The first thing players will notice when playing Constance for the first time is its resounding resemblance to Hollow Knight. From its art style to the overall feel of the game, it’s clear to see that inspiration is mainly drawn from Team Cherry’s masterpiece. After recently playing through Hollow Knight: Silksong and absolutely loving it, I instantly felt right at home the moment I began my journey through the beautiful world created by developers Blue Backpack Games.
Making a Metroidvania is tough these days, mainly due to the amount of competition in the space. There are so many games that fall into this genre that it’s easy to create one that is overshadowed by others, leaving a special game to be forgotten about and not played by the masses. This is especially true when you have behemoths such as Hollow Knight: Silksong, recently released earlier this year.
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However, I have hope for Constance, as it does a ton right, and very little wrong, to have a chance to stand out among the crowd. So, what makes Constance so great, and why should anyone who’s a fan of the genre give this game a shot? Read my thoughts in this review to find out more.
A Sad Story With a Powerful Message
From the start, Constance presents a disclaimer to players, warning them that the game deals with sensitive subject matter, such as anxiety, depression, and loneliness. These three topics are at the center of Constance’s story, and the world the players progress through is a representation of the main protagonist’s declining mental health.
While each biome is beautiful and colorful, representing Constance’s hope of not giving up, it’s also decaying and broken, just like her mental state and the depression she’s dealing with. The entire map is one big metaphor of a girl who is lost and broken down by her real-world problems.
The main objective of Constance is to collect four Tears throughout the map, all hidden behind a main boss. Each of these Tears holds a memory within Constance’s mind, and as you collect them, you begin to learn more about her past and uncover the reason behind her mental state.
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For example, one Tear memory shows Constance getting taken advantage of in her real-life workplace, while another shows her getting berated by her teacher during a music lesson. These memories glimpse a girl constantly reminded that she isn’t good enough, no matter how hard she tries, and it’s a sad sight to see.
As you progress through the story and find each Tear, you begin to really feel for Constance and the pressure she’s under in the real world. It’s a powerful message to make any player look inward and relate Constance’s struggles to their own problems. In a society where we are constantly pushed to do better, or else you’ll get left behind, it’s refreshing to see a game that tackles these topics with full transparency.
It’s a powerful message and is strong enough to make any player look inward and relate.
Addicting and Fluid Gameplay At Its Core
As previously mentioned, Constance is reminiscent of Hollow Knight, and that can be seen in its fluid gameplay and platforming segments. However, even though Constance draws heavy inspiration, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Each of the unlockable abilities, which opens new platforming capabilities, brings its own flavor to the genre and really makes it stand on its own two feet. Constance simply feels so good to play.
Constance takes place in a painted world, so to no surprise at all, our main protagonist has the ability to turn into paint. This paint ability allows players to dodge through enemies, spikes, and other traps they may come across, without taking any damage at all. It is essentially a form of a dodge or dash that temporarily turns you invincible for a couple of frames, an ability that players will be using constantly throughout their playthrough.
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As players progress, they’ll encounter canvases that can be interacted with. These canvases offer up unique platforming abilities that drastically change the gameplay and how you interact with each biome. For example, one ability allows Constance to turn into paint and go inside a wall, allowing her to climb up large walls to higher sections that were previously inaccessible. Meanwhile, another grants the ability to bounce across spiked floors, granting access to new locations to explore on the map. It’s all quite Metroidvania-like, and it’s done very, very well.
After obtaining all the abilities, the fluidity of Constance’s gameplay really begins to shine. You also start to feel much stronger and capable than you did at the start. Enemies begin to feel easier, some platforming sections become trivial, and bosses that seemed too challenging before are now much more manageable. By the end of the game, don’t be surprised to be flying through each biome with ease as you master each new ability you come across.
After obtaining all the abilities, the fluidity of Constance’s gameplay really begins to shine.
Bosses Are a Standout in Constance
Constance does the platforming sections and Metroidvania elements well; that’s great, but how are the bosses? Well, simply put, most of them are fantastic. I say most of them because there is this one boss that is so frustrating to the point where I don’t think it’s designed very well.
It focuses on using the bounce ability mentioned earlier, where you can spring on objects to get to a higher level. This is a cool concept for a fight, where the objective is to bounce on objects to reach the boss’s location, but there is just too much going on in the fight, and too many obstacles to avoid. This, in turn, makes this entire fight feel like artificial difficulty; hard for difficulty’s sake.
However, the rest of the bosses in Constance are absolutely fantastic and are designed incredibly well. Each requires the player to master the paint dodge ability, along with other abilities found on the way, in order to come out on top. While none of them reach the difficulty heights of the bosses found in Hollow Knight and Silksong, some come pretty darn close. In fact, from a design standpoint, I actually enjoyed some of the bosses in Constance much more than Hollow Knight’s.
Several boss fights include platforming challenges and combat, mixing the two gameplay elements. For example, one of my favorite encounters in Constance was against a floating bat-like wizard that loved to go to the ceiling to replenish its health after draining about half its health bar. This ceiling is really high up, so you have to use platforming to reach it.
Several boss fights include platforming challenges and combat, mixing the two gameplay elements.
To prevent the boss from gaining health, players have to use their “Paint Stroke” ability, which allows them to grapple onto hook points, to reach the boss on the ceiling and knock it down to the ground. The twist is that these grapple hooks teleport you to a different location in the room, so you have to be quick to discover the correct grapple hook that brings you to the top, where the boss is. It’s very cool, tense, and suspenseful as you attempt to do this.
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This is just one of the many examples of platforming incorporated into Constance’s boss fights, but since the fun lies in discovering this on your own, I won’t be discussing the others. Just know that Constance mostly succeeds in its boss design, and you’re in for a treat when you stumble upon them all.
Sense of Discovery Is Lacking
Constance is a fantastic game, but by no means is it a perfect one. Its biggest problem lies in exploration and discovery, as there are not many exciting secrets to find outside of health and paint bar upgrades, and hidden rooms that contain crystals that allow you to upgrade buffs for your character. While you can find hidden NPCs throughout the game map, offering up a quest or extending the world’s lore through dialogue, these characters aren’t all that interesting.
Exploration just feels pretty barebones compared to the giants of the genre, and it would have been nice if Constance had offered more to discover. For example, more secret bosses that unlock new weapons, journal entries to learn more about our protagonist’s state of mind, etc. There just doesn’t seem like there’s enough to encourage the player to go off the beaten path, which is crucial to keep the player engaged for hours on end.
Every time I found a secret entrance to a hidden room, I was ecstatic, only to be let down by the fact that it only contained crystals. These hidden areas are bland too, sometimes being so simple with a few platforms to jump up on, and an enemy or two to defeat. However, it was nice that some of these hidden rooms offered a door that you could open to create a shortcut to a boss from a resting area.
Closing Comments:
Constance is a fantastic game that I would recommend to anyone who’s a fan of the genre. It draws heavy inspiration from Hollow Knight, which is clear as day, but brings fresh ideas to the table that make it feel like a unique experience. The story, where players bounce between the real world and a world inside the protagonist’s declining mental state, is a sad tale that sends a powerful message about depression and anxiety. Constance tackles subject matter that we don’t typically see enough of in the gaming industry, at least with this much depth, and it’s refreshing to see them explored here. The mix of a heartfelt story, addictive gameplay, and incredible platforming makes Constance easy to recommend.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
