One of the things I tend to appreciate most in indie games, no matter the genre, is that they do something a little differently than the competition. I’ll admit that sometimes I have even given games a bit of a bump in their score to reflect my appreciation for not just doing the same old thing, for taking a risk or two. The problem is, not all risks or new ideas pan out for the best. Whether flawed in their concept or in their execution, there are sometimes either reasons nobody has thought of an idea before or at least that they’ve never tried to pull it off. Violet Wisteria is a title I’ll give some credit for trying something new with its color-coded enemies and attacks, but unfortunately for the most part I’m afraid it just doesn’t work out quite well enough to make it worthwhile.

So, the main thing to know about this game is that your character has three distinctive attacks, each mapped to a specific button and color: white, blue, or red. Each enemy you face will also be color-coded, but in two ways. First, they’ll have an icon above their head that is in one color, and this indicates which attack you want to choose based on its counter color. So, for instance, blue attacks will kill white enemies, white will kill red enemies, and then red will kill blue enemies. The other aspect to the colors is that in order to get around, for instance to get over a gap, or to vault yourself upwards to get to a ledge, you’ll need to use the same color as the enemy instead. Conceptually this makes sense, and in terms of attacking enemies I think it works well enough.

The problems creep in more with the somewhat unwieldy nature of the overall controls and trying to rely on your powers of same-color repulsion, especially when you’re also jumping. Quite simply, trying to coordinate the timing, pressing to jump, hitting the proper button to use the proper attack, and then controlling where you land can be dodgy at best. That’s not to say it’s impossible by any means, but it can be aggravatingly inconsistent. Speaking of that, in my initial playthrough I also found simply jumping at all to be unreliable, and the only way I found to remedy that was to point slightly up with my joystick, since it feels like if you’re even slightly below the midpoint your jump command is lost, and you’ll simply walk off the edge as a result. That was at least something I figured out a work-around for, but it again points to the somewhat unreliable overall feel of the controls, which consistently require precision so this is particularly aggravating.

In the end, there are actually some aspects of this game and its design that I appreciate, the problem is that they’re more than offset by other failings. Granted, I may be more impatient than most, so I have no doubt that there are people who’ll find the controls suit them just fine. Rather than considering what I can adapt to, though, I’m more inclined to compare the game’s controls to those of its contemporaries and with that in mind it’s clear this title could have used quite a bit more tuning and refinement to get it right.