Pseudoregalia

With a trip upcoming for me I’ve been playing through a bunch of shorter games I’ve picked up and one of those was Pseudoregalia! This was a game that’s been on my radar for a while since I’ve heard good things about it, but I didn’t pick it up initially because the art style was a little dreary. Not that’s a bad thing or anything, but I am very much the type of person who likes more bright and cheerful environments.

The game is pretty short, though admittedly I didn’t 100% the game (in terms of finding up all upgrades/doing all trials). Honestly, the movement and design reminded me a lot of Mario 64 lol.

To me where the game shines is the movement. It feels like a blast to learn how to move in the game, and once you do, going through environments feels awesome. Learning applications and combining different techniques to reach higher areas or previously unreachable areas feels great and is super exhilarating.

Unfortunately where I felt the game lacked was combat. There weren’t that many different enemies and the combat itself was a little lackluster. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing since the highlight of the game is movement in the first place, but it did make some fights/encounters feel more like a chore.

One other problem I had is that movement feels awesome… when you have all the upgrades and options available. When you didn’t, it didn’t feel that fun to explore through the castle. Granted, this is more of a minor complaint, but it also felt like by the time you collected every upgrade, there wasn’t actually that much left to do. There’s also the usual complaint I have with cameras in these types of games, and I also felt that the wall kick movement option was a bit finicky with how it bounced against walls with momentum. Otherwise, I felt the movement was fantastic.

If this game got a sequel I’d love to explore a larger area with a focus on the platforming and movement aspects. Discovering and figuring out tricks to be able to optimize how I wanted to move felt really cool. But overall, for a 5 dollar game definitely worth the price of admission.