Connie and the Essence of Chaos

After multiple fanmades of Rayman, like Reign of Terror, Redemption, ReDesigner, RayMansion and a little game named Scoop Kick!, Ryemanni come back to publish the spiritual successor of Rayman 1 : Connie and the Essence of Chaos. Connie takes you in a colorful, cute and challenging adventure to retrieve the Essences staff to the hand of Lucilate. 6 worlds, with 4 levels in each, 3 sections in every one of them. It has also a lot of challenges (Steam success's), mini-games and secrets to discover in your playthrough. If you liked Redemption like I did, you will also like this game, with similar level design and cages/beans locations. It has also a lot of references to his previous work and over licences with costumes. But (because there is a but), the game can be hard for boss's, levels and especially some challenges, especially "Love Wins" (Trap Master 2.0). If your going for the 100% in game and on Steam, prepare to suffer trying to complete it. Recommanding the 100% to only veterans of Redemption. Overall, it was a good experience, but not going to 100% again. Did it once, that's all. I still prefer Redemption than Connie for the graphic, music and overall easier difficulty, but I will replay Connie again, just for the fun of it. Also 0/10 cause no new Toy March remix

I've played only 2/3 of an hour, but ialready can recommend this game to anyone. If you've ever played any "Rayman" game, this game is for you! "Connie and the Essence of Chaos" is a game inspired by "Rayman 1" game and is created by Ryemanni, who is well known for his "Rayman: The Dark Magician's Reign of Terror", "Rayman Redemption" and "Rayman Redesigner" games. This creator also developed such games as "Spooky Raymansion", "Rayman Bowling 2" and others. This game is very fun, and you can spot several similarities between this game and "Rayman 1", such as our main character, Connie, can throw her fists to punch enemies. Also, this game has it's own analog of the electoons, called Spirits. Also, as i notice in the release trailer, some enemies from "Rayman Redemption" are also here. I'm really glad this game's finally out! Ryemanni cooked once again!

[h1]A fantastic fan-game for fans of Rayman.[/h1] Connie and the Essence of Chaos is a a love letter to Rayman fans, being mostly inspired by Rayman 1 and Rayman 3. The developer of the game, Ryemanni, is actually the same person who developed Rayman Redemption, which is a Rayman fan-game that's essentially Rayman 1, but bigger and more polished. Connie and the Essence of Chaos follows a similar design philosophy. And that's very blatant as soon as you step into the game. This game truly makes no attempt to disguise the fact that it's based on Rayman 1 (and Rayman Redemption). Everything from the character animations to the enemy types and the powerups are all unapologetically Rayman. Just like Rayman 1 (something I'm probably going to say quite often in this review), the story is very bare-bones and ultimately serves as just a vehicle to get the player moving instead of something deep to be invested in. All of the worlds in the game are very creatively designed. Whereas Rayman 1 had half of its worlds be "whimsical" worlds (Band Land, Picture City, and Candy Chateau) and the other half were "realistic" worlds (The Dream Forest, Blue Mountains, and The Cave of Skops), Connie and the Essence of Chaos only has one "realistic" world (the first one), and every other one amps up the whimsy factor to the extreme by having several food-themed worlds (fast food, candy, a freezer, etc.) and a casino world. Not only are they just pretty to look at, but they give the game a distinct visual identity past just being a Rayman 1 clone. Speaking of not being a Rayman 1 clone, Connie plays fairly differently from Rayman in spite of her similar design. The most glaring omission is the lack of Rayman's signature helicopter hair ability, and also his ability to hang onto ledges. Connie's combat also works quite a bit differently as you don't hold the fist down to throw it farther. Instead, your fists travel the exact same length every time, but you can hold the button down to rapid fire it. This comes into play especially during boss fights, as unlike most platformers (and that includes Rayman 1), you can attack most bosses at any time (with some exceptions), which encourages you to find opportunities to attack the boss whenever you can at the risk of possibly putting yourself in more danger to get hit. The bosses in this game are generally quite fun. Also carried over from Rayman 1 is that game's notorious difficulty, although in Connie and the Essence of Chaos, you have unlimited lives, falling into a bottomless pit only costs you a single hit point and sends you back to your last platform, and your only penalty for dying is losing 20 jelly beans (the game's equivalent of Tings from Rayman 1), meaning you can actually do this on purpose to farm for them (although the likelihood of you needing to do this is incredibly slim). The level design and the enemies are quite challenging, but they're quite enjoyable at the same time. It's a very tough ride just like the game it's based on, but because of the game's modern-day amenities, you will always eventually be able to complete it as long as you're patient and adaptable. Whether this is a good thing or not is entirely on you. It's a fantastic Rayman fan-game made by someone who's both very passionate about the series its based one and the game they made. Definitely worth looking at. [h1][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42368614-OutOfGames/?appid=504230]Steam Curator Page[/url] | [url=https://outof.games/news/9556-connie-and-the-essence-of-chaos-is-a-triumphant-love-letter-to-rayman-fans/]Full Review[/url]

Played up to World 3 so far, and I`m really enjoying everything about this. The gameplay, music, sprites, characters, etc. are so great. The arcade really hooked me lol

Lovely game (if difficult at times) Connie very cute!

tl;dr Buy if you want your butt kicked in a cute looking game. Don't if you look at the first Rayman game's later levels and have your soul shrivel up like a raisin. If you're looking for a difficult and challenging platformer with charming presentation, Connie And The Essence of Chaos delivers. While not a groundbreaking or innovative experience, it takes its inspirations to create levels that live up to the challenge of what is inspired by. Thanks to infinite lives, it never reaches the cruelty of the original Rayman it clearly takes most of its influence from, but the levels near the end of the game will make you thankful for that. While the starting stages are fairly easy given basic patience and skill, the game quickly ramps up over its 30+ levels, all of which are of substantial length and content (The game lists Bosses and "Towns" as levels, but for main platforming content there's really about 30+). You'll be expected to execute precise, and sometimes awkward, platforming solutions which will have narrow margins for error, both for timing and positioning. You will encounter sets of platforms and obstacles that will require waiting more than one cycle for them to synchronize for the correct moment. You will encounter ice physics combined with small platforms. You will encounter a weird grappling hook that tries to force a specific rope length and will cause shifts in momentum as it forces that length. The game pushes all it can out of itself, with what at times feels like spiteful glee, to challenge you. It will feel unfair at times because of the way certain levels are constructed to seemingly maximize your pain and suffering. As for Bosses, they are fairly uneventful until the final stretch where their patterns start demanding the same level of precision as the platforming. If I'm allowed a couple of complaints. The Final boss has an attack where it rises up above the stage and falls back down, and I still don't know how to dodge it consistently, And the Final Final Final Final Boss has an attack that looks like a sound wave and thanks to the chaos of the fight, and the background, the sound wave attacks became difficult to see or notice. I actually had to at times strain my eyes a little (not a lot) to see them. Other than that, the Bosses are fittingly challenging for where they are in the game. If what I've described sound like things you're excited to tackle, try this game. It's got a good amount of content and variety in challenges and levels that will keep you trying and trying again. That said, if you aren't looking for something that is approaching the difficulty of the original Rayman, this might be a hard pass. Even with the Assist feature (Doubles Health and gives more i-frames on hit), the game's platforming will demand as much as it can from you and will accept nothing less. I over all really liked this game, even for as frustrated as I became near the end, and look forward to a sequel where the game replaces a ton of lore, shifts the tone of the story to be darker and edgier, and becomes an easier 3D collectathon platformer that gets rereleased on everything.

If you're a fan of 90s platformers, especially those featuring limbless heroes, then this one is definitely for you. The developer, Ryemanni, has clearly woven inspiration from some of their favourite franchises (the likes of Rayman, Donkey Kong Country, Kirby and maybe even a dash of Megaman for good measure) into a new wholly original and fresh idea. We join Connie as she arrives in Cuisinia, meets a new friend Plum and learns of a terrible plot to overthrow the world and enslave a friendly race of spirits. As Connie, its your job to travel Cuisinia, free the Spirits from their cages and stop Lucilate and his gang from conquering the land. First of all, the presentation. This game is gorgeous, it perfectly captures the 90s 2D aesthetic its going for. There are beautifully detailed environments that feel very unique for each world and a whole cast of wonderfully drawn and expressive characters along the way. The art direction is seriously impressive here. Everything is consistent in style and there's a really nice integration of some 3D elements too that add to the experience. The backgrounds are also really well crafted, without being too distracting but giving great atmosphere and context to where you are. Ryemanni and PeppermintBubble seriously nailed the art. Secondly in presentation is the music and sound design. The sound effects are really playful and fun, great choices made here to make everything sound satisfying as it plays out on screen. Secondly, the music, Ryemanni composed all the music for the game and I must say this is a pretty good effort. A big step up from previous games, the music here fits the mood (and the stakes), and there's some really good tracks - especially towards the end of the game. I can't wait to see Ryemanni's music arrangement and production skills continue to grow into the next project and beyond. So then, how does the game play? Well, pretty damn well. The controls are tight and snappy. Connie moves fairly slowly by modern standards BUT that is exactly what this game is NOT trying to be. Its all about precision, puzzle solving and tight platforming. Her movement speed suits 99% of the level design perfectly, with only a couple of instances later on leaving me wishing there could've been a slightly quicker movement option unlocked towards the end. Making the game work with only one movement speed is seriously impressive stuff - with the amount of content here, it never felt stale and most importantly it never felt like the movement speed affected the pacing of the game. On the level design front, this is classic Ryemanni level work. You can see his level design DNA from all the way back in the Rayman Designer days present and refined here in Connie. He really exploits and pushes mechanics to the absolute limit, making the most of each and every one, and uses his level space very effectively and efficiently. You often find yourself returning to a previous area with brand new obstacles, platforms and pathways unlocked to explore and it really makes the levels feel like grand puzzle boxes that need to be solved. Ryemanni has a really unique level design approach and I am so glad to see that signature philosophy alive and kicking (end evolved further) here. But, Connie does keep things fresh by giving you new powerups to play with, at the end of each world you unlock a brand new ability to use in the next one. There are five core powers to unlock with the kind help of the Spirits, and personally I really liked most of them. These enhance the platforming and add new twists to the gameplay that keeps you thinking and they are really fun to master... With the exception of one, which I really didn't gel with - it brought the pace to a stop, and for a game thats all about being precise and intentional with your movement and platforming this powerup in comparison felt oddly imprecise and frustrating at times as you are still expected to pull off some unforgiving/tight tasks with it. There is a chance I just couldn't get the hang of it or I was doing something wrong, and luckily this was the last powerup unlocked so I didn't have to use it too much, but that one was definitely the weakest of the bunch. The game does get quite hard towards the end. The final boss in particular is probably the hardest boss fight I've played by Ryemanni. There's A LOT going on, and sometimes it felt a bit overwhelming with so much on screen at once. Saying that, it was still fun and I still managed to beat it after a few (and maybe a few more) attempts. Connie also has a tonne of bonus content from extra challenge levels, to skins to unlock, arcade games to play and more. Its such a feature rich game, my first playthrough took over 15 hours to get to the end (although I was trying to get all the collectibles I could!) and there's still more to do, and I am still loving diving back in to try and complete the final challenges and reach the coveted 100% completion. Overall, this is an excellent video game. An absolute achievement by Ryemanni (congratulations!) and something that anyone who loves old school platformers should pick up and try. For the money, there's oodles of content and the game has so much charm and heart you can't help but get sucked in by its presentation and world/level design. Buy it, its really good. Thank you to the developer for passing over a free copy to me <3 (I did also buy it on Itch so I hope that still backs up my points about the value of this game).

If Ubisoft would stop sexually assaulting their employees for five minutes and give developer Ryemanni the rights to the Rayman franchise already, the world would be a better place. Essence of Chaos is Rayman 1 if the developers didn't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate you (or rape their coworkers) - the dream Rayman 1 sequel I've waited my entire life for. It hones in on Rayman 1's strengths as an ultra hard precision platformer in a beaming bright whimsical world, while fixing a lot of the trial and error slop that has always made it one of gaming's greatest “what ifs” for me. But despite the obvious Rayman inspiration, what I loved about this game is that it feels like a love letter to the entire 2D platformer *genre*, taking just as many cues from Donkey Kong Country, Mario 3 and a million other classic genre conventions. Its core philosophy is peak DKC - introduce a mechanic, stretch it to its absolute breaking point, move on to the next mechanic… but then BRING BACK that first mechanic and start mixing it with the second one. It's a symphony of game design, escalating and calling back to ideas in a way that was constantly putting a smile on my face. All creative mediums have similar principles in their skeletons - those concepts of setup, payoff, callbacks, etc. This was a masterclass in the fundamentals of structure, constantly surprising me in a way that rewards mastery of earlier mechanics. I'm not a game designer but I do enjoy writing, and I bizarrely found myself getting inspired by the ways this game plays with structures like pattern recognition and payoffs. And the boss fights, ♥♥♥♥ YES DUDE. As someone who has worshipped the platformer genre for 20+ years as man's greatest achievement, I've developed PTSD eye twitching trauma over “hit the weak spot” boss fights that curse 80% of otherwise amazing platformers. Dodge 500 attacks for 12 minutes, hit the gremlin's butthole while it's exposed for 0.3 seconds, repeat for another 4 hours. So this game's approach made me NUT INTO THE STRATOSPHERE. This game takes the Sly Cooper/Ratchet & Clank/Kirby and the Forgotten Land approach where, with rare exceptions, a boss is able to be hit at all times. This might sound like such a trivial difference, but it makes the boss fights so much more engaging because I always have AGENCY. Rather than the boss fights feeling like rigid scripts I'm learning, there's a flexibility that raises the skill ceiling. I'm not JUST dodging, but also looking for openings where I can chip down the boss’ health DURING those dodges. It turns the fights into these frantic, multi-layered scrambles. A tug of war where I'm weighing whether I can fit in another punch or two before the boss does his next attack, or if I can dodge this one specific attack in a way that allows me to get a hit in mid-jump. Considering the core platforming is usually slower paced, the boss fights act as a perfect juxtaposition to this - they're BURSTS OF CHAOS. However, you might have noticed that I said this game fixes “a lot” of Rayman 1's design flaws. Because unfortunately, I do think this game occasionally suffers from trial and error. From time to time, there's scenarios where the game will give you an obstacle that you cannot humanly respond to in time. A jump across a death pit that you're magically expected to know to do a LIGHT jump over rather than a HIGH jump or you overshoot it and die. That ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ swinging challenge, frequently asking you to swing off grappling hooks with specific levels of momentum to reach the next hook but not TOO far or you die, which it expects you to magically guess first time around MID-AIR. The hidden collectibles suffer from this too. You don't know if you've missed a collectible until you get another one later in the level, a great system on paper because it helps you pinpoint the general area the collectible you missed is. But on numerous occasions, levels are structured in a way where you're unable to return to previous areas. So if you missed a collectible… you have to replay the entire level again. The entire *15-20 minute* level. This was one of the major issues with Rayman 1, so I'm surprised that a game whose mission statement is “Rayman 1 but less ♥♥♥♥♥♥” somehow overlooked this. On a moment-to-moment basis though, Essence of Chaos is awesome. If you like difficult platformers, this is an easy recommendation. Developer Ryemanni has consistently been THE shining star of the Rayman community. After decades of mistreatment from its creators, Ryemanni has constantly been the one to remind everyone how amazing this goofy ass franchise is. Be it through his beloved Rayman and Designer remakes or even just his social media efforts over the years, this dude has consistently kept my love for the Rayman series alive, and there's very few developers in the world right now who I think deserves support as much as him. Go buy this absolute banger post haste. TLDR - One guy takes on the Epstein Island of the gaming industry and wins

Maybe it's too early for me to write this review, since I haven't played the entire game, but I finished the demo and I've been following Rye for a while I loved the demo and I'm really glad that there are people who are able to express themselves in such sincere, lovely way with their art, that reminds me a lot of the childhood experiences I had with the original Rayman trilogy