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Website: https://www.ginsha.com/
Price: $10-15 USD
Blurb: “GINSHA is a unique atmospheric 2D Sci-Fi Action Adventure Platformer, with special Gravity Shield and Dash mechanics. It combines a versatile Platformer Core with RPG, Souls and Crafting Elements to an Anomaly among Metroidvania games. Explore huge interconnected planets, filled with secrets, loot, obstacles, different enemy types and epic boss fights. (sic) Level up, equip and customize your Clone, craft companion drones, and enjoy ever evolving possibilities as you proceed to save your species.“
Ginsha is the successor to Cryogear. If you know that game, you will know it is one of those metroid-vania’s that stand out on the indie-scene. The graphics were nothing special, actually below par, but it had fans all over the world in just a few months, and that says something. If you have never heard of it, look it up and see the similarities.
If you are a fan of exploration, you will not be disappointed. Ginsha brings exploration in spades and there is no hand-holding. This is quite refreshing, as following ‘ way points’ makes a game feel linear. When you explore, you discover, and discovery is a big part in getting your dopamine release, as there are secrets everywhere. You can go left, right, up, down, wherever, and you may discover new things like secret areas or mini-boss fights, whether you’re ready or not, ramping up the tension. This is something a lot of modern AAA titles lack. The feels! I go back to playing Skyrim every few years; why? It does not hold your hand and you can go wherever you want, ready or not. If you just want to do side quests, so be it. Let me not start ragging on Fallout 76, once they took out the feels, I have no interest in playing it again. Back to Ginsha. The level design is fun to experience for yourself, you are not led there by the nose. You even need to find the secret room on the first level to set your game difficulty. How’s that? There is *some guidance in the beginning, so you are not just kicked from the nest. If you are looking for a non-violent game, the game has shooting, and gun choices. I think one should expect that from the metroid-vania genre.
This is the second thing Ginsha does well. The shooting is responsive and sounds punchy. The game has the usual tropes, auto fire, shotgun charge gun, and so forth. There is another interesting mechanism in play here too, as you have a personal force field (Holtzman shield anyone?) that you can use to access otherwise dangerous places. It also allows you to fly. OK, that is a bit of a lie. You can glide or float, depending on the situation. The game feels very fluid and sometimes reminds me of the classic game Abuse (that you can still find here: http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/a/).
There is also a smidge of role-playing involved where you can improve your ‘stats’ as you get better. There are four categories, red, blue, purple & orange, that basically have skill trees in them. (Well… they may mean something, but that is how I identify them, as the icons are way too small and low-res for my liking). This can make for an explorer build or a tank build or whatever, allowing for replayability. Replayability is important for modern games, because as much as I liked a game like Dredge, once the story is done, it’s done. I’m not going to play it again just for the alternate ending, I’m going to load my last save game and choose the other option. Couple this touch of role-playing with large level design and secret hunting, and you have yourself some fun on a Sunday afternoon.
Honestly, for me, the only downside is the low-resolution graphics. Though the levels feel lovingly crafted with interesting backdrops and faux lighting effects, I detest faceless heroes. The symbiote, or alien on your head, is nothing more than waving red pixels, looking like a bad hair day for a ginger. This could have been such a nice twist; a game mechanism gone wasted due to the low-res sprites. The other thing is the palette. I understand that it is supposed to be an alien world, but the faded purply-wurply does not work for me.
Let us quickly talk about the sound. When you start the game, it has that tinkerbell bell and heavy distorted bass in the menu areas, creating an expectation of the music to follow. When you start the game, however, the music is different. By different, I don’t mean bad, just a completely different sound from what I was expecting, given the sound mood created on the menu screens. There is a full gameplay video on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0vi8oERRHw -but you only need to watch the first ten seconds to understand what I mean here, I do not expect you to sit through hours.
The question you have is probably, how does it run on Linux? Well, great actually, on a modern machine, but what about the guy with the low-end computer? Sadly my potato laptop has sort of bit the dust, so I am unable to test that aspect for you guys. The Steam page says all you need is 4GB of RAM. At the end of the day, it is a low-res pixel art game that would probably run on a Nintendo famicom, so I doubt you would have a bad experience.