There are many different ways to wake up, some better than others, and it's safe to say that "in a giant specimen tube in a decrepit lab as it shatters and dumps you on your face" is one of the lesser options. A boy with no memory of how he got there is oddly accepting of his strange circumstances, including the catlike AI that greets him and explains that they've got to get out of the lab before the power goes down and seals the place forever. Cat-AI (Sec-urity Sy-stem, trying to get people to call it SecSy for short with mixed results) hops into a mask the kid wears propped up on his forehead, and together the two set out to escape.
Hayaku! Island of Darkness is an NES-styled metroidvania action adventure that's currently got an active playtest running on Steam, basically the first hour or two from humble beginnings to powering up enough to take on the first major boss. A look at the Steam page linked in that last sentence will show that there's a lot more gameplay systems than are shown off in the playtest, but it's still enough to get a sense of the movement and enemy design as you get to beat up a nice pile of robots.
While the full game plans for three major weapons, Hayaku's playtest features the energy sword Crimson Star. Combat is fairly straightforward, in that you hit the button to slash at enemies in one of the four primary directions and that's pretty much it, but for as far into the game as the playtest goes that's more than enough. Defeated enemies drop crystals, which act as currency for the weapon, and collecting enough let you level it up twice. The first level adds a ranged attack while the second extends its reach, and both levels add a bit more power to a strike. Where things get tricky is that the weapon has a couple of orbs underneath it, and taking a hit not only knocks off a bar of Hayaki's health but also drops an orb off the weapon. Lose them all and it regresses a level, which isn't too much of an issue while wandering around searching for the next area but can be a serious problem in sealed challenge rooms.
The obvious solution, of course is to play better, and the pattern-based enemies and bosses aren't too hard to learn. That's not the same thing as easy, of course, and I refuse to admit how many attempts it took to clear the playtest's final boss. What made it worth persevering is that the controls feel fast and responsive, meaning any loss is down to misreading the timing on enemy attacks or getting impatient when a little bit of caution would have been a better idea. Hayaki's move set is basically run, jump, and dash, so not particularly complicated, but once you're in a fight with multiple enemies using different abilities it's very easy to react without thinking, right into one of the bot's attack patterns.
The Hayaku! Island of Darkness playtest is a promising glimpse of the upcoming metroidvania, with a couple of good secrets to ferret out in its map and fun, snappy action-platforming. It's also, if you take a look at the Steam page, not fully representative of the game to come, which will have two more primary weapons, an unspecified number of secondary weapons, more movement abilities, a customizable mech suit, and an expanded cast located across the island once you break out of the lab. Hayaku!'s playtest may only be the start of the adventure, but when the only reason to stop playing is because there's no content left, that's a promising indicator of the game ahead.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://hardcoregamer.com/escaping-the-metroidvania-lab-in-hayaku-island-of-darkness-playtest/
