Gestalt: Steam and Cinder Review
I was going to refrain from using the term “metroidvania” in this review, but since Gestalt: Steam & Cinder is classified as such on Steam, it’s worth mentioning the term at least once. While Gestalt does fit the bill, what it attempts to do wanders a little bit away from the tried-and-true formula — which is not a bad thing, to be clear, but Gestalt has a little bit more going on for it than strictly 2-D Action Platforming.
Gestalt starts off by introducing you to the world of Canaan: a vast city that appears to be built underground, powered by steam and technology. You assume the role of Aletheia, a “Soldner”, this world’s version of a bounty hunter or mercenary, as she investigates the vaults below the thriving city. During the descent, she unlocks a strange power, and not long after, the forces of darkness conspire to throw the world into chaos.
To call Gestalt a steampunk game would be accurate, but not entirely. The game focuses heavily on the idea of steampunk, but also aged over time — things are equal parts clean, full of steam, and rusted to hell and back. You contend with robots that jam their servos occasionally, explore forgotten vaults full of destroyed technology and rusted-over machinery, and fend off humans that look like they’d fit in during Industrial Revolution-era London (just, ya know, with clockwork gizmos attached.) The spritework is extremely well done — the background of the various maps you visit are detailed and vibrant, and Aletheia's attacks and movements are fluid. Love her big hat, too!
The story of Gestalt takes center stage, with “Elsewhere…”-style cutscenes appearing at specific points during your journey. While you get plenty of exposition about Aletheia, Canaan, and the Comitium at large, due to the short length of the game, the story does feel a bit at times like it’s too often throwing Keywords With A Capital K at you and pushing you along. The opportunity to stay a little longer and learn some more about the key players in the story wouldn’t go unappreciated — but since the average playthrough is approximately five to six hours long, it’s understandable that we can’t stop and smell the roses. The story that is here still has a lot about it to enjoy, and some side-quests can help deepen your understanding of the game world as well.
Any 2-D Action Platformer worth its salt has tight gameplay and combat mechanics, and Gestalt knows its heritage inside and out. Controls are extremely responsive, there’s a wide array of platforming puzzles to figure out, and fluid combat that rewards mastery without feeling over-complicated. Often enough, you pass by an object or treasure that you can see, but can’t actually reach until you unlock a new ability later on. Even if you can’t see it, sometimes you’ll hear it — gotta find all those Corgis, after all. Speaking of hearing…
The music in Gestalt is fantastic. Each area has a slammer of a theme to explore to, with my personal favorite being the Outskirts. The combination of twang from guitars combined with synth beats really sells the idea of the adventure that Aletheia is on, and matches the aesthetics of the world. I also really want to commend the sound design just in general, as the game uses easily identifiable sounds to alert you to various hazards, enemy attacks, and yes, hidden Corgis.
As you explore, you level up and earn Upgrade Points to build Aletheia as you see fit. It’s possible to fill out the talent board if you hit max level and find extra Ability Point Nodes in the game world, but I was kinda hoping for more customization, sacrifice, and personal choice. I wanted to build Aletheia as a gunslinger, rewarding the limited bullet resource with higher damage and using my sword attacks to build meter, but since you can unlock everything, you will always end up with a perfect hybridization of gunslinger and swordswoman. Which makes sense, Aletheia is talented at those skills, so this is a minor nitpick more than anything.
Some of the bosses could use a balance pass — Boss 2 (Einherjar) feels like it had way too much health for a generic mook boss. When you see all of the bosses' attack patterns within the first 10% and have to rinse and repeat for the remainder of the fight, it doesn’t feel good. Boss 3 (Fox) also felt a little bit like this, but you only need to reduce his health to 50% before he gives up, so that’s not as bad. Then…the rest of the bosses were cakewalks. I blew up the remainder of the bosses with little fanfare, and I don’t believe I was overleveled — the EXP gain off of enemies weaker than you is miniscule, so even though I was exploring, I wasn’t really gaining levels.
The exploration is excellent, although the map does leave a little bit to be desired. It’s entirely possible that this is me not really “getting it”, but I prefer the block-style maps that you see in Metroid and Castlevania. Gestalt has blocks, but also padding between, and lines connecting exits to entrances. Sometimes these rooms would overlay on top of other blocks which makes things not immediately obvious at a glance. While I was never confused about where I was going, it does make looking at the map more of a chore than it needs to be.
After clearing the game, I immediately realized that the shorter run-time lends the game to speedrunning, but also remembered that there’s no way to skip cutscenes. If you die against a boss, the bosses' intro gets cut short on your next attempt, which is welcome, but you cannot skip a cutscene entirely if you haven’t seen it on that playthrough, which is disappointing. There’s a deceptive amount of text in Gestalt, and even mashing through the textboxes, the cutscenes get a little on the long side sometimes, so seeing that option in the future would be great.
All in all, if you like action platformers, you’ll love Gestalt: Steam and Cinder. It’s a shorter affair, to be sure, but it explodes with love for the genre, and the developers have put a lot of heart and soul into crafting a world and story that is both equal parts fun and tense to explore. My nitpicks with the game aside, Gestalt was an extremely enjoyable experience and is definitely on a list of games I’ll replay from time-to-time. I’m excited to see where Metamorphosis Games takes the series in the future, and hope for plenty more adventures of Aletheia to come.