Solid stuff! On the simpler side design-wise and thus I can say it’s by far the most faithful to N64 platformers I’ve played. Very Banjo-Kazooie-like. Simple, very well utilized movement kit, and it's on the slower end of platformers. This game never really reuses any ideas, writing-wise and theme-wise. It always uses its concepts creatively and with a brilliant, expressive Invader Zim style. The art style, world, visuals, controls, visual effects, sound design and animations of this game are just extremely well made, creative, absurdly expressive, fluid, and satisfying to look at (especially with the player's animations, good lord). Just so well executed overall. The game is kinda corny but in a charming sort of way.
The simplicity of the move kit I feel is great, not only keeping things faithful to n64 platformers but also keeping the design immersive, tightly designed and grounded. This simple really let the dev be super creative with the design of the world and level design while keeping the structures you see grounded. It helped them balance this all very well, making sure the player can't really exploit much with their ensured tight design.
The platforming is a little more on the challenging side. Very tense, as this game's main way of punishing you is dropping you down to where you started so you have to reclimb, and it gets pretty thrilling and tense, especially with the longer drops. It knows very well just the right times on when to make the climbs and punishment for falling rough. It almost always takes a few seconds to get back to where you need to be in any challenge after failing or falling literally anywhere on the map, and the design around that has always been impressive to me, as the game at the same time also keeps its immersion. Even the more unpunishing parts, it really doesn’t take that long to recover and get back into the action, and the more you do it, the more the game teaches mastery of the game's platforming mechanics. It’s just really well designed.
You always have stuff to do as you explore the world. Going from one key area on the map to another? There’s a ton of collectibles for you to grab, some easy and some hard or obscure. You can do stuff in almost whatever order you would like besides stuff locked behind main progression triggers, as the world you play in is basically one giant hub with a bunch of challenges leading to the main thing you collect for progression. No levels, a few small maps and one large map basically with a whole lot going on in it. It’s like mini-worlds inside of worlds. You’ll enter a building, and that building will have a cartoonish and witty theme to it based on what you walked into, for example. It will have its own unique platforming challenges and NPCs. Every platforming challenge is immersively placed in the world and adds more and more to the zaniness of it all.
Most games follow very tried-and-true thematic formulas and very predictable world but yeah, this game comes out of left field with a lot of what it presents. You platform on racist owls that are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on people in a church, you dig up somebody's grave for a cheese grater, and you literally enter mirror mode of the world to change what are essentially this game's levers to activate things around the map, which are screws, to behave differently and do the opposite of their function… Because the screws now rotate the other way! Like… What??? You make a house that is a music box that plays music backwards play forwards in this mirror world, which plays ♥♥♥♥♥♥ public domain music and causes the main roadblock to get horrified and run back into their hideaway, and later in the game un-turn the mayor pig from a block of salami by killing the lead owl, but then get scolded for it because you caused the mayor's polls to collapse due to the controversy of your actions and other stuff. Such a fun world, man. If that isn't fun to interact with, I don’t know what is. Honestly, a bulk of this game's reward is just seeing what zany things come next as this game's world is a treat.
With all of that being said I do have some major gripes.
Some things you do are extremely unrewarding to the point of extreme irritation, I’m gonna be honest, like your only reward for knocking down 8 trash cans in the first stage is literally just 10 XP… For collecting one of the main collectibles in the game, bottle caps, you get a whopping 1 HP for all of your hard work. I get it, it's supposed to be underwhelming to add to the humor of the game, but for what the jokes are, it isn't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ funny. It isn't good rage bait. It’s just sadism. ♥♥♥♥ you for all of that. Seriously. ♥♥♥♥. You. And these are not just simple things either, no. Main collectibles you will be collecting for the entire game will be rewarded with practically nothing as a “joke”. It’s outrageous.
The main collectible you get to progress feels pretty unsatisfying to collect a large chunk of the time, as it suffers from the same problem Odyssey does where a lot of them are just around out in the open, but they are more satisfying to collect than Odyssey's at least because at the very least 90% of the time it's a decent challenge to collect them. There are a few collectibles in this game also that are so impossible for anybody to rationally normally find that this game 100% requires a guide for a fully complete save (looking at you, out-of-bounds void screw. Surprised it didn’t take 20 years to discover like the Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! camera flash Easter egg).
It takes forever to go to and from where you need to be after you’ve collected everything in an area, and you end up having to do really linear and tough platforming sections over and over again just to get to where you need to be after acquiring stuff. Whenever you are done collecting everything on a certain route it becomes a chore walking for a minute or two across the map to get to where you need to be next. Healing from a vending machine is also obnoxiously slow. You hit it once for 1 HP and it takes like 4 seconds to do one hit in total.
I also REALLY don’t like the looping music. You play in one stage basically the entirety of the game and it plays the same damn theme with slight variations (think Super Mario World music) the entirety of the time. I honestly muted the game and created my own playlist.
Anyways that aside, its a fun time and those complains don’t really ruin the game whatsoever. The dev is also like really cool, definitely look at their portfolio. They have a website with their own web comic and so much more, that web comic in particular has been going on since like the dawn of time btw. Do look into playing this!
