Played a few hours so far. Maseylia is an interesting 3D metroidvania with a big focus on exciting and often fast paced platforming. I've been having a lot of fun exploring the world, finding upgrades, and tackling some of the different challenges!

The puzzles are interesting, and while some can be simple there are few I've encountered that had me scratching my head before finally figuring them out, which definitely felt rewarding.

Ran into a couple small bugs, but nothing game breaking. Overall a really solid experience and definitely worth it for the low price compared to some other titles out there!

I'm very conflicted with my review. Mayselia is a very interesting take on 3D platforming. It has some very interesting and fun mechanics for movement, but the controls can feel clunky, the world feels a bit unpolished, and even the full game feels more like a demo than a game in and of itself. You get one power of movement, use it 3-5 times, then find another, or an upgrade. I felt the timing of progression felt more along the lines of "Look at this new thing, okay now this new thing" instead of what I think might better suit a game like this, which would be to give you a new tool, have more and more ways of utilizing it, and once you meet some big challenge where mastery of that tool helps you overcome it, then giving you the next. Combat also feels like an afterthought, and I feel the game would likely be better without.

I really like the concept, but I feel the execution missed the mark.

Although you start with nothing more than a basic jump, the game gradually introduces new abilities. You gain a slide that lets you squeeze through narrow openings, which is later upgraded into an air dash. A simple stick serves as your melee weapon, while a bow with unlimited arrows provides ranged combat and puzzle solving opportunities.

Combat itself is fairly basic since you only have a single attack, but the lack of a lock on system makes encounters more frustrating than they should be, especially when using the bow. Fortunately, fighting enemies is rarely necessary because there is little incentive to engage with them.

The bow comes with several limitations. It deals low damage, has a restricted range, and cannot harm certain enemies. On top of that, its aiming feels broken because arrows fly below the crosshair rather than directly at it. This often causes shots to hit the environment despite having a clear line of sight to your target. Its real purpose is not combat anyway. The bow is primarily used to interact with the environment by shooting ropes to drop crates, activating moving platforms, and grappling onto special orbs that allow you to traverse dangerous areas.

Death comes quickly because you can only withstand three hits, although there is a short period of invulnerability after taking damage. For example, falling into water removes one heart, but immediately falling into it again after respawning nearby will not cost another heart until the invincibility period ends. Healing is handled through mana orbs that recharge by attacking enemies or striking special mana rocks. You can fully recover at save points.

Save points serve another important purpose by allowing you to equip charms that must first be discovered throughout the world. These charms enhance various abilities, such as increasing ranged damage or improving healing efficiency. Each charm consumes a certain number of slots, and since your capacity is limited, choosing a loadout requires some consideration.

Upon death, you respawn at the last save point without losing any coins, which serve as the game's currency. Even better, you keep all coins collected before dying, regardless of whether you saved recently. This creates a rather strange situation where intentionally dying or quitting to the main menu can become part of your strategy. Since enemies and money rocks only respawn after death, farming currency often revolves around repeatedly clearing areas near save points.

Money is constantly required throughout the adventure. You must pay to activate charm flags near save points before you can swap charms. Regional maps need to be purchased from robots before they fully reveal themselves. Merchants sell upgrades that increase your health and coin capacity, while teleporters require payment before they can be used.

Because costs vary significantly from one area to another, it is easy to think you have enough money only to discover you are still short when you finally arrive. This becomes especially frustrating with teleporters. More than once, I completed a difficult platforming sequence only to reach a teleporter and realize I could not afford it. Since there is usually nothing nearby to farm for coins, I had no choice but to backtrack through the entire section. Even worse, the latest updates also resets coin capacity, and now I can’t even farm for them because the teleporter costs more than my bag can hold.

The map itself is functional and includes icons for important collectibles, such as health and mana upgrades hidden behind challenging platforming sections. It also displays the completion percentage for each region. However, the extra third dimension feels unnecessary. The map is essentially a 2D image placed within a 3D space. Rotating it and viewing it from above can occasionally be useful, but tilting the camera simply creates an awkward isometric perspective that adds little value.

The world is divided into several distinct biomes, but progression through them is mostly linear and gated by abilities. For example, an ability obtained in the first frozen region allows access to the jungle biome that follows. The environments themselves are enjoyable, and traversal becomes increasingly satisfying as new movement options open up more creative ways to navigate the world.

Platforming is one of the game's strongest aspects. You constantly leap between distant pillars that collapse under your weight, bounce off giant mushrooms, and avoid spikes that emerge and retract in rhythm with your movements. Thanks to the steadily expanding set of traversal abilities, these challenges remain fun. While the level design occasionally looks as though it can be exploited by jumping onto pieces of scenery, progression generally feels fair.

The environments are visually varied and feature a handful of unique enemy types, but the game is clearly more interested in platforming than combat. Most enemies can simply be ignored unless a forcefield locks you into an arena and requires every enemy to be defeated. While you can move directly toward the next biome, the broader objective involves defeating several bosses and collecting the keys they guard.

With the exception of a particularly frustrating final boss that seems capable of hitting you regardless of what you do and has a tiny weak point that you keep missing, the boss fights are surprisingly easy. Most can be defeated by simply circling around the arena while firing arrows. Unfortunately, the bow is the only viable option during boss encounters because fighting up close is impossible.

A number of bugs also hurt the overall experience. Some are relatively harmless, such as missing textures that allow clipping through geometry, charm flags that occasionally reset and must be purchased again, or respawns placing you on strange pieces of scenery because they count as the last solid ground you touched.

The most serious bug almost ruined my playthrough entirely. In the water biome, you unlock a fantastic swimming ability that can be activated anywhere underwater. However, after dying on land and respawning at a save point located underwater, the game still treated my character as though they were standing on solid ground.

As a result, I could not activate the swimming ability and became completely trapped. There was nothing nearby that would allow me to escape through normal means. The only solution was to exploit another bug that lets you move beneath the deadly water surface. The water behaves like a barrier that instantly kills you when approached from above, yet does nothing when entered from below, which ultimately allowed me to escape.

In the end, this is an interesting title that focuses heavily on movement and traversal rather than combat. However, it never fully delivers on the promise of being a compelling metroidvania. The stages are large and vertical, but exploration rarely feels rewarding because progression mostly follows a straightforward path with occasional side routes leading to collectibles.

There is little reason to revisit previous areas unless you deliberately skipped collectibles during your first visit and decide to return later with abilities that make those challenges easier. Unless, of course, you care about a bunch of speedrunning achievements, which are the worst idea you can have in an exploration-focused game because they are an insult to the time you decide to grant to the game. It doesn’t deserve a second playthrough.