Kandria

Beautiful artwork, evocative music and interesting setting. I liked the characters - they felt like they had strong voices - and I liked the story, though I felt it ended abruptly. It's clearly deliberate and a part of me kinda likes it (it's a bold move), but it would have definitely been nice to have a bit more of a resolution, perhaps not too in depth if some mystery and ambiguity was desired, but a little bit of dialogue or perhaps a montage of art scenes. The world mysteries are great, you're never explicitly told what caused the calamity (and I like that) but there's enough information and clues lying around that if you explore well, you end up with a good idea. The game is full of lovely touches too, like being able to sit down in various places and watch the world go by - very chill. And there's lots of nice nods to other films and games, so much to discover, lots of collectable uniforms to find, and a whole databases of fishable critters/items. The 'records' database is particularly cool, little snippets that add to the world building. There's a lot of depth to this game. I have found the platforming quite frustrating in places, however. I consider myself quite good at stuff like this and I found it brutally hard. I don't find the default controls conducive to playing this game well, but even once remapped it's just hard to control the character well. Plus the there's some real difficulty spikes (pun intended) in some areas and I never felt that sense of increasing mastery over it. It didn't feel like a fun challenge to me, it came to be something I dreaded having to do. If there'd have been more checkpoints within the spike infested areas, perhaps that would have helped, but more often than not you're reset to the start of the area. I was invested enough in the story that I persisted, but only after turning on infinite dash and infinite climb, without those I would have rage quit. Kudos to the devs for adding so many accessibility features and allowing you to remap all controls! The game also comes with a full set of modding tools which is really something! Not checked it out properly yet but I'm looking forward to seeing what the level editor can do. Oh, and it's a really stable, bug-free game too. Overall, I've enjoyed Kandria and I think it's worth playing but I think unless you're a twitchy, hardcore celeste-style gameplay fan, then prepared yourself for a bit of frustration (and toggle some of the settings to make it a touch easier on yourself).

Pros: The setting is cool. The controls feel good. Gameplay feels solid so far. Cons: The default keyboard and mouse bindings didn't work for me. I ended up putting climb and dash on mouse 4 and 5 and that took care of it.

I love this game wholeheartedly. If you like Celeste or Nier Automata or Metroidvanias in general (since its sort of one of those) then you owe it to yourself to at least try out Kandria. On top of the gameplay comparisons these characters and world are such good fun plus if you're one of the rare and elusive '[i]Vibe Based Gamers[i]', this game's world and soundtrack are an incredible vibe. Seriously I am blown away by how good the soundtrack is in this indie platformer, most AAA games don't have soundtracks as good as this. As far as criticisms go, I salute the team for constructing Celeste-like platforming levels that you can go through in both directions but I felt like a few places it was kind of silly that the other direction you go in is as easy as sliding down a wall. For example you're presented with a huge platforming section but also you can just slide down a different direction if you're going in one of the two directions to avoid it. There's also stuff that could be a bit more refined here and there, like the map for example isn't very good and lol I really do not need to know how many times I died on that screen with spring boards... As far as mechanical issues go I'm playing with controller and man I cannot figure out to reconfigure the damn and maybe this is a me issue but the remapping just don't seem to work properly for controller so I'm left moving around with the joysticks which is icky. That being said the platforming is fun, sometimes a bit janky, but challenging and rewarding. If you're like me and you're terrible at platformers there's probably going to be a part where you go "Aw they lied, I MUST need an upgrade for this part" but no, they make you use every inch of your moveset -- like there was a part with a breaking platform that I was stuck on for ages and I was trying to do the usual boost jump to clear this room and it was just not happening -- then when I realised what I actually needed to do I was cackling with how obvious but kind of ridiculous it was to expect a player to realise that. So yeah play Kandria its great five stars

very fun game, the post-apo world makes itself want to be explored, I really enjoyed reading the snippets of the character trying to figure out what happened. The platforming was difficult while using a kbd&mouse, the game is easier with a controller.

It's difficult , for me that I'm not really good at games but I'm enjoying a lot. I have to find more time to play it.

Kandria is fun, a little on the ridiculously hard side. Platforming is a bit sometimes tedious or unfair, and I wish there was more variety than simply avoid the spikes. But it's still fun overall.

The platforming gets kind of frustrating without a gamepad, but I keep wanting to play it so it must be doing something right. I really like the exploration aspect and the traversal mechanics, but the fights are kind of meh. So far I haven't run into an enemy encounter where spamming quick attack wasn't the best option. I think the enemies and the combat could be reworked a bit to be more synergistic with the platforming and to make each encounter a bit more unique. Over all it's an enjoyable experience and it's cool that large portions of the game are open source, so if the trailers got you intrigued, give it a go.