My brother came to visit this weekend, so I got to play one of the games he got on Switch.

This is a platformer. Aside from your standard left/right movement and jump ability, you can dash in your standard 8 cardinal directions (even in mid-air, but you have to land before you can dash a second time) and you can grab and climb on walls. Grabbing and climbing will reduce your stamina, but you don’t get to see how much stamina you have left (which is especially annoying since it seems like it goes down faster at some points than at others); you can only make an educated guess based on how much your character sweats (and when your character starts flashing, you have about half a second left before you fall). You can wall-jump without using stamina, though; just remember not to hold the “grab wall” button as you approach your target. Also, note that you can climb/fall through single-unit-wide spaces even though your character sprite is clearly wider than that.

I should start off by saying that this game gets a lot of things right. Controls are responsive, hazards are clearly distinguished, and the game will even save which checkpoint in the level you’re at when you quit so you don’t have to beat a level in one sitting. Left/right movement might have a bit of momentum to it, but it isn’t so much that you’ll have to fight the controls. The game even has a lot of little details, like each level having its own death transition or a dialogue option changing if you select enough optional dialogue choices. However, I do have some issues with the game, and just like with practically every other universally-acclaimed masterpiece, it’s my two old nemeses: level design and the difficulty curve. To start, although your death count will more-or-less rise with each consecutive level, it’s not because the levels are getting harder; it’s because they’re getting longer. The game does start off pretty challenging, but rather than the game giving you trickier platforming challenges as you progress, it places checkpoints further apart and bloats levels by using segments that might as well be recycled versions of previous parts (if they aren’t actually copies of earlier segments).This is especially noticeable in the final part of the final level, where checkpoints go back to being fairly close together; it will feel like the game suddenly got easier, but in reality, it never got harder to begin with. Plus, the final level recycles gimmicks from earlier in the game without actually combining them or otherwise doing anything different with them, so it’s less “testing what you know” and more “regurgitating what you’ve already done.” Despite that, the boss fight is probably the worst part of the game since it just keeps dragging on and on, barely having any difference in each consecutive arena, and each time you think it’s over, the boss breaks open a wall or the floor, revealing yet another, highly similar segment (the only real variation aside from the ~2 vertical segments is when the momentum from hitting the boss knocks you over some spikes, and you have to react relatively quickly to get back on land). I think it would have been better if the current boss fight’s segments were scrapped and instead the boss was in the final level; that way, rather than there being two lengthy segments of stagnation, the game properly builds on its gimmicks by having you deal with the boss’s projectiles while simultaneously using the gimmicks to platform across, resulting in a satisfying, climactic final level. I think the game could have done that and still told its story.

Side note: I remember seeing someone on this site mention the “game-play loop” of a game. At first, I thought it was just some wording I wasn’t familiar with, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much it applies to modern games. It seems like modern games are more concerned with getting the player hooked on game-play loops instead of providing a satisfying difficulty curve. It would explain why there are so many games with procedural generation and why even non-procedurally-generated games like this one don’t really have difficulty curves. As much as I like how far video games have come, the trend of game-play loops is one I can live without since it results in a difficulty ouroboros.

It isn’t until the “B Side” levels where the game actually decides to ramp up the challenge, but as much as I genuinely enjoy the B Side levels, the only way to unlock them is by finding a hidden collectible in their A Side counterparts. In other words, if you miss the item and want to unlock the B Side, you’ll have to play through the A Side again, paying careful attention to the walls to see if there’s a discrepancy in the tile-set or something. What’s worse is that some levels have split paths, so you might just end up going down the wrong path and bypassing the possibility of getting the item in the first place. Of course, even if those issues were addressed, there’s still the fact that it’s stitching mechanics from the hidden object genre onto a platformer, and I don’t know how much crossover appeal those genres have (I know that I’m not a fan of hidden object games). I would prefer if beating the game unlocked the first level’s B Side, then beating the first level’s B Side unlocks the second level’s B side and so on, with the strawberries being the only miss-able collectibles in the game.

I also have an issue with how the game handles its gimmicks. If you’re familiar with basic level design philosophy, you probably know how to introduce new mechanics: put it by itself in a safe environment so the player can get used to it, then build on the concept afterward (add hazards to avoid, etc.). This game doesn’t do that. The most telling example I can think of is when the game introduces the green bubbles: the first one is directly over a death pit, so if you don’t already know how to use them (which you probably won’t since it’s the first one), you’ll be launched off to the side (as opposed to upward, which is where you have to go) and you’ll fall into the pit and die. Another example are the bouncy orbs in stage six. Sure, it doesn’t take long to figure out that hitting them in certain spots bounces you in a different trajectory, but even the most-still ones will move back and forth by a couple pixels, making it unnecessarily difficult to be precise with them.

However, I think the worst of the game’s bad tutorials is this one:

Sure, it’s more forgiving than the green bubble example since, if you mess up, you can reasonably avoid the spikes on your way back down. However, you see that seven in the upper-right hand side of the screen, below the flag icon? That’s how many checkpoints are left until the end of the game. You see, rather than the game regularly using the gimmicks it introduces, they’re level-specific, even to the point where the final level has its own new mechanic. Combine this with the game’s lack of a difficulty curve and the game feels less like a cohesive whole and more like a series of random stand-alone stages made by different people with a level editor. Maybe the game could have experimented with building on the gimmicks in the B Side stages, but that screenshot is from the B Side of the final level, showcasing another mechanic added on top of the one introduced in the final level’s A Side. It turns out that the B Side stages don’t combine gimmicks from different levels, either, and a couple even add new mechanics to make new challenges. For one example, the second level has blocks you can dash through, but the B Side tells you that you can get an extra jump by hitting the jump button right before you exit the block (and of course, there’s the above screenshot which introduces a concept right before the end, neither building on it much nor letting you get the hang of it properly). Maybe the game builds on them better in the C Side levels or in the optional Core stage, but I’ve seen enough of this game to know that I won’t have fun looking for its secrets (my brother told me that the Core even has some arbitrary nonsense in it, like colors on a TV corresponding to a direction you have to dash).

Ironically, the one part of the game that does introduce a gimmick in a safe environment ends up being safe for a bit too long and gets kinda boring, but it’s still better designed than the other gimmick introductions in this game.

Oh, and I also didn’t like the feather mini-game. There are two moments where this hardcore action game stops dead in its tracks to make you keep a feather within a constantly-moving area, and it might just be the most flow-breaking segment I’ve ever seen in a video game. Out of nowhere, it goes from a fast-paced, responsive platformer to a slow, heavily-momentum-based proto-clicker. Honestly, that genre is even more far-removed from the platforming than the hidden object genre, and I honestly believe that the game could have told its story just as well without it. In fact, it kinda ruins the story IMO; how the hell is that supposed to be relaxing?? It’s frustrating because the momentum keeps the feather moving past the zone after I let go of the button! At least the feather dies, so I can revel in that bit of poetic justice.

So, would I recommend this game? Well, unless you’re a fan of platformers, hidden object games, game-play loops, and momentum-based feather-moving mini-games, I say get it on sale. I like the platforming segments (especially in the B Side levels), but it has a “throw everything until something sticks” approach to level design instead of trying to have a more focused, cohesive challenge with an actual, satisfying difficulty curve. If you want the challenge to do anything but flat-line, you’ll have to deal with the shift in genre and look for those hidden collectibles (or keep a walk-through handy).

P.S. Oddly enough, the “PICO-8” version of the game has a better difficulty curve, but this is only really accomplished by having some screens start you off on crumbling platforms, giving you little time to get your bearings.