Smith and Winston

In order to destroy most games, you have to play around with corruptions, or data mine them, or use glitches, or speedrun them. This game lets you destroy practically all of the game dev's hard work in level design, go ahead! It's part of the fun! You can rush through the game, or you can dig around and find all of its secrets. It rewards you for dying as little as possible but also doesn't punish you heavily. You can come back infinitely but using a continue wipes your score. It brings back the fun of arcades in going for high scores.

If you enjoy platforming, twin stick shooters, destroying the environment, and collectibles, this is easily worth $5.

So...first of all...grabbing this game at a -75% discount...seems okay to me, it's about Rm 6 for me ( let me give you a references...it's about the price of 2 packs of snacks....) I had noticed that...this game is made by some Indie developers, so I wanna try to be "that guy" that do what I can if I like their product

Pros:
1) Twin stick shooter...fun? yeah, i think it's fine
2) Funny NPC (AI) giving comment from time to time
3) Destrutible environments... but it caused lag for my potato...fun if you have better setup
4) Tons of achievements
5) Tons of collectibles
6) Tons of "Hidden stuff,gold,points etc"

Cons:
1) So the death mechanics, you fall off edge? You die! then reset your points...
2) Maybe it's for...your own discovery fuzziness...so stuff are not highlighted, you may missed some extra "Keys" to open the other portal (but i guessed that's equal more "replayability"
3) So...lack of loots, skill tree, weapon variety, gadgets
4) So...the Jetpack... it don't have some indicator on "how many % left" before you fall to your death
5) Oh...also, the "Turning speed" of the camera....oh god, I had motion sickness when I am using it...lol, Beware
6) Also the...torchlight? The WHAT? I can barely see light form it...illuminating my surrounding with bullets n granade explosion are better...
7) Oh...the game saving is just BAD...I just lost my progression after I quit the game...Now i need to redo everything again..

Overall...this is an Indie game...it's a "get it on sale" if you're looking for a twin stick shooter, where you're looking for games like minecraft with guns, destruction, puzzle or something

Tried this at EGX Rezzed a year or two ago. Bought it shortly after but, as ever, didn't play. Just tried it and yep, great fun! Loads of secrets and deadpan humour coupled with plenty of blasting and no hand-holding. Yeah I'll admit I got a bit lost a few times trying to figure where I hadn't been but I soon found my way. All in all, great fun. Look forward to my next session :)

This is NOT a metroidvania, it's more akin to some arcade platformer since progression are broken into stages. Every stage has keys specific to the stage and get lost when you move on. The only persistent thing is the gold cubes you collect which are needed to exit the stage.

It is a pretty decent game to waste some time on every so often. The world is entertaining to destroy and the voxel art is pretty nice although generic. Aiming could be smoother and could really use some indicator of where you are aiming but it does the job since the enemy patterns aren't that complex. Kinda wish collectibles were more interesting and that the explosive items were more noticeable.

I also tend to fall through the floor every so often when voxel destruction occurs which is weird since shooting and destruction can't be done on the y-axis.

A short but fun overhead shooter with an emphasis on voxel visuals and destructibility. It took me a little over 3 hours to finish in single player and the trailers on the store page don't mislead you, what you see is what you get here. Most levels have you hunting for a prerequisite amount of power cubes in order to finish, though you don't know the exact amount until you find the end portal.

Aside from that you're blowing through bits of the environment looking for the cubes and fighting enemies along the way. Some level navigation can be a bit annoying due to the number of portals and needing to remember where to backtrack upon finding keycards, but generally it's simple action fun. If you enjoy games with destruction gimmicks like I do, I'd say it's worth your while.

There are a lot of good, fun things in this game (see lists below) but first of all I have to highlight two phrases in the listed Features: "Metroid style exploration" and "Casual Game Play". Smith and Winston has neither of these, and if you were expecting a casual metroidvania style game you will be disappointed.

Death is frequent and has penalties. There are many things that instantly kill you, including missing a jump and falling off the level, or digging through the bottom of the level. This discourages players from exploring or digging too much - a lot of the time I was thinking "There might be something over there, but it's not worth maybe losing a life to check it out and having to repeat this section again". Punishing the player for exploring and experimenting isn't "casual" or "Metroid style".

Worse, there are no "Metroid style" upgrades granting permanent new abilities and not even suit health/energy upgrades. The only things you pickup are weapons/ammo, and the occasional extra life (max 5) or health point (maximum of FOUR!). As four hits from the weakest attack will kill a character who was on 100% health, this makes extended combat and boss fights repetitive and frustrating.

Being unable to tank many attacks and keeping health pickups rare isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't scream "Casual game play" to me. After a couple of hours I eventually tired of either dying or playing overcautiously to avoid death to continue.

Positives:
- Voxel-style graphics are done well, very consistent and cool art style.
- Levels have good variety, some underground, towns with detailed buildings, snowscapes, mountains etc.
- Most of most levels is destructible and cool to see it torn apart during combat.
- Three degrees of freedom with your jump-jet equipped spacesuit.
- Snarky ship computer is pretty funny.
- Overall well polished and stable.

Cons:
- No upgradable abilities (there are shmup-style powerups (rapid fire, spread shot, big bullets etc) but these are just temporary weapon boosts).
- No upgrades to durability/health/armour.
- No Metroid-style returning-to-previous-areas-with-new-abilities-to-access-new-areas.
- Only 6 weapons, plus a "mining" tool.
- Too easy to lose a life falling off things, which discourages exploratory jumps and digging.
- Can't aim at enemies above or below you. Often your shots hit the ground when you're just slightly below your enemies, but theirs can still hit you.
- Levels get repetitive quickly, as the visual differences have little gameplay effect (most "stuff" is just destructible, or not, just different colours).

I am enjoying this game,

Level design is wonderful, game play is excellent.
Camera controls are awful,

Hopefully the devs fix the issues with camera controls,
Because this is a hidden gem that is marred by camera controls that obscure the enemy or the player depending on level design,
Annoying deaths from hidden holes / lava are annoying.

Otherwise worth your time,

Great game, wonderful cube/voxel look, had a great time blowing stuff up and exploring. Playing on Ubuntu Linux and did not have a single issue. The robot voice is a little annoying but I think that's the point.

Highly addictive, very well implemented! A quite fun twin stick shooter!

Totally worth it! Get it! Runs perfect on Linux. Thanks a lot for that :D

VOXEL MADNESS!!!!!! xD

Very good dev and very good game for its genre
Also good Linux compability

I was hoping for a game about fighting with lots of explosions, but what I got was a basic top down shooter where you also can almost literally chew the scenery while you're wandering around between fights. The part where you often can't see yourself when you dig contributes a lot to making digging into the terrain looking for surprises part less fun than in Minecraft or Terraria. Oh, and there are plenty of little pieces you can't destroy.

The first fight where terrain destruction matters at all happens maybe twenty minutes in, with some thin lattice over lava and poorly-indicated explosive shrubberies (first try I didn't understand why I was taking damage). That seemed to be the only one so far, and it didn't even have enemies you could dump into the lava much.

Surprised how fast I bounced off this one. Judging by the tags it should have been perfect for me... Just didn't end up being fun. Oh well, on to the next.

Not bad the game even works pretty well under Manjaro Linux.

I've followed this game development for a long time and has been very excited for it. It's really good looking. The controls are somewhat strange. I personally would like to have an auto-rotated camera. It's in the current state very hardware demanding, But I've just tried on a 16GB Dual core 3GHz MacBook pro (mid 2014). So I guess that's no problem on a gaming setup.

I would recommend the developers to implement flood filling for the environment so that trees/rocks falls down when destroyed underneath. That would be a really nice effect :)

Overall, It looks awesome and I will surely play it on faster hardware later on!

Update: Works really well on an GTX1060.

This is a very fun game that works EXCEPTIONALLY well on linux, with really easy to pick gameplay, great game flow and nice vibrant colourful graphics. And alt-tab works great even on fullscreeen on multimonitor setup!
Cons: It's too easy to fall from the floating worlds for ham-handed players :P
Whishes: Co-op multiplayer please!
Really worth it!