Great technical gameplay with some flawed mechanics – Downwell Review

I am a fairly decent fan of Devolver, and when I saw that this game was on sale, I figured I would give it a shot, because Devolver does retro, skill-based games the best (Hotline Miami, Broforce, Enter The Gungeon). Thus far it's been pretty much worth while, with solid, fast-paced gameplay that requires you to rely on technical skills as opposed to just spamming buttons (like in a somewhat similar dungeon crawler, Punch Quest). The game mechanics work really well with the game, in that its mostly about time and combos, and since gravity is always pulling you down, it makes sense that landing on your enemies kills them. However, there are two problems that I have come across so far that have either made the game irritating or unplayable. The first and lesser of the problems has to do with the hitbox for landing on enemies. It seems like every time I am falling, and the enemy is a long distance to the left or right, but within reach, and I go to stomp them, clearly I can see myself on top of the enemy (on top and slightly to the side), but I get hurt like I've just walked into them. Then, if I land and then move directly over to an enemy on the ground next to me, while I am clearly just walking into them from the side and should be hurt, it registers as a stomp, and I kill them. The first part of this problem is really irritating (losing health when I feel that it was unjustified), while the second part just seems counterintuitive (if the first problem isn't fixed). The bigger problem I have faced is that fairly often the left movement button will cease to work, which is a game ending glitch. Firstly, in my opinion the controls are garbage (which is not good for a game where movement needs to be utterly precise), since they are too close together and are too small, plus they block the screen. If people from Devolver were to read this, I would suggest moving the fire button all the way to the right, and split the distance between the left of the fire button and the left edge of the screen for your movement buttons, effectively making their hitbox bigger, easier to hit. Next, I would keep the hitbox height the same, but I would make the visible arrow keys much shorter (five to ten pixels in height) and have them hug the bottom edge just so they take up less of the screen. Secondly, if you add onto that a sometimes non-functional left movement button (my guess is that it's either the touchscreen not registering my finger, or it's the 3D touch on my phone being stupid and thinking that when I'm pressing hard I'm trying to switch apps; regardless, it needs fixing), the game becomes unplayable and frustrating. In technical, skill-based games especially, any interruption in gameplay, glitch or otherwise is eternally frustrating, since it disrupts the flow of gameplay when you are fully invested. This will almost always result in huge mistakes in-game, which leads to the player failing the round or whatever. If they can fix those issues, it will be a great game.
Review by XxxaxwetxsockxxX on Downwell.