Ebenezer and the Invisible World is a 2D Metroidvania-style platformer primarily based on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. You discover London as Ebenezer Scrooge, on a quest to return the commercial capitalist, Casper Malthus, to his good-natured self after a go to from the Ghosts of Christmas seem to have corrupted him.

In related model to Hole Knight and Blasphemous, you’ll be platforming via varied environments, defeating enemies, and finishing varied fetch quests for NPCs. The platforming right here is sadly not very fulfilling resulting from imprecise and unresponsive controls. We regularly fell from platforms to our demise when the sport didn’t register a press of the X button to leap, or acquired shocked by an enemy mid-jump, inflicting us to reset to one of many few and much between save factors, shedding our progress.

The fight is equally irritating, feeling sluggish and clunky. Enemies really feel very restricted with just one or two strikes, and would not be such a risk if it weren’t for the unforgiving hit bins. They do not line up with the visuals, inflicting you to take sudden hits and battle to land assaults. The ghostly talents Ebenezer can unlock and utilise do redeem the fight barely with some enjoyably chaotic powers — fireballs, ball and chain, and harpoon throws to call a number of.

The sport’s presentation is fingers down the very best a part of it, with gorgeously detailed hand-drawn environments and animations that deliver Christmassy pleasure and heat. Sadly, that is overshadowed by the dearth of important route steering and the quite a few bugs and glitches current all through. Quests do not advance when accomplished, leaving the sport comfortable locked; crashes trigger you to lose unsaved progress; field puzzles do not operate as meant, inflicting you to get caught on the setting; textual content disappears, inflicting you to overlook key story factors, and the record goes on and on. We could not full the sport, solely managing to make it a few hours in earlier than having to restart completely a number of occasions for the reason that important questline failed to maneuver to the following step.

Smooth locks, crashes, and bugs burden this gorgeously offered Christmas story. Till this nightmare earlier than Christmas is patched, we might recommend discovering one thing else to put below your Christmas tree.