Realm Of I

Realm of I is a great example of why solo devs need to use godot engine instead of unity. Unity is a bloated engine that doesn't handle 2D sidescrolling well and requires a lot of workarounds which this game doesn't have because the dev is winging it.

The steam deck helps greatly in mitigating unity stutter in this game but it doesn't matter because this is a mouse & keyboard game and hence I can't play it on the steam deck anyway. Hence, no recommendation.

To the dev: Please use godot from now on.

TL:DR - Worth the price, a fun and interesting 3-6 hour experience depending on how much secret hunting you do. Getting all the achievements might bring you closer to 9-12 hours since you will likely need to beat the game 3 times.

The Good:
- Fair price.
- Visually and musically interesting.
- Funny and surprising moments.
- Diverse environments.
- Cool sense of mystery.
- A hidden mechanic that is kinda fun.
- Secret areas to keep things captivating.
- Great movement, besides the fall-stun mechanic.

The Fair:
- Relatively easy overall.
- Exploration is an emphasis but can be slow with no fast travel until you beat the game.
- Enemy and boss behavior is fairly simple, and in turn combat can be dull.
- Most spells are just "shoot thing(s)", but there's enough variety.
- The difference in combat power near the beginning of the game compared to the end does not feel significant.
- The menu is very slightly convoluted.

The Bad:
- Pausing is not an option, which makes switching spells mid-combat inconvenient. This makes sense if it was a deliberate design choice, but it also leads to consequences like walking into the final boss and not being able to attack them since I had only melee spells equipped.
- Screen shake is pretty strong with no way, or at least no clear way, to reduce it.
- Visual effects can be very "loud", making it hard to tell what's going on.
- After falling a certain distance, regardless of how fast you are falling, you will be temporarily stunned. This can break the flow of backtracking and smooth movement.
- A lot of areas feel a little empty, and in contrast there's a few areas where you're kinda bombarded with a single enemy type.
- Certain obstacles cycle pretty slowly leading to somewhat annoying waiting periods while traversing those areas.

This game was nothing but fun. One thing I REALLY like is dark pixel environments, Instead of the whole screen being lit up with colorful pixels, this game is really atmospheric and immersive. The exploration is fantastic, the fights are fun, and its all very well-executed. Its doesn't exactly hold your hand, but gives you just the right amount of guidance/guesswork. As always with me, I just wish the map was much larger, a big ask from developers. I have this fantasy of a Metroidvania that takes 200 hrs. This game is a perfect size in truth. Please make more games like this! It's so good!

An enjoyable game with fun exploration and smooth movement mechanics. Each time I died it definitely felt like it was my own fault. The game wasn't that difficult but for someone who doesn't play a lot of games in this genre, it wasn't a cakewalk either. The game featured some pretty funny moments as well.

A dapper metroidvania game with smooth motion and witty text. Not difficult to beat the game but somewhat challenging for certain achievements.

Realms of I feels like a 'devs first game' but it was surprisingly fun for its 3 - 4 hours and without many issues. I enjoyed exploring it.

The game doesn't recognise the inputs on Steamdeck. I quickly decided not to play this on my gamepad either because the game allows for 360 degree aiming, so this one is slightly better with the mouse and keyboard (like Terraria or something).

Combat is simple. You learn some basic spells (With no mana cost to use) and pew pew.

The game is very dark (obviously). I turned the brightness up a bit in the games options. It's still very dark, but I got it to a point where it wasn't bugging me too much.

The game suffers some minor issues with the sound mixing: The music and ambience volume was too quiet in some areas and needed to be turned up in relation to the sound, but then in other areas the music would be louder and i’d need to turn it back down to its original setting.

The games map is clearly made in paint but its been perfectly serviceable and in some ways adds to the indie charm of it all.

It's not a very difficult game, I died twice.

Decent little adventure with some similarities to Roots of the Mind (I preferred this one i think, albeit it slightly).