stikir

Stikir is somewhat similar to Pony Island in the sense that it's a bit surreal and meta, with microgame gameplay.

It's presented like a game developer is thinking on how to make a game, and you then have basic gameplay of his thoughts. So sometimes there's a bit of platforming, then it could be a basic racing game, then a basic shooting game.

The aim of some of the games is a bit cryptic, like in the racing game, I completed 3 laps then glitched out of the circuit when the moving obstacle pushed me out. That is actually the solution - to get pushed out, and I have no idea if you could keep doing more laps without realising. In the next section, I got stuck because I was wandering around aimlessly, not realising that the gun was pointing the direction you were supposed to move.

In some platforming sections, falling will result in death, but in other sections, you are supposed to leap into the void to progress to the next section.

The most frustrating sections are when you are expected to react to some danger but aren't given enough time to. The battle with the dragon is one of these where he moves in a sine wave pattern but you don't get visibility of where he is because he moves completely off screen at the top and bottom. So it becomes more of a trial-and-error and just estimating where he is so you can time your shot and movement. You have to hit him loads of times without even taking a single hit.

Another example is when it's an auto-scrolling platformer. You jump over a few obstacles then the next obstacle you are supposed to jump on so you can jump onto the platform above. However, you aren't going to know that without failing at least once, and there's not enough time to go back for a second attempt. Then there's multiple instances of this in the same section.

Some games can suffer from being too easy like the side-scrolling shooter where I was mindlessly moving up and down whilst constantly firing. It’s actually simpler than that because you can remain stationary and fire - since the enemies only ever move horizontally and therefore most enemies pose zero threat.

It will only take around an hour, but then it feels most of the time is spent on the sections with difficulty spikes or unclear objectives. When the "story" is supposed to be about game development, and there's several instances of game design failures; then it's very ironic.

I'm fine with simple games as long as the game design is right. A game like WarioWare has the microgames and the absurd style and mostly gets it right. This doesn't get it right and you definitely won't come back to replay it.