Supraland review

Introduction
Supraland is a different game than many people might expect. It is time for you to play one of the few First-person Metroidvania style games. The game works like Metroid Prime but with Play toys instead of Samus and space pirates.
You will have to shoot enemies to fight your way through new areas but then most areas will be blocked. You will need to gather new abilities, this way you can continue with your search. You are a Supraland character in redville that needs to investigate why the water has stopped entering the town. In the tutorial, you find out that the blue supra characters have sabotaged the water pipes. All you need to do is get over to bluevile and talk to their king. Sounds easy right? You are so wrong!
You will need to complete many puzzles and find new gadgets. Visit many new areas before you can finally get to bluevile and finish the game but once you reach bluevile the game will still continue! Get ready to backtrack and reach new areas with all the new gadgets you find. Eventually, you will find so many upgrades, you will be able to find true happiness!

What did I think of Supraland before I started playing this game?
I did not really know what to expect from Supraland when I purchased the game. I did not know that Supraland was a first-person Metroidvania before I began the game.
The graphics made me laugh and made me think of Supraball. Oddly enough I found out that these games are indeed related! Once I understood I would need to collect gadgets to continue and backtrack to previous areas everything fell into place.
I was already planning on reviewing Supraland but then the game Grid started to malfunction and I needed to use my backup plan, Supraland. For so long I have wanted to play something that reminded me of Metroid Prime.
The sound was perfect in the footage that I watched, it became intense when fighting and the sound is relaxing when solving a puzzle. The sound effects are really good. The evil laugh I heard from the monsters are awesome. Without further ado, I jumped into Supraland expecting great things.

The story
The story will contain spoilers! Not all upgrades will be mentioned in the story. They will be handled in the gameplay section of this review.

You are the son of the king of redvile and you are tasked with finding out why the water supply has run dry. After investigating in the sewers you find out the blue people are responsible for wrecking the pipes. The best thing to do is find the king of the blue people in bluevile and talk some sense into him. As you are traveling to bluevile a door is blocking your way. The only way you can get through this is to find a new gadget near the red crystal but to get to the red crystal you will need to find a new upgrade. After finding this upgrade by solving puzzles you can finally reach the red crystal area. You will need to solve a complicated puzzle to reach the chest with the red Macguffin inside. You will now have obtained a gun that you can use to shoot balls of energy at anything. After obtaining the new upgrade you will finally be able to continue your way to blueville. You will soon find another door that leads to bluevile but again there is a problem! Now you will need two new gadgets, one is at the blue crystal and the other is at the purple crystal. You will need to solve many puzzles and fight many enemies to reach the blue Macguffin. Before you can claim the blue Macguffin you will need to complete a puzzle dubbed the facility. Many people claim it is a really hard and illogical puzzle. After having found your way through the facility you will become Buzz Lightyear! Activate your new upgrade which is a belt buckle and float away to infinity and beyond! The downside is that it only works near metal. Luckily for you, Supraland is full of metal objects.

Now you will need to find the other Macguffin, the purple one. You will need to fight your first boss here named Rattlehag before you can even start exploring the new area. After defeating Rattlehag the volcano will erupt and many stronger enemies will spawn to halt your progress.  You will now be able to solve puzzle upon puzzle to reach the Purple Macguffin. When you finally reach the new upgrade you will learn it is a grappling force beam. You will now have to solve a puzzle using your new grappling force beam. Once you have solved this puzzle you get to carrot town. You are almost able to get into bluevile and end the game. Have you spotted the green crystal on the map? You will need to find a way back from carrot town to bluevile. This involves a Minecraft pickaxe and puzzles. Once you finally manage to reach bluevile they will deny you access to the town. You will need to solve a small puzzle to gain access to bluevile. All your stuff will be stolen once you reach bluevile. You will need to solve many puzzles without your gadgets to find scattered coins to get them all back. Once you have collected enough coins you can buy them back in the shop to solve more puzzles. You will now be able to reach the king of bluevile.
Not only did he lie to his people about the red people he also sends his son away to the volcano to fix the water problem. You will need to head over to the volcano and save your cousin from being burned to a crisp. The volcano is near the green crystal. Is it possible that you will find another Macguffin here?

The path to the volcano is hidden, when you find the door it is closed! There is a hidden upgrade here if you look carefully. Once you find the entrance you will need to solve more puzzles on the way. You will need to help someone make fake gold nuggets to get a new upgrade. You will need this upgrade to continue the journey through the volcanic area. You will need to continue until you find your blue cousin trapped in the volcano pit. After saving him you will get the green Macguffin!
Now you can teleport small distances to solve more puzzles! You will need to help your cousin get back to bluevile. Once you have helped him get back, you will learn the root of the problem. There is one last thing to do with all the Macguffins in your possession, eliminate the source that is stopping the water flow for both towns. The door to the next area is closed and you need to find two green moons. After you use all the Macguffins to locate the green moons you can continue in the volcano area. You will need to solve even more puzzles to continue. Once you managed to go through a hidden pipe to reach a character called Mr.Miracle, he is supposed to be a Jesus like character in Supraland.  I will call him Jesus from now on to simplify things.

Jesus will tell you exactly what the problem is. There is a huge monster sitting in the river stream called Farting Meatbag. You will need to face him to restore the water flow. He is guarded by two monsters hiding in feces. After defeating the guards you will need to face the Farting Meatbag. Jesus will help you in defeating the Farting Meatbag by giving you tips to complete the puzzle. You will need to solve a puzzle to defeat Farting Meatbag. The idea is to get farted on and make him look like a carrot! After defeating Farting Meatbag you will finally have restored the water flow. Back in bluevile the red and blue people are reconciling with each other, to cement this newfound relationship Jesus appears and makes sure everything will be alright.

Gameplay
The main goal of Supraland is to be an obsessive completionist. There are so many upgrades and hidden collectibles to gather, it is pretty insane. This game can be classified as a First-person Metroidvania collectathon. You will be backtracking most of the game or finding new upgrades to continue into a new area even in post-game. Your main weapon is a sword to start with. Later on, you will find a gun to shoot the enemies with. Enemies have spawn points that look like graves, you can destroy these graves once you have found the correct upgrade. The upgrades are very useful in many situations even later on when you have all the upgrades they don’t become irrelevant later on. When you have collected a Macguffin you are able to find new upgrades that will allow you to inflict more damage or fire faster. I will go over the main upgrades in the upgrade section.

You will have health points but they do not regenerate yet! You will need to find more max health hidden in nooks and crannies. You will also find upgrades that upgrade your max health. You can always eat cactus fruits if you don’t have health regeneration to heal yourself.
There are 172 chests in the game, collecting one chest will grant you awesomeness. You can only see how awesome you are when you have bought the upgrade of the awesome meter. You will find shops scattered all over Supraland. They will sell you modifiers that make you or your Macguffins stronger.
To buy these upgrades you will need to collect coins that are littered all over the place. You can also find coins by defeating enemies but you will first need to find the upgrade that the enemies will drop loot. For almost everything you can think of you will need to find an upgrade. Many upgrades like finding loot can be upgraded too by searching for chests. After completing the game you can continue exploring Supraland and be an obsessive completionist and find true happiness. When you have found true happiness you can jump really high and look for other collectibles like fallen heroes. I have found Link and Super Saiyan Goku among others. Don’t forget about Santa Claus!

Of course, Supraland is not only backtracking and collecting. You will need to complete many puzzles to gather all these shiny trinkets. They can be easy or really hard. Sometimes you see exactly how the puzzle works and the other time you stare at the puzzle for over ten minutes. Then you call your wife and ask if she sees the solution. My main problem with the puzzles is that I overthink way too much. What should be an easy puzzle has me baffled since I am thinking extremely hard when maybe it is just ground pounding or clicking E. You will either hate or love the puzzles depending on your taste in games and in puzzles but I loved them and I will definitely try to platinum Supraland in my spare time. The best upgrade ever is the chest detector

Main upgrades.
There are many more upgrades but these upgrades are considered your main gear. You can destroy graves with your sword or gun after finding the Holy upgrade. You will need two holy upgrades for the same weapon to be able to destroy the stone graves.

The sword
The sword Is the only weapon that you will have in the beginning. It will only do a measly one damage to foes in the beginning. You can upgrade this to a weapon of mass destruction! You will be able to deal over 80 damage in a single blow on an enemy with your doomsday sword.
Swing faster as a ninja and increase the range of your sword. For doing this it is important that you collect the rare red moons hidden in Supraland.
The gun
The red Macguffin is a gun that you can use to shoot switches. The gun will be upgraded later in the main story, after the upgrade you will be able to fire laser beams. If you collect all laser beam upgrades you can melt metal beams.
You can use this weapon to attack enemies from afar, shooting a ball of energy, and then hitting it with the laser will cause it to explode and deal heavy damage.
The most important thing that you will need to remember when solving puzzles is that when you shoot a ball of energy through anything with color the ball will change into that color.
The force cube
See those pesky coins up there? If you could only jump higher! No worries with the force cube you can plant a cube under your feet and rise up to reach the coins.
That is the main function of the cube, to reach higher places. Other functions are pushing buttons for you to open the door or keep doors open.
Ground pound
You will be able to use the ground pound after you have obtained the stomp boots in the main story. A simple ground pound can destroy many fragile items like broken glass or weak wooden planks.
The ground pound is needed to find true happiness.
Float buckle
If you ever wanted to be like Buzz Lightyear this is the perfect upgrade for you. The float buckle is the blue Macguffin and is hidden in a place called the facility. Many people find this puzzle really hard to complete. It was indeed complicated but doable.
Press the button on your belt and fly to infinity and beyond! The small problem is you will need to be near a metal surface. Your character will indeed imitate the pose of Buzz Lightyear.
Grapple Beam
The purple Macguffin is the grapple beam from Metroid prime! In Metroid Prime, you would need specific grapple points to use it but Supraland has taken it to a whole new level. Anything wood-related is a grapple point!
Now you have a way to go up with metal and wood. If there are two wooden spots you can even create a grapple bridge you can walk on. This upgrade is very innovative, to make it even better, you will find an upgrade, later on, to tether one side of the grapple beam onto your force cube.
Translocator
Beam me up, Scotty! The translocator will be able to teleport you small distances. I think there would be too many quantum physics errors with long-distance teleportation. This is a wonderful tool to solve many puzzles and reach many hidden nooks and crannies. You will find modifiers for this weapon to increase teleportation distance and even increase the damage this weapon does.
Juicy upgrades
the Juice blenders can be found in different towns scattered over Supraland. There are three juicy upgrades to find in Supraland. They all do something different, you will need to gather ingredients and put them into a blender.
One will increase your max health, another one will increase the amount you heal from cactus fruits and the last one will make you stronger.
When you are stronger you will be able to lift heavier items from the ground.

Sound and graphics
The graphics are very detailed and polished in Supraland. When you have found true happiness you can walk over the boundaries that have been keeping the areas apart. There are a few graphical glitches up there.
Nothing too troubling, mostly just fun clipping and tiny errors but there is great detail for objects in the world.
The sound was exactly what I expected from hearing it in the footage before playing, I am glad the music is very gentle on me when thinking about how to solve a puzzle.

What did I think of Supraland after playing?
The game is really great, I love exploring and backtracking. The combat could have been better but it was good enough for me to be enjoyable. I thought when I started playing Supraland would be a quick game, get to bluevile talk to the king the end.
Boy was I wrong. The creator of Supraland has created a masterpiece with this game. Finding a good Metroidvania is really hard since there so many out there but finding a first-person Metroidvania is like finding a unicorn.
I will be playing the game in my spare time to get it to a 100% completion. In the future, there will be a separate review for the DLC of Supraland as it is a standalone story. I did not expect this to be such a great game, I am just baffled by how well it is created.
When Supraland 2 hits steam, the chances are high I will even pre-order it.

My personal rating of Supraland is 9.8

Pros and cons

Pros
– The game has a very large sandbox to explore once you have acquired all the Macguffins and true happiness.
– The story seems simple but is way larger than you would expect.
– The upgrade system works very well.
– There are a lot of perfectly placed easter eggs.
– You can find many collectibles in Supraland.
– There are many chests hidden in the nooks and crannies.
– There is a well-balanced difficulty curve in the puzzles as you progress through the main game.
– I was able to find true happiness.

Cons
– The endgame boss is a puzzle.*
– It was easier to use a keyboard than a controller.**

* I did like the puzzle a lot but I had hoped I could use my collected awesomeness on a very strong enemy.
** This comes down to personal preference.

I really liked playing this game, I was truly surprised by just how good Supraland is. I am wondering though how someone comes up with a story like this. I will recommend this to anyone that loves puzzling and Metroidvania games.
I Give this game a…drumroll…

9.3

Please leave your thoughts in the comments or leave your own rating.
You can buy Supraland here: https://tinyurl.com/Buy-Supraland
I hope to see you in the next review.