Recent reviews by ebu

I got this game as part of a Humble Bundle.

So I played for an hour or so. This game is just fine, and for the price I paid it's pretty good. Check the bottom for a summary.

Throughout this review I'm going to mention Super Meat Boy a lot. This is because basically everything in SMB is done really really well. Go buy it. Please. It's really good.


Preface: I used an Xbox 360 controller, and I highly recommend using it (or any other controller you have). The controls on keyboard are subpar at best.

So a lot of people are saying this game has bad controls. I thought they were just mediocre. The controls are very similar to SMB, with some annoying issues. I'll go into further detail:

Double-Jumping Weirdness

When you double jump while running off a ledge, if you jump a little late, the game uses your double jump. Mechanically this makes sense, since you ran off the platform, but in practice it's just really annoying.

Slippery Character?

A ton of the negative reviews for this game mention the character feeling very slippery. Yes, the character slips a little bit. However, of the ~60 levels I played, the slight slip only became a limiting factor in one level. I didn't get the feeling of sliding all over the place as other people have mentioned.


The Ink

So as you can see in the trailer, the level is revealed through splattering ink on the level. Don't worry, when you die, the ink remains. While creative, it has some outstanding problems.

The Level Boundaries Kill You?

I don't know why this is the case. I expected the level's bottom to kill me (duh!), and I was sort of suprised to see the sides murder your little white cube, but why oh why does the TOP of the level kill me? Mind you, there's virtually no leniency. You touch the top, you are now little paint blobs. Congratualtions.

The Level is Hidden

"But," you say, "the level-revealing is what makes the game unique!" That's a good observation.

For the first twenty or so levels, the revealing-thru-ink part of the game is really cool. You get this sense of exploration, and you start to learn to splatter ink at the start so you can see what's going on before you take action.

And then they introduce elements to the game that just turn it into another generic hard-but-not-quite-rage platformer. There are places in the game where you have to act IMMEDIATELY, or you die.

This is dumb. I can't even see the level yet and you're already trying to kill me? The feeling of exploring a level, using the paint to your advantage, trying to scout out, is all but gone. Why? Why turn the the ink (which is the UNIQUE PART OF YOUR GAME) from being a fun exporative mechanic into a infuriating you-can't-see-the-level-until-you-die-in-it death machine? This is the part I'm most upset about because this could have been a totally different (and in my opinion, much cooler) game.

This brings me to my next point.

I Wanted to Explore

Maybe this is just me, bit I really wanted this game to be a cool exploring game. Jump around, use the paint splatter as a kind of sonar visibility, not another twitch-time platformer. I don't really know what to say, I'm just disappointed. Probably could have watched some gameplay footage, but eh. The Humble bundle contained the entirety of GameMaker Studio.

So, in short:

The game is fun, but it's not an exploring game. It's a hard platforming game, and while good, it's no Super Meat Boy.

GREAT Post-Portal 2 game. Thinking across time proved to be a very interesting challenge. I only wish it had more.
This game is this far my favorite Portal mod.