Ary and the Secrets of Seasons has just been released, developed by eXiin and Fishing Cactus and published my Modus Games. It's available now on PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PS4.
The game is a light puzzle platformer with some RPG elements and combat.
It's set in a fantasy world called Valdi, which is based around a "China of old" theme.
Ary joins the guardians of the seasons after her father can no longer fulfill his duties. Ary's father is the guardian of Winter but he is grieving the loss of his apprentice Flynn. (Who is his son / Ary's brother).
She infiltrates the organization, which is traditionally governed by men, disguised as her brother and is tasked with restoring the seasons to Valdi.
Besides the standard fare of simple combo combat and light platforming the games USP is that Ary can summon small spheres that act as tiny ecosystems for each season, changing the environment within completely. The spheres can be opened up three at a time; thus, Ary can jump from winter to summer to autumn in a single leap. This allows for environmental puzzles in a similar mechanic to how other games have used time/parallel universes.
This sounds like a very interesting and quite unique premise and should be a fun game environment to explore. In reality though, poor execution and a completely unfinished product leave this game dead in the water.
It's very rare for me to give an extremely negative review, I always try to look for positives and redeeming factors in every title and approach each review with fresh eyes and impartiality, regardless of my personal preferences.
However this game in it current state is not in a good place.
The graphics are generally nice looking, but extremely PS3 era and backgrounds are still very glitchy. It has the overall aesthetic of a "cocomelon" YouTube Nursery rhyme video and although the game seems tailored to a younger gamer the aesthetic still seems a little way off the mark.
While the voice acting for the most part was actually quite good, a lot of the other audio seems out of time with the on screen actions or straight out asset flips. Seriously, within the first 10 minutes of the game I noticed two sound effects that were seemingly ripped directly out of Breath of the Wild. They were even used for quest, as they were in their original context. While this could be complete coincidence, I very much doubt it.
Gameplay is severely lacking too. The protagonist, Ary, lacks seems to lack any weight to her and feels very strange and disjointed to control. A recurring issue when attacking was that, often the object I was attacking would break before the weapon had even made contact.
It overall just feels very unfinished. If this were in Early Access I could accept that. Consumers would have the informed choice that this was a work in progress and the developers could work with the community to create a polished final product ready for release.
But to release this as a $40 finished product in it current state is nothing short of disgraceful. There really is no excuse. While there is of course, no obligation for anyone to release into EA, any basic playtesting would have picked up glaring issues within the first hour.
I honestly wanted to stop playing at around the 40 minute mark, but kept going for the purposes of the review and to give the title the benefit of the doubt.
A commendation to the devs is that they have seemed to react positively to the negative feedback surrounding this game, by releasing an extensive patch a week after the launch.
I did revisit the game prior to publishing this review and while their attitude is good there is still a very long way to go to make this game anywhere near finished and worthy of the price tag.
In conclusion:
Ary and the Secret of Seasons does put an original twist on the genre but is so poorly executed that there is little enjoyment to be had from the game. This was clearly a case of "push it out and we'll fix it later". The game as it stands is nothing more than digital monument for how little respect some developers and publishers have for consumers.
If the premise interests you, wait a while to see if further patches improve the game and wait for a drastic reduction in price.
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