[PA] Meowchine - One Life & "Review"
8Total recording time: 15 minutes
Overall Difficulty: Hard
Satisfaction: 65%
Would slightly recommend
Alright, it's been a hot minute since I did a review. The last one I almost got done after months of demotivation, and then my computer decided one glass of water was enough for it to die... so, now we're here, almost 4 months later, trying to get back in the swing of things.
This level was requested by a longtime subscriber for me to do, so, now we're here! As always, if you want me to play any level - whether your own or someone else's - feel free to request it. Just provide a link, okay?
Anyways:
The opening was a bit bland, not being able to actually be damaged. This was not a huge problem, since I didn't even break double digits replaying this level, so even though there was potential for it to get tiring, it never actually did.
When the same patterns start attacking you, well... it gets a bit worse. Those cubes that fly out have such absurd variance in their speed that it's more reactionary gameplay rather than smooth gameplay, and even then it just felt like luck. I recommend not having the speeds randomized like that.
The segment at 0:39 was honestly BS. I got the pattern down, but it's difficult to dodge straight through Kitcat, and dodging to the top or bottom was the only viable option, although it felt like pure RNG. I managed to get it down eventually; you want to dodge while the fast flying balls are closer to Kitcat, then dodge back in while they're outside of it. That was still overly difficult and most of my runs lost 1-2 lives here and made the rest of the run impossible.
The transition at 0:54 was a bit odd to do for the first time, since it was hard to predict what it meant. While the pure circle as a warning was neato, I'd suggest sticking just to another circle. While I never had any trouble at this transition, I think it would be a good fix that makes it feel a touch more fair.
The gameplay at 0:56 is pretty much the same as the part at 0:24, and so is the part at the end (2:45); the cubes flying out of Kitcat have too much randomization in their speeds to make this part fun. When I played this casually, these segments were just pure panic for me as I prayed I could get good RNG.
At 1:23, the warnings for the hands moving out was very confusing. I thought it was going to be a beam attack at first, and was confused to see it be the hands moving outwards. The same goes for the attack right after that, where the hands spin; it was kinda hard to figure out what those warnings meant on the first playthrough. I don't really know how to improve that much, but maybe you could replace the bars with circles that are the same size as the hands?
1:38
EVERYBODY GET UP, IT'S TIME TO SLAM NOW
I love the little segment with the hand lasers at 2:02. That was surprisingly satisfying to play through, just for that sync.
The last unique part of the level at 2:28 was... rather annoying to get through. The question marks on the side made it feel like RNG, even though every time I've played, Kitcat just goes up no matter what; also, Kitcat pushing on the ball made the hitbox hard to predict, and really just shoves the player into the bottom left or right corner of the screen in order to dodge everything.
I know that's a long list of complaints (as always), but I'd like to take a second to compliment this level - I really liked the amount of time the warnings gave you to prepare for attacks. Everything (ASIDE FROM THOSE ANNOYING CUBES) was given a fair warning - while on a first playthrough it was sometimes hard to deduce what those warnings meant, after the first playthrough they gave a good amount of time to prepare mentally. They were fair and fun for the most part.
Song:
https://youtu.be/lgTxImwO1Dw
https://soundcloud.com/azazalmeow/azazal-machinedoll-meowchine
Azazal:
https://soundcloud.com/azazalmeow
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkNi1JAI9L1piIrxFCe9Ywg
Machinedoll:
https://soundcloud.com/machinedoll
https://machinedoll.newgrounds.com/