Iason's curse

I started playing this wanting to write a review, and I ended up giving so much feedback and criticism I was tempted to leave it at that.
However, a lot about the game's premise is confusing, so to help players along, I might as well write it!
It is being reworked, so I left the score out because of that and will edit it accordingly. There are minor "spoilers" for the game mechanics, but I consider them irrevelant to the flavor.

"Iason's Curse" is a short rhythm game with a little story attached. Entering battle with random encounters and bosses, you use a rhythm script where you need to input the keys that flash up on screen. You are like a quicker and more efficient Stanley!

You have been kidnapped to solve the town's mystery, prophecy and curse lurking in a cave. Only women can do this for some reason, and the locals ran out of women to use.

It is advertised as a "short casual rhythm rpg experience", but it is not quite casual at the moment, and it plays more like a puzzler than anything else. This is not casual. You will need to think, and you won't be able to procceed otherwise. The difficulty suddenly spikes up as well.

You can procceed through the game to the end boss ignoring pretty much all puzzles, but this will make it impossible to beat said boss because solving puzzles weakens him (it's not explained anywhere as of yet..).


Hit. hit hit. This is the easy version, at least.

The rhythm system is quite fun by itself, but since the actual rhythm you input keys in with is the exact same throughout a battle, it gets tedious if you keep at it for too long, as there are no variations. You simply react to the symbols shown.

You input arrow keys, a, s, x and z in random combinations at the same speed for each fight. Later monsters have a little quicker pace (and the endboss is an asshole)

You can gain a few more team members with which the battles are longer (except the endboss), because HP scales up, but the speed at which you hit "notes" is slower.
You also add different rows on which keys are displayed, but while this makes it a little more complex to read, it is still one note at a time.

The music is .. fairly bland, to be honest. It's a few light classical pieces. They are "nice", but just that. I believe there are three different pieces used, a less light-hearted theme for the boss fight would have been appreciated though. It all feels very same-ish.
The speed changes are also applied to the same songs quite arbitrarily, which chips away at the fun of matching the muscic's beat.

The Game

The main problem this game faces is a lack of player direction, and frustrating difficulty spikes.
You may also count puzzle blocks if you do not enjoy puzzles - like me - but that they are decent in design. Difficult to do though, you will also be lost without pen and paper.

Throughout this game, there are many points that are simply not explained. Many of the core mechanics are intuitive - like how the rhythm system works - so they are easy to pick up. However, other gimmicks are completely left in the dark, but crucial to your experience starting with the way to acquire money.

The one elder guy you start with has "vague hints" for those "mechanics", but it's impossible to make them out at the time, and you will also want to ignore him because:

1. You already heard the story in the intro. A couple of written paragraphs explain the situation - starting out into the game you are completely clued in on what you need to do, and you just want to get started.

2. To use every dialogue option you need to sit through 2-3 boxes of filler dialogue with text pauses of "..." in there which you need to wait out. This makes going through each option a lot more tedious than it would be otherwise.

3. Most of what the guy says seems completely irrevelant. Or redundant.
There is a save statue to the right of the first map - you interact with it you save. You can ask about it, too, and he will say it heals you and you save. Duh.

However, the "heal" refers to the "chance / life" system in place, since you recover automatically after battle.
.. only you didn't fight a battle yet! You don't know you heal automatically, you don't know such a life system even exists unless you die once! It's impossible to remember or even notice as a clue at this point!

Then you can ask about the "prophecy" which is written into a stone you can interact with. He will tell you the exact same thing that is written on the stone, great.

The third thing is about a weird stone slob (I skipped this one at first because the other two option left me wanting to finally get out of town), and a weird "meditating before it can make things happen maybe" description.
I interacted with it, it says nothing. It seemed like a non-object to me and I left it afterwards. It is not.

This stone is the only way to get money according to the points/score you acquire.
You won't get money directly for whatever weird reason. It is nowhere mentioned, the shop is closed at this point, too.
It is a strange complicated system for no good reason.

Also, there is another such stone in the cave dungeon, which nets you MORE money than the other stone does. This is hinted at by "a light does something" in that starting dialogue - when again - you do not even know you get ANY money. You don't know how or if it works, and you are supposed to remember this. The description of getting money is the very same for both stones, so it is impossible to make out playing the game.

So with that old geezer ignored (the only humanoid you have dialoge options with in town), off you go into that cave!

It's a very straight-forward one, push blocks, procceed, meet people (maybe), step around the dark to procceed and it's puzzle time!

It's very compact mapping, but quite nice and comes across well - there is little unnecessary space. There are a few dark areas which I find annoying, but they are small enough.

The story is really bare-bones, there are a few hints at oppression and women's rights, but it's a simple sweet tale and it works for that.

There are some cool puzzles with reading instructions properly, but sadly nothing really tell you when you get it wrong - something appears - whether that is good or bad .. you do not know. The room you enter is the same.
There is also a door you unlock somewhere and are teleported back, but .. only you have no idea if that teleport is a short-cut or if something happened. You can check, but it is a little frustrating guess-work if you try to explore more in the dark only to realize you already got everything you needed to find.

There is a switch puzzle you can "solve" by flipping random switches and reach the exact same room you would otherwise .. with no indication of what effect it may have.

The boss is designed to be unbeatable unless you did all these puzzles.. and it is neither explained, nor displayed in any shape or form. This is frustrating.
If you manage to reach the boss you usually should have all tools to beat him. At least in about every single game I have played, so changing this should be explained or at least hinted at.

And even with all done, if you missed a team member you are still facing quite a difficult long battle.

I don't quite know why, but on many occasion the game started stuttering in battles (only minor lags, so not inhibiting the gameplay, only getting on my eyes a little bit), and freezing for a second or two after battles. It never crashed though.

Equipment and Battle Prowess

Why equipment exists in this rhythm game is elusive to me, so before I can point out why that is, let's explain the system.

You have attack power and defense as stats. Attack power - def = damage in a nut-shell.
If you hit the note, you attack. If you miss, you are attacked.
So if you play perfectly, you will not get hit at all. And if you mess up you can die quickly.

After the first two very short rooms you will encounter enemies with much higher defense than the first ones making the doubled life seem ridiculous.
I needed 10-20 hits for the first enemies. Some needed a little more.

The next row of enemies needed 500 hits. No kidding. Allowing for about 15 mistakes. You are supposed to have bought decent equipment when you just took 10 felt steps into the dungeon.

Money is calculated with the a scoring system (so longer streaks = more moneyz). Which means fighting weak enemies will get you nothing, fighting "strong" ones does.
You need equipment to fight strong monsters, though, or alternatively .. endurance. The difficulty is not really the speed or the skill to pull it off, but the ability to do so in long consecutive rows - the same speed and system with a samey rhythm and samey song wears you down over time and makes it hard to properly concentrate. Mistakes will add up over time and without any way to regenerate may even kill you.

However, if you pull it off to kill such a guy (like, by buying some cheap equipment to only need 300 hits + and endure), you will have instantly enough money to buy the best weaponry and attack boosting you can get throughout the entire game.
And you will likely get more money than you will for the rest of the game, too. This is bad design.

Equipment serves two main purposes.

1. Flavor and Progression - you can have all kinds of fancy names, descriptions. You will also show a progression in name (from wooden to fancy golden stick), to numbers over the course of a game. It makes you feel a little more sophisticated and stronger.

2. An Alternative to Skill or Plan B - it can make things a little easier (or harder) depending on where you are at. It also usually allows to grind a little and gear up if you are having trouble.

Problem is, the game is too short to really make a different, there is no flavor text to the equipment, and you cannot grind for it either unless you fight really "strong" tiresome, boring monster fights.
It also is absolutely necessary for you to get anywhere. Fighting without equipment is an impossible task.

So why is it here? I really don't know.
A rhythm game should have appropriate difficulty - it should have a slow progression to let you get used to the system and speed while getting increasingly more difficult, or staying the same challenge (which usually also means that it gets a little more difficult over time)

Sudden spikes and sudden drops are really bad - and boring too. You get that equipment - you kill everything easily. And then there's the boss which is just utterly frustrating again - you have nothing even remotely close to the speed this guy has going on to practice. You already have full equipment, too.
Leveling increases your health - not your ability to kill. Either you are able to hit him well and keep up with the speed - or you die really quickly anyway.

In this system the "chances" are a neat idea and addition so you won't get a game over instantly, but really .. either you can beat the critters, or you can't beat them at all. There is nothing inbetween, and it's really imbalanced because of it.
It has little use imho. Still, it doesn't hurt, either, and they are refilled.

Replaying this: It is a lot easier if you get a secondary character.
But you can easily miss this (the first thought is to do the wrong thing), and it is supposed to be an "optional character". It should not become unplayable by not getting said character if you do have the choice!
There is no choice if only one course of action will allow you to win the game. Making this choice viable by allowing you to procceed even screwing it up is really really frustrating. Honestly, I imagine the endboss will be perfectly playable with a full party. It is not missing one.
Also .. difficulty is pointless if it's not satisfying as a challenge.

If you need us to get that character, make us lose if we act the wrong way and redo it.
Otherwise you waste an entire playthrough only to realize at the end that you need to restart.
It seems to all make more sense now .. but sadly not necessarily for the better.

All in all

To sum this up it it lacks so much feedback to know what you are doing that playing through this was a really, really really frustrating experience.
I did not know what to do or why, and it seemed like it was pointless, too, only that then it wasn't and "maybe" it was important. Working for a "maybe" is not fun.
I was faced with impossible to beat enemies for no reason after spending 5 minutes in the game. And then again at the endboss. (honestly, I refuse to "practice" for this. I will need all characters to beat him, and that means replaying the game for me, since this choice is very early in the game).

It has a sweet frame, the music isn't great and really not the catch, but it is alright. The story is simple and while it suffers from a couple of grammatical errors, it's quite alright.
It reminded me of rhapsody in the way that the battle tune is really calm and relaxing - and it was meant to be a small relaxing experience. If it was actually just a sweet easy tale with a few puzzles inbetween it would be a lovely experience.

And that's really the sad thing about it.
If the puzzle completion didn't enable you to beat the boss, but to have more flavor and story (like different endings), it would work.
If you needed to complete the puzzles one after another and couldn't procceed otherwise (and dropped the equipment) it would work.
If it was just a lil easier overall and with clear clues and a better balance it would work.

It was planned as such a nice laid-back experience and I hope to see it like that in the future, even if it won't be a gem.
I really can't recommend it in its current state.