Furthermore, there are no symbols in rooms to indicate why you can’t go any further, so I was constantly taking laborious trips to rooms with unopened doors, only to realise when I got there that it was one of those rooms that I didn’t have the correct skill to get through yet. When the world turns, the map keeps its orientation, so you’re left to figure out if a door that is to your right is up or down in relation to the map. This leads to another frustration: the map, while functional in showing where you’ve been in an abstract sense, does nothing to help you navigate sections or work out where you are meant to go next. The game even turns the world on you as you enter some rooms, while others are mirror images of each other and act as thoroughfares to even more warren-like areas.

The animation as you enter a door looks like a graceful plunge, which enforces the game’s strange, no-gravity aesthetic. It presents well, however, with a clean pixel art presentation and nice animations and effects. With no hint system and the inability to warp between safe camp spots, Dandara becomes a frustrating exercise in retreading old ground. At one point, I was completely stuck for two hours, mostly due to level design that actively leads you through the longest possible route to anywhere (imagine entering your house, then being forced to go all the way around the block just to use the back door). I found this incredibly frustrating from the beginning and only the fact that I had to review it kept me going.

This is a Metroidvania-style game, in that there’s a sprawling map and you must unlock new abilities to get past its many roadblocks, but to put Dandara in the same sentence as those games seem far too generous. However, these are rare and the movement system, combined with level design that is extraneously overdesigned, results in shunted, unsure hops and player frustration against various other design elements. The movement then becomes a kind of leapfrog affair, although the game does a decent job of auto-aiming, which sometimes allows for small moments of free-flow. Rather than move along an X-axis, you must instead manually aim at flat, white wall pads and press a button to then fling to that spot and stick in place. Built primarily for touch-only controls, Dandara’s entire design is built around the main character’s immobile state. Your enjoyment of Dandara will come down to one thing: the control scheme.

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