The game initially caught my attention with its first demo in 2023 Steam Nextfest. The dreamy atmosphere and the clean art style reminded me a lot of the Ori series. In 2024 Steam Nextfest, the demo was updated and it was even more fantastic than before. The visual had been vastly improved. The premises of using paint brush techniques as gating abilities left me interested. Now the full game has released, and I have mixed feelings for it. At its core, the game is a very competent metroidvania. It does everything right, yet somehow I can't shake the vibe of disappointment. Maybe it's because some designs feel out-of-place, or maybe it's because the emotional reveals are too heavy-handed. Nonetheless, Constance is still a good metroidvania worth your time.

• Gameplay: The control is tight and responsive. You can easily animation-cancel a lot of the move sets to either chain more attacks or move swiftly in levels. The game tracks your progression well. Enemies are often designed accordingly to encourage more ability usages. The platforming challenges can be daunting at first, but the satisfaction of mastering the skills and conquering them is undeniable.
  
  
• Dual-purposed Abilities: This is one of the features I love about modern metroidvania. Giving gating abilities additional flavors helps them shake off the usual "keys in different shapes" sentiment from many metroidvanias. Paint Stab is often used to pierce dark barriers, and it is also a great damage tool in combat. Paint Clone not only helps you break walls but it also functions as a pseudo-platform for you to bounce on. With specific Inspirations, you can even turn somersault(double jump) and air dash into lethal weapons.
  
  
• Art Style: I really enjoy this sort of blurry, foggy effect in Constance. Accompanying with the gentle lightings, each level easily gives off a surreal and dreamy atmosphere. The strong color also strengthens the visual vastly. It's clean. It's eye-pleasing. This art stye really fits the theme of this game.
  
  
• Inspiration: I like the animation. The protagonist looks at a point of interest. She takes out her notebooks and quickly jots down the inspiration. These inspirations, like I mention before, not only empower your abilities further, but it also provides a mini inventory-management puzzle. Certain inspirations have additional effects when placed specifically. It is fun to re-arrange my preferred inspirations to fully utilize the blocks as well as getting the most of those special inspirations.
  
  
• Preserving Your Shell: I quite like this design choice. It's a half-pity, half-challenge mechanic which the game lets you revive at the beginning of this section at the cost of making enemies extra hard to kill. They will receive a damaging aura that can hurt you even if you dodge through them. That condition may sound terrible at first, but in reality it's not that bad and you can easily work around it. This mechanic is basically a free retry for platforming challenges without the runback.

• Not Enough Symbolism And Fitting Designs: (This is where I yap about my unreasonable expectation towards the game. Feel free to ignore.) For a game about mental well-being and burnout, Constance surprisingly does not include much of symbolism you often find in games that explore the same theme. Characters' and enemies' designs don't reflect on the protagonist's inner struggles. Levels feel like ideas put together with little connections. Even most of the abilities are not painting-adjacent and fall in line with the box-standard metroidvania formula.
  
  
• No Heals: It is a bold decision to not have healing flasks or any methods to heal on command. Sadly in Constance's case this doesn't work. You can only heal by breaking special items and absorbs the heart within. This design leaves little rooms for mistakes in both platforming challenges and combat arenas. There is a band-aid health flask upgrades you can have, but it still requires you to find those special items to recharge it when you're at full health.
  
  
• No Directional Normal Attacks: You cannot attack upward or downward with normal attack. This can be really frustrating to deal with flying enemies or you just want to squeeze in more attacks in between dodges. P.S. Pogo is a gating ability is of its own.
  
  
• Paint Meter: This might be just me. I find this meter to be extra awkward whenever I am in a platforming challenge. In combat, it's a good way to deter players to be over-reliant on powerful abilities. In platforming challenges, quite the contrary, it feels rather restrictive and punishing when the game wants you to chain multiple abilities in rapid succession to get pass the gauntlets. That Cosmic Maw chasing-sequence is easily the worst part of this experience.
  
  
• Box Map: Please for the love of god, abolish this atrocious design! It does not help convey any useful information for the map. It does not tell you where you are and where you probably should go. And it certainly does not want to cooperate when I go for scavenge hunt, you know, the essential part of any metroidvania.

中文小簡評
→2024新品節亮點之一，當時的demo讓我印象深刻。如今正式版推出，本質的確是款傑出的類銀河系惡魔城，但就設計上我覺得可以再更好。
→朦朧的氛圍搭配強烈鮮明的用色給人一股如夢似幻的感受，許多地方也有以手繪的風格來呈現。
→遊戲體感佳，操作流暢，所有技能都能順暢連接運用。關鍵技能是我最喜歡的雙用途設計，能在探索中找出新的道路，亦能在戰鬥中發揮十足的功效。遊戲充分掌握玩家進度，以此設計敵人讓玩家能充分利用新技能。
→運用「靈感」強化主角，不僅能將移動技能強化為攻擊利器，裝備靈感的方格也簡單考驗玩家的拼湊能力。
→遊戲也有讓你可以就地復活的設計，代價是所有敵人都會獲得強化光圈(即使閃避穿過敵人也會受傷)。聽來很難搞，但實際操作起來沒那麼難應付，可以大量省去折返的時間，特別是在跳臺挑戰時機根本就是免費復活。
→可惜就設計而言我覺得這款做的不夠好，一這是款關於生活倦怠與情緒低落的遊戲，意外的缺乏許多象徵性設計，角色、敵人與關卡都沒有一點主角內心掙扎與絕望的要素，以至於所有主角現實中回憶與生活壓力的橋段顯得十分唐突。
→沒有固定的回血手段讓戰鬥與跳台的容錯率非常低。
→普攻無法向上或向下攻擊，對付飛行敵人時非常難受(下砍彈跳本身是一個獨立的關鍵技能)。
→施放技能會消耗顏料，顏料耗盡會扣血，在戰鬥中是個不錯的限制，但在跳台挑戰需要連續運用多種技能時會變得礙手礙腳，學院裡的追逐戲碼就是因為這點而令人非常氣餒。
→我恨箱型地圖，完全看不出角色所在位置，回頭拾荒更是被這含糊的地圖設計浪費掉許多時間。

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Ngl, this feels better to play than Hollow Knight Silksong

After 10 hours, I completed the game 100%. It was fun and beautiful, one of my favorite Metroidvanias along with Ori and the will of the Wisps and Silksong. Personally, I think it has the perfect length, and the narrative minigames gave it a special touch.