I didn't grow up with Zelda, I was on team Sega and grew up with Golden Axe Warrior for my top down adventure playing in the 90s.

Anyway, Rack is a a psychotic demonic critter who blows up worlds and laughs like a maniac. You play Rack. This is not a redemption game. Enjoy being evil for a change.

After blowing up several planets, rack is punished by his master Ruin to corrupt a world instead of outright destroying it. Kill the inhabitants, take their souls, and use them to corrupt a segment of the map. Once you have collected and corrupted enough at a soul point, the world will change from lush greens and yellows to a decayed fetid realm.

Doing so does unleash more evil into the world. Evil that also does not care for you and is marginally more difficult to counter.

Thankfully you can cast fireball an other attacks such as a giant evil blade, lightning, and a freezing attack. But mostly you'll focus on Fireball as the 0 MP cost attack. And likely do what I did and find out at the end of the game post defeating the boss that there is a way to bake your fireball even more fireball.

There is a story of a couple of heroes who decide they will save the world. You quickly show them that this is not that kind of game.

The enemies though, both good and bad, bring this game into a light level bullet-hell game. While not the utter precision madness that is this genre, Rack does have a smaller hitbox than he appears to have and the boss fights can get a little crazy in comparison to the overworld maps.

There's not a lot more to the combat loop. While there is a collection of items you can use to temporary boost item/attack stats (though there is no character levelling) only the boomerang horn is really useful. And other attack types only for activating door locks.

Except shield. The shield is always useful, and unlike dozensthe majority of other games can be used while you run.

Outside this there are many puzzles to solve, requiring Rack to use telekenetics to move blocks onto switches... They need to be matched though, and there are cases where the definition of a block can mean a monster (including Rack himself).

Part way through you team up with a human who also lusts for power and you need to arrange blocks into paths to get a chain lightning to activate a switch. Here the game gets a little bit picky as precision is needed far more than anywhere else. Worse still, you can sometimes shoot between gaps you should not be able to and hit things you should not yet be able to.

This once soft broke the game and I had to escape to the menu and play out the zone again (thankfully only part way in), but it does set you mind in a place where you can think that this trick may be the solution. It is not.

Graphically it is in a bit of an odd spot. It is pleasing to look at, even when the world is corrupted. But sometimes the map feels a little too zoomed in and I would of liked to pull back a bit. This is especially true with some of the more maze like maps such as Fae forest near the end of the game.

Characters are also kinda ugly.

None of this really detracts from the overall game though.

Audio wise it is certainly atmospheric and never got on my nerves to cause a mute hours in. Nothing is really memorable, so expect a suitable job at a sound track and crunchy'n'splatty sounds as you teach those mortals who is boss.

I enjoyed this one. While the loop is simple it is also engaging and easy enough to play though. There's an achievement for completing it in under 2 hours, which is a little ridiculous, and those wanting to 100% it will find a few extra hours our of it.

But not every game needs to be long. Sometimes you just need long enough to cackle like a madman and then blow up the planet.

Game Acquisition: Bundle Stars (Mystic Reboot)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 14 October 2022
PC Used: Scorptec Master-RTX2070 2019 MK1

OS: Windows XP+
Processor: Pentium 4 or greater CPU with SSE2 instruction set support.
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: DX9 Supported Video card.
DirectX: Version 9.0
Storage: 2 GB available space
Sound Card: DX Supported Sound card.