A Short Death

It kinda feels like a bad Playstation 1 game, but I don't mean it in a negative way, it feels intentional, and once you get the timing it's very accurate actually, just takes a few minutes to get that muscle memory. As you progress you will get the ability to transform between 4 characters, each having some movement gimmick, and you can also use them in some shortcuts if you accidentally find yourself roaming. The narrative was a little silly but it made me laugh a few times, I like the overall homebrew feel of the game, and I thought the ending felt very heartwarming. Generally I don't care for these games, you know the 'GO UP' platformers, frankly I just find them very generic, but this game had a little bit of charm to it with various character mechanics, and it does not really focus that much on the difficulty, it's actually a pretty chill experience. You can complete the regular mode in 90 minutes or so (with practice included). The regular mode has a ton of checkpoints and you can teleport to the last one that was activated, and the NEW GAME+ seems to be a 'start to finish', but I haven't tried to beat it. There is some collection content, as well as a few extra things to find like a hidden dev room. You can also buy hats and even get a golden skin on NG+. The level design overall was not bad, there are a few visual changes as you progress, as well as some psychological effects, although I think you probably could have done more with navigation, given there are so many movement tools. [h1] Pros: [/h1] (+) You get the ability to transform into different characters with unique movement, so for me it makes it a bit more interesting than say, a generic game in this genre (+) Not sure if it was intentional but it kinda reminded me a lot of many bad Playstation 1 games, you know like those movie adaptation games, the real trash. But in a very charming way. It seems clunky at first, but I kinda got a good feel for the timing after a few minutes. Very silly narrative, the game does not take itself seriously, overall I thought it was very cute. (+) On regular mode there are many checkpoints and you can teleport to the last one you used. Also if you teleport too many times, the game will offer you to skip to the checkpoint at a small price. The shadow is also very nice for tracking the landing (+) Can unlock many hats, and there is some collection support. Can replay on NG+ with mostly no checkpoints it seems. [h1] Feedback: [/h1] - I had occasional issues with the character not grabbing the edges for some reason, and sometimes moving objects would affect your movement in strange ways - Maybe the game could have used a few more sections for the skateboard, like designed for it. Also the places like that dev room, I wish you had more side activities like that, what makes a game like this fun for me is optional exploration, so something to keep in mind - The camera in the horror section was a little wild [b] Overall Thoughts: 7/10 [/b] Just something you might enjoy for 90 minutes if you ever experienced like a meh Playstation game, the ability to change characters made it stand out for me among similar titles. Nothing too special, but for the price I think it's decent effort, made me smile a few times with the design choices, also really nice selection of sound effects lol. Even though it's in that "hardcore platformer" genre, the game is actually very chill and not even that frustrating. [code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]