A demandingly difficult, mildly amusing precision platformer that bears lingering bugs, and which contains some baffling design choices in place, seemingly only to vex the player.
Positive:
- Ancient South American temples are represented and depicted tastefully, with the traps, pits, and associated thematic artwork comprising of creative and colorful artifices that are also accompanied by the occasional fantastical wildlife. Traversing each level is always visually interesting, avoiding dangers is exciting, and discovering secrets is rewarding.
- All 8-bit pixel art very much resembles the original works from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s, encapsulating that video game area accurately and proficiently. The retro charm is exhibited nicely through all playable characters, enemies, levels, menus, and title screens, with the chiptune music serving as a wonderful complement to the overall audiovisual presentation.
- Despite the frame rate being locked to 60 per second, the action is always fluid, and there are never any frame rate drops. Likewise, controlling the playable characters is consistently responsive and quick, allowing for rapid adjustments to varying circumstances while maintaining player agency by accommodating for instantaneous decisions to capricious obstacles and foes.
Neutral:
- Traps and spikes are not always signaled before being activated on contact or by proximity. While this is not totally unfair or badly implemented, it does require the player to be extra-prudent when judging jumps and calculating risks. This mechanic adds another layer of difficulty depth that is presented early in the game, and premeditates a careful traversal of all environments. With that said, this design choice also culminates in the drudgery of trial and error, thus causing the player to repeat levels many times until they are able to figure out the developers' intentions.
- There is a narrowly specific set of precision platforming skills, dexterity attributes, and agility coordinations that are required for one to be successful in this game. The overall difficulty becomes more extreme as one progresses, and it is apparent that the general level design mandates restricted approaches to navigating obstacles and deciding jumps in order to complete each stage triumphantly. Due to the intricacies of the ongoing challenges, this may or may not be a barrier to the player, depending on their previous platformer proficiency and on their personal tastes. Either way, it is highly likely that this major flaw could potentially lead to frustration and annoyance.
- Button assignments displayed on the graphical user interface areas are generic and not specific to a standard gamepad, like the Xbox 360 controller. Instead, ambiguous numbers are shown, such as "button 11". This is not helpful, as one should not be expected to be familiar with the technical addresses of buttons on the controller they are using, which do not correspond with the labels appearing on the physical controller itself.
- Plot, story, and their accompanying cut scenes are stylistic throwback representations of video game yore, although the narrative includes an interesting dynamic of family drama and adventure. With that said, there are not any storytelling nuances, and there are no significant surprises for the player to digest. It all unfolds naturally and in correspondence with the action, but without any form of engaging extrapolations.
- As one plays and progresses through the many levels, a wide variety of characters may be unlocked. While they expand upon the game's lore and also add characters from other video game franchises, there is little to no incentive to replay the entire story mode again with each character, as they are only actually worthwhile in the bonus arcade modes, due to their unique abilities. There are other unlocks, but they are mostly cosmetic, so working toward their acquirement may or may not be valuable, depending on one's interests.
Negative:
- A music settings bug is persistent and causes the music to be turned off. Fixing this is simple, involving going into the options menu and adjusting the music's volume again, but this problem occurs frequently. Despite the bug being reported by many players over the years, the developers have never fixed this, which is unacceptable.
- Avoiding any spoilers, the workings regarding player lives in the main story mode is unnecessary and distractive. The entire idea is a design oddity that makes absolutely no sense, and does not add anything of value to the overall experience. It is illogical as to why the developers elected to include such an inane characteristic to player lives in the game, especially because the "game over" screen cannot be skipped and lasts for about 30 seconds. Circumventing this nuisance involves playing through and grinding at least one other separate game mode. Worst of all, the non-story modes do not save one's progress, and require a complete playthrough to be done in a single sitting.
- Crashes to desktop are infrequent, but they do occur at seemingly random times during play. There does not seem to be a way to prevent this from happening. The developers have not addressed this issue even though many players have reported similar, yet, varied issues of the recurring problem.
- The arduously demanding nature of the levels' arrangement necessitates the repetition of the most exacting trials hundreds of times as a likely possibility. This means that the player must endure the same sounds, the same songs, and the same actions for replayed levels without much variation for a prolonged period, making the process feel tedious and boring. Completing levels can feel satisfying and like true accomplishments, but this effort and toil come at the cost of one's lost patience and with growing aggravation against the design of the game.
- Collision detection can be defective, especially when it comes to icicle spikes at a certain part of the game. The pixel art of said spikes do not appear to touch the playable character's sprite, thus causing unmerited deaths. In fact, the collision detection is so rigorous, that one must stand and jump from specific pixels in the artwork, in order to avoid being killed by something that is not actually visible.
Overall rating: 3.0/5.0
