When I first touch Afterimage via PC, I was astounded by the fidelity of handcrafted art on display as well as an aqua-based design theme if the player dies. Afterimage is a 2D sidescrolling of a Valkyrie-designed-like or a Genshin Impact type of character by the name of Renee gracefully slashing her way through enemies while brandishing her sword and picking up teardrops loots on the enemy corpses. The animation is pretty flowy as the hand-crafted art of clothing folds and creases through the wind, frame by frame, smoothly as Renee makes a jump or run.
However, Renee does not have ledge climbing animation which means that I will have to make a jump from a higher or similar height altitude to make it through the platforming levels. Jumping across platforms feels generally done in a linear fashion with no precision jumping required (thank the gods), along with predictable wooden spike traps along the way. Hopefully, as development goes on, there will be more varied platforming obstacles, puzzles elements, and more tricky traps.
Source: Afterimage
In combat, hitting your enemies sounds like a symphony of striking stones and shells with a satisfying clank as if you’re bouncing stones off their shells; finding goodies also has an alluring shlick coin-like sound, like collecting golden seashells by the seashore. This department alone hits the spot in my book as the fluid animation of the main character’s attack and the sound effects timed and gelled perfectly with each other. Making it looks like I am playing a decent side-scrolling anime game.
Yes! We've reached 2 new stretch goals: a brand new class of weapon and New Game+!
Also, we've updated our first dev post: the WEAPONS! Do you know how many classes of weapon are there in #Afterimage and how they are differentiated? Check it out now:https://t.co/HvJwtZpmrP pic.twitter.com/30qe7ZCnZX— Afterimage – ✨NOW LIVE on Kickstarter! (@PlayAfterimage) April 7, 2022
On the receiving end, there is quite a number of varied enemy designs ranging from humanoid bandits to floating jellyfish to coral conch shells beetles. Although some enemies stubbornly do not react to your attacks, others will throw knives and bombs at you if provoked, but this need not be a concern as the projectiles can be reflected by your timed slash attacks. Things do spike drastically in terms of difficulty when it comes to big baddies bosses, boxing mushroom, and mini-bosses fights later on.
As of my playthrough, although there is a lack of attack variety performed by Renee and using dash-forward alone does not count as a dodge roll as you will still take damage from enemies by simply touching their bodies. On the flip side, there are other options to either jump over attacks or simply slide under enemies to avoid taking damage which adds to a varied fun mix of avoiding damage while observing different enemies’ attack animations.
Overall, I’ve had a fair share of fun and some qualms of bugs like being stuck in the loading sequence after death and being lagged after reviving, but this is understandable as it is the first playable demo. Hopefully, things do get ironed out later on as the development progresses.
Speaking of progress, as of this moment of writing, the Kickstarter campaign was already 100% funded within 40 hours, with almost all stretch goals achieved within a short period of time as announced by developer Aurogon Shanghai. This goes to show that the idea of development and demo garnered much positive feedback that proves to be something special to the audience. Afterimage is set to launch in Winter 2022 on Windows PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Introducing brand new controllable character of #Afterimage: Brenda the Rider Penguin!
Being cute enough to ride all kinds of creatures, Brenda is ready for an exciting adventure with his "friends"!#metroidvania #indiegame #indiedev pic.twitter.com/vCXGuDAGJ0
— Afterimage – ✨NOW LIVE on Kickstarter! (@PlayAfterimage) April 1, 2022
