Paint Your Way Through Burnout
HIGH Extremely fluid movement and platforming.
LOW Borrows more than necessary from its influences
WTF Another self-sabotaging final boss?
I have played more metroidvanias this year than any other genre. According to my Steam Replay, this sort of game took up over 1/4th of my total playtime this year (mainly because of Hollow Knight: Silksong) but out of everything I played, only about two of them have been worth my time — and of those, I’ve only reviewed one on this website. Constance, a hand-drawn, movement-packed metroidvania, is that one.
In this title I played as the titular character Constance — a burnt-out digital artist with mental health struggles who falls into a dreamlike inner world. Her only hope of escape is to capture four “tears” and use them to escape the world and her creative abyss.Â
Upon first glance, it’s clear Constance takes influence from a number of highly-successful metroidvanias and platformers – chiefly Hollow Knight and Celeste. There are portions here that aggressively pull from these influences, almost to its detriment. However, while Constance does draw from these sources, it still somehow managed to carve out a niche of its own.Â
The first thing I noticed as starkly different from Constance’s predecessors is the world design. It’s not dark, dreary, and oppressive. In fact, it’s downright colorful. Pastel hues of blue, yellow, and pink highlight some of the more cheery areas of the dream world Constance is trapped in. Even the gloomy areas in the lower regions of the map, like the forest green-tinted sewer, were still nice to look at and gave a sense of peace and calm that’s fairly uncommon in these experiences.
This sense of calm is amplified by Constance’s movement and platforming. Given her background as an artist, Constance’s main abilities stem from a large paintbrush strapped to her back. It’s with this paintbrush and a vial of paint she keeps locked and loaded that she is able to dash through obstacles, whack enemies with extra strength, and turn into a blob to stick to walls. Combining these elements makes perhaps the most fluid platforming experience I’ve played in a long time.
However, some dark portions of Constance’s world come via difficult portions of combat and platforming gauntlets. Some of the platforming sections are not for the faint of heart, and require precise button presses and carefully-timed jumps to pass through without a scratch. Constance differs from other metroidvanias, though, by making its hardest areas almost always optional, and any difficulty spikes are almost always chosen by the player. When a gauntlet had me sweating, it was always to get additional resources not necessary to completing the main story.
On the other hand, while I could access every area once the traversal abilities were fully unlocked, some secrets stayed hidden due to limitations – chiefly her paint meter. Every action costs paint, such as dashing, wall climbing, and launching off of “dash points” hung in midair. I enjoyed some of these extra resources being hidden behind harder platforming challenges, but some of the hardest resources to get are extra paint vials, which are needed to get to more paint vials. It feels a bit like a self-defeating loop.Â
Otherwise, Constance undertakes an impressive balancing act of creating a world that’s pleasant to be in while also being a delight to look at. At the same time, it outlines the underlying themes of Constance’s internal struggle with mental health. In support of this idea, she talks with NPCs including a damsel made out of a lampshade, a frustrated and discombobulated arcane professor, and a carnival director with split personalities. Each ones’ struggles makes Constance feel lighter about her own, and by helping them, she begins to understand her own mind better.
I had a lovely time with Constance. It’s not a lore-intensive metroidvania, it’s not particularly difficult unless the player wishes to test themselves, and it never outstayed its welcome. Among the titanic release of Silksong and other metroidvanias, Constance still managed to make an impression on me. Don’t let this one pass you by.Â
Rating: 7 out of 10
Disclosures: The game was developed by btf and is co-published by btf, ByteRockers Games and PARCO Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 8 hours were devoted to the game, and it was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB, but it has mild depictions of fantasy violence and involves in-depth discussions of depression and burnout. This game is not made for kids.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind options.
Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: The only dialogue and sounds are communicated through speech bubbles. The text for these speech bubbles cannot be resized. There are no relevant audio cues needed for gameplay. This game is fully accessible.
Remappable controls: Controls are fully remappable.
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