For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Blade Jumper, developed by bit paradigm and published by CFK.
The #eShop mentions that this game has one button that does the jumping and the attacking. i was very curious as to how this would work and whether or not it would make the game difficult or not. the eShop page also talks about the game's story and i wondered if it is a difficult game would they be able to tell that story. So having a demo is great for this kind of game as it could answer many questions.
It starts with a cool song that really sets the mood, we find out at the end of the video that this song doesn't loop so don't be surprised when it stops. it also mentions that this is a demo and has a link to the eShop page, something that few games actually do so it was welcome to see.
Once you start, you're immediately introduced to the story, your main character, and what you're task is. there is a tutorial and it's mostly blended into the game's introduction. but with everything using just one button it does take a bit of time to get used to. thankfully, there is graffiti across this first stage that'll help with how to line things up and what force to use.
So far so good, but it's not long after this that i personally started to have issues with the game. i don't enjoy the core gameplay mechanic, i found the jump system to be a chore and when it's coupled with respawning monsters it was frustrating. the whole experience took nearly 50 minutes to complete what turned out to be a short demo. i imagine this could easily be done in less than 30, maybe less than 20 minutes. but i found the learning curve so high and the level design unforgiving so it simply took a long frustrating time.
But i wouldn't say the whole game is frustrating. i actually found myself really interested in the story and the music. i talk about how i would like this game to have a story focused mode, instead of the game focusing on it's jumping mechanics. so the demo did it's job. i got to try out the core mechanics and i learned that it's not for me. it's not a style of game i would enjoy, and whilst i did like the story and would like to see what happens i've also learned that i don't want to experience the story how it's currently being told. i recommend people check out the demo before buying the game as it's more hardcore than it lets on to be.
