Beat Boy

Great little (sometimes difficult) parkour game with a terrific soundtrack and a unique, colorful look that really works well with the music and game style. Only takes 1-2 hours to see the credits the first time, but the great music, fun level designs, and a (non-IAP) shop filled with some fun aesthetic items and power-ups, will definitely bring me back for another playthrough or two. Good: - Really fun run, jump, punch, obstacle course gameplay - New and entertaining challenges on each level (gravity zones!) - Terrific music that makes you want to play more - Neat effects, ragdolls, and slow-mo to celebrate your successes (and many more failures) - Good checkpoint system and fast "rewinds" to keep you in the game - Great little (non-IAP) store with some fun aesthetics and interesting perks and attacks - Cookie stealing giant worm! Could be better: - Interface and store is good and functional but doesn't have quite the same colorful, contrasty zest as the rest of the game - Mostly good and fun difficulty curve, but got stuck for a bit in a few spots despite the checkpoint system. Might have been my skill level, a couple of blind jumps, or attack issues, but it wasn't anything some practice or some shop perks couldn't fix - All the levels are fun to play but I would like to be able to hear the music (or a preview) before jumping into and committing to a level

Despite the on-a-budget feel, Beat Boy is a fun (yet short) experience! If you enjoy simple 2D parkour, good music, ragdolls, and failing over and over A LOT — well, look no further than Beat Boy to satisfy your needs for at least an hour or two.

Very satisfying jumping/kicking my way through the levels, sound FX is great! Getting new power ups and punch moves is fun. Though the game can be very difficult at times, it is very rewarding. [spoiler] My favorite levels are the changing gravity ones. [/spoiler] If you like side-scroll parkour games, I highly recommend this one!

The executive summary version of this review is, I like the game and recommend it. When first trying it on a lower spec machine it was more frustrating than fun, then after trying it on a better spec system I found it to be enjoyable overall and was able to complete the game. For context to what follows, I grew up playing video games (e.g. on Atari, Intellivision, Nintendo, and then PC) for many years. While I was never an amazing gamer I did okay and could have fun with fast-paced games in various genres. I haven't been a 'gamer' for many many years now, and currently don't even own a computer with discrete graphics. The first couple of hours that I tried this game, it seemed way too difficult, but it seems that a big part of the problem was the PC that I was using at first, a micro form factor PC that does meet the listed minimum requirements. With that PC the there seemed to be almost no time to react to things appearing on the screen so the game felt way too fast, game responsiveness to control inputs didn't seem consistent (that could be me though) and some of the graphics were quite ghost-y, making it less than ideal to judge where the edges of objects actually were. I'd only gotten to the 2nd 'real' level after much frustration. THEN, I decided to try the game on a somewhat newer tower computer. Still no discrete graphics but a newer CPU with better integrated graphics. That made a huge difference. The graphics weren't ghost-y, the game seemed to respond better to inputs, and though the game still seemed a bit faster than I'd like, I was able to immediately play better and made a lot more progress in a short amount of time, and ended up playing it through to the end.