Oooohwee boys and girls. I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on this metroidvania game for a long while, at least a few months.
MindSeize is yet another game I first learned about from #screenshotsaturday on Twitter, mostly because of GIFs like these.
🤖🚧#pixelart #ドット絵 pic.twitter.com/su8RABSjDD
— MindSeize – now on Steam! (@MindSeizeGame) December 8, 2019
This is called a Guardian Unit. This is the Tweet that first brought my attention to MindSeize, a sci-fi Metroidvania game by Finnish developers, Kamina Dimension.
I saw this and thought to myself, “wow, that’s really cool! But what is it? A mech combat game? I love mechs!”
I was curious and wanting to know more, so I followed @MindSeize on Twitter.
I ended up wishlisting them on Steam. It then sat in my Steam library for a few months, even though I’d perpetually intended to get around to playing it.
All in all, I’m glad that I decided to follow Steam, and I’ve gotten to see a lot of really nice-looking GIFs that have piqued my interest about the game even further.
Like this:
Ascended Knight#pixelart #indiedev pic.twitter.com/oqVULOJHUB
— MindSeize – now on Steam! (@MindSeizeGame) November 12, 2019
And this one:
生き物#ドット絵 pic.twitter.com/uEZnFQj4gX
— MindSeize – now on Steam! (@MindSeizeGame) December 6, 2019
And this one right here:
Just released first patch for MindSeize fixing lot of the issues people were having. Check out the full patch notes and what’s still to come here: https://t.co/4qh7bbmIJX#fixingthis pic.twitter.com/M9N1wdIA6B
— MindSeize – now on Steam! (@MindSeizeGame) February 8, 2020
That last one looks like Radical Edward from Cowboy Bebop, and I approve of that.
Look at the detail on those character models. Look at how fluid the animations are.
Those robots and aliens look so real somehow. That’s probably how they blew up on Twitter (5,338 followers) and Instagram (10.6k followers).
They’re 2D hand-drawn characters but they move and behave like you would expect robots and aliens to.
So imagine my satisfaction when after months of following their development with interest, I saw that they released on Steam earlier this month on February 7th!
Needless to say, I picked it up as soon as it came out.
And…
Well, it’s *good*. But I’m going to need to qualify that.
Gameplay is fun.
Combat is exhilarating and fast-paced, and requires you to react quickly and move seamlessly from thought to action. Different weapon combinations and power-ups let you adapt to different situations and find the playstyle that suits you best.
Exploration, also fun. Metroidvania games like this are my jam, and MindSeize is full of secrets, and branching pathways and power-ups to uncover.
Art is top-notch. The levels of visual detail, creative character designs and smooth, seamless character animation are what I came for and MindSeize delivers on that front.
Worldbuilding is fleshed out. The story, though not the highlight, has me engaged enough to want to see what happens next.
None of that is the problem. What caused problems and eventually forced me to rage quit is that the game (at least when I played it) is still very buggy.
MindSeize is a diamond in the rough. A worthy metroidvania game at its core but in need of some polish.
It caught some heat on release for being buggy and had a mixed review rating on Steam. The developers are aware of that though, and the reviews have since changed to “mostly positive”! I’ll get to that in a bit.
First, I want to talk about where the game shines brightest: the creative enemy designs and animations!
Here are three creative critters that’ll clean your clock in MindSeize a sci-fi pixelart metroidvania game recently released on Steam.
Context – Story and Gameplay
You are M.C. You’re a private investigator tracking down a criminal organization called The Ascended across the universe.
The game opens with you shaking down one of their flunkies when he takes you to their leaders, Valkyrie and Shiva.
The encounter ends with the leaders seizing the mind of your daughter Taryn and leaving you paralyzed, crippled, and bound to a wheelchair.
You team up with your friend Raven and his crew who give you a robot exo-suit you control with your mind, and you set out to get vengeance for yourself and to rescue your daughter.
MindSeize is a sci-fi metroidvania game that spans multiple planets, each with their own environment, cast of enemies and range of power-ups.
Shroom Lizard
— MindSeize – now on Steam! (@MindSeizeGame) September 24, 2019
I used to call these Mushroom Lizards until the developers informed me they’re called Shroom Lizards. Guess I wasn’t too far off.
These things. Hoo boy, these things were a huge pain in my ass.
Their main attack they shoot a cloud of spores from the mushrooms on their back that homes in on your location and chases you around the screen, even off the screen.
There’s a characteristic of this metroidvania game I’d like to bring up here: the enemy behavior.
Each enemy isn’t just lovingly hand-crafted, they also have unique behaviors.
They sleep until your movement wakes them up. They burrow up from the ground to shoot globules of poison at you.
They look and feel like real animals and robots. It makes each planet somehow feel like a living, breathing ecosystem.
The mushroom lizards, in particular, tend to be sleeping when they first enter your field of view. You can often get the drop on them that way if you’re quick.
Thorn Horn
The Thorn Horn#pixelart #indiegame #gamedev pic.twitter.com/eZXjI3Us8L
— MindSeize – now on Steam! (@MindSeizeGame) October 21, 2019
This is the second mini-boss you encounter in the forests of Verdant Gama, the first planet you visit on your mission.
Thorn Horn is a pretty nasty customer. It took me about an hour to beat him, and I could only do that by buying some necessary upgrades for my exosuit that let me swing my sword in an upward arc.
His main attacks are a charge, a stomp attack that pulls roots up from the ground wherever you’re standing, and making rocks fall into the ceiling when he rams into a wall.
Thorn Horn is pretty hard to avoid or to hurt without taking damage.
His design looks pretty cool too. He looks brutal, with those glowing eyes and the spines coming out of his back.
When you initiate the mini-boss fight he’s sleeping in the hollowed-out trunk of a tree. It’s almost like he’s part of the environment somehow.
Drifter Hanu
This guy. This fuckin’ guy.
Drifter Hanu, the final boss of Verdant Gama, is annoying as fuuuuuuuck.
He doesn’t sit still. He’s constantly moving and jumping all over the place and you can’t get a good shot at him.
Hanu also moves very quickly and is difficult to dodge.
He has an arsenal of weapons including grenades and a spray attack fire that you can’t really defend against. He clings to walls making you have to shoot diagonally at him, which requires an extra button press, which in turn takes an extra millisecond in which time this boss can wreck your shit up.
So yeah. Drifter Hanu pretty much kicked my ass. His design is still pretty creative though.
This character has a lot of energy. He’s mischievous but also diabolical. It’s like he’s taunting you while remaining just out of reach and spraying bullet hell at your robotic exoskeleton.
Being a monkey, he’s also agile and limber.
He uses his tail to hang from the ceiling. He clings to walls, he jumps ups and down and screeches. He bounces up and down all over the place.
Recommendation
About 4 hours in, I ran into a mini-boss on Takomo 7, the second planet you visit. Unfortunately, it was at this time that I encountered a game-breaking bug that made the mini-boss impossible to beat and reluctantly, I had to put MindSeize down.
And that’s a shame because by this time I was really having fun. I tried to ignore some of the more serious bugs as well as I could, but this was the point when forward progression became impossible and I had to quit.
And that’s a shame, because the exciting gameplay, exploration and visual creativity make this metroidvania game worth checking out otherwise.
The developers are aware of some of the more problematic bugs and are working hard to patch it up.
My advice to you is to add it to your wishlist, keep an eye on it, and wait a few months for them to work out the kinks in the plumbing. MindSeize is available for $19.99 on Steam, and plans are being made to release on the Nintendo Switch.
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