixed with a memo-test rather than a feat of skill.

mu bueno

一坨巧克力颜色的答辩。 hitbox不稳定，存档点尤其是boss战中设置不合理，骑鱼的E按键经常死活按了没反应。 连基本游戏性都做不好。

Such a good idea, but such a bad game. Its not fun at all, u get stuck on stuff that u shouldnt (like that not triggering rhino). Hate this so much, dont recommend to anyone.