Deneb: Across the Stars

It was inconvenient to control only with the mouse, but there is an advantage. When you fall, you can smash keyboard with your other hand.

Quick Score: 5/5 Notes: -Simple but enjoyable mechanics. -Extremely polished -Looks great, sounds great -Hits a great level of challenge, not too easy, never gets too hard to be annoying. -You should buy the game cause its good XD

Deneb: Across the Stars is a carpal tunnel inducing rage game in the vein of 'Getting Over It' or 'AltF4.' The game seems targeted towards masochists - you know, the types that complete Dark Souls titles using Donkey Kong bongos or reach Spelunky 2's '7-99' ending using DDR dance pads. Do not be fooled by the trailer on the store page because the amount of break-neck speed and pin-point precision required for surpassing even the earliest obstacles is obscene. Deneb would be a difficult game using the more precise navigation provided by a controller but seems near impossible when you're only allowed to use a mouse (at least, for anyone that isn't juiced to the gills with Adderall). For what it's worth, I see some potential in this game but I think that the developer would need to either add an 'easy mode' or dial back some of the existing elements of this game in order to be enjoyable for the masses at large. Checkpoints, an option to freeze your character in place (by right-clickin...

Can't put cursor on the edge of the screen to control angle at a high level, game does the sh*t to make mouse control slippery.

I can't with this game. Maybe if the devs eased the player in a little before ramping up the difficulty to 1000 but nope, it starts off incredibly hard and then just gets harder. The penalty for failure is simply too steep and the constant character movement adds a level of desperation that simply is not fun (for me). It makes me think of the myth of Sisyphus rolling the boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down again in a perpetual cycle for eternity as a form of torture. Not what I am looking for.

This game has a pretty unique mouse-only control system that has a really nice balance of challenging, but not impossible. It can certainly be disorienting going in, but very satisfying once you start to get the hang of it. My run time went from 3+ hours to under 10 minutes across a few play sessions. The use of music and sound is subtle in a really cool (and diagetic) way, plus the art is a truly beautiful pixel art style that actually reminds me a lot of Celeste.

This is a rage game. A cute rage game, but a rage game nonetheless. Navigating top-down strict-timing movement using a mouse with limited range sucks, but it's designed that way. Recommended, but only if you like games that kill you over and over and piss you off. And not in a "Fire Emblem Fates Revelations storytelling" kind of way, but in a "Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy" kind of way.

Though game is challenging, gorgeous artwork pulls you through the game. Great gameplay with spicy difficulty.

Lovely little game that is also satisfyingly challenging.

From ~2 hours with hundreds of falls, to 6:44.45 min. with none. Truly a polished, alas criminally underrated little gem. It was quite a journey, thank you for making it happen.