Playing Flinthook is very frustrating: one of the main game features — jumping with the hook — feels unresponsive, random, it does not feel like you’re controlling where you’re going at all. And that would have been fine for a platformer where you could neatly craft the levels around the clunkiness.
Speaking of platforming, the other thing that stood out to me while I was playing is how bad the wall-jumping in this game: you slide off the walls too fast, the wall jump itself is too small, it feels like the hook jumping took more of a priority, which makes sense! And I would have been fine with it if one of the trap rooms wasn’t build around wall jumping to traverse!!!
Again, this would have been fine if the level design supported the gameplay, not the conceptual part of it. The rooms, the traps, the enemies — they all make sense! But only before you start the traversal.
You see, this game is a rogue-like platformer. And one of the important things you need to have in a rogue-like is tight controls — that one thing the player can rely on no matter what.
Maybe I’m just bad at playing Flinthook. Maybe I haven’t played enough of it to say for sure. Maybe the game just did not click with me yet. But after going through one run of the game I just don’t want to play it anymore. What a shame.
