Gene

I bought this game for my daughter and ended up playing it with her! It wasn't quite what I was expecting as I thought it would be a quick platformer. Instead I was really surprised by the huge levels and the detail involved. I wouldn't say it was a puzzle game, but there are skills you need to understand to progress which shows a lot of thought has gone into this. It looks like it is all in the same back drop so maybe some different scenes would be nice. Overall it is a really nice, fun game to play. The graphics are simple but that is all it needs, as the detail in the game play is really good. This is a game we will return to on a Sunday afternoon.

[h1]A pleasant typical old-school platformer, referring to and styling itself with Sonic[/h1] The difficulty balance is decent, plus a lot of ideas for diversifying the gameplay will ensure that people who like this type of atmosphere will not get bored quickly, the only drawback for me was the graphics or rather the lopsidedness of models/animation, but still, since it's supposed to fit into a certain outline of a retro game, you can get over it. If you can find it in the bundle and you like this type of game, it's worth a try, it may not be something incredibly extra, but it's a reasonable paltformer in which you can find a challenge.

Had a lot of fun playing this with my 6 year old already! Looking forward to going back to some of the older levels once we have more mutations to try new things out.

Really disappointing. Thought this would be a good game to play with my son, but there's better stuff for free on ipad.

This is one of those times where I wish there was more than a simple yes or no answer for whether or not I recommend this game to others. Given the low asking price, I suppose I'll have to give it a thumbs-up. For collectors and completionists, or people looking for a mindless game to play while listening to podcasts, Gene will be an interesting enough distraction for the four or so hours it takes to beat - or even less if you aren't trying to fully complete every level. Gene is, from start to finish, an incredibly simple side-scrolling platformer. You play the titular Gene, a little blue alien with big eyes facing a bit of bad luck. After your space ship starts smoking for entirely unknown reasons, it crashes hard enough to break apart into twenty different pieces. Those parts, as well as a bunch of gems that one of the game's generic enemies steals for equally mysterious reasons, are spread across fifteen levels. The main gimmick of Gene is mutation. You start off as a blue version of the character, whose abilities include being able to travel through teleportation spheres and moving faster when there are boost arrows in the background. From there, you'll find five other colors of Gene to become, each with their own uses, who you'll be constantly changing between throughout each level. These range from the somewhat believable grey Gene that can jump much higher to the red Gene that can.. place and detonate bundles of dynamite by remote. Three of the mutations center around placing explosive devices, and two of those are primarily ways to access parts of the levels that are otherwise blocked off. At times it can feel a bit too obvious that some of the choices were made simply as a way to pad out the play time. The enemies in the game come in a few different flavors but they're really just a different paint job on the same exact obstacle. They move back and forth on whichever platform they're standing on, and cause damage on contact. The game does give you a mutation right from the start that lets you place land mines in their path, and a single one is enough to kill anything outside of the single boss encounter toward the end. It was nice to see all six of Gene's collected mutations being used as part of that final fight, though some of the ways you're forced to attack go against the ways you've learned to keep yourself safe until then. The platforming controls are nice and tight, and I'm glad the developer didn't include some arbitrary "your double-jump doesn't work if you haven't used it before half of your jump distance is completed" mechanic. Sadly, there were more than a few times where I ended up clipping through a thin platform or even getting entirely stuck inside of a wall through normal gameplay. Then there were the times when the red Gene just stopped planting bundles of dynamite when I hit the E key during a level. Level introductions can be skipped, but if you do so before the part that includes an animation of the exit device appearing, then the exit simply won't be there when you finally get to that part of the stage. Issues like those brought me very close to giving up on the game on a few occasions. Gene is an interesting enough game to play, so long as you've got the patience to deal with its shortcomings, and preferably have something interesting to listen to in the background. Given the price I pay for coffee each morning, I can't really fault having paid one dollar to get just under four hours worth of mindless platforming.