Jubilee

Mane Where the soundtrack at!! some tunes lowk fire

Extremely fun precision platformer. If you like a good, condensed challenge, then give this game a shot. Reminded me of the most fun parts of Super Meat Boy and Celeste in a bite-sized package.

Jubilee wastes no time getting right to the fun and excels in simple pleasing presentation where even the tutorial level outdoes what many platformers with far more mechanics try to achieve their entire runtime. Whenever I start a game, I mess around with the controls the moment I can move the character. And pressing each face button, I was delighted with what they all did: You just jump. Every button that isn't movement is the jump button and I instantly knew this game was going to prioritize level flow, unique ideas, and intuitive obstacle design to guide the player. And within like 2 obstacles, the game basically just rips off the band-aid and goes "yeah yeah okay you know what platformers are let's just get to it" and litters the map with hilarious NPCs to deliver tutorial quips and opportunities for you to mess around with splitting pathways, walljumps to show off how cool you are, and tons of gems to collect that scratched the same itch to me that Super Mario Odyssey's "something special every 2 inches" mentality of collect-a-thon felt. I was dazzled with how much fun I was having in the first 15 minutes alone. Discovering new biomes always felt instantly rewarding due to the jumpy fantastic soundtrack that has no misses, and each zone did an excellent job introducing and remixing their unique gimmicks. A particular favorite of mine being a beautiful pathway up a waterfall where you jumped on descending logs which later incorporated that biome's classic Crash Bandicoot style piranha plant trap platforms quickly adding more intensity to an obstacle that already was surprisingly demanding on how fast you needed to be to climb the safer version of the waterfall. Also speaking of said waterfall, I just really like the visuals man. The entire game is just a giant level that seamlessly transitions from one section to another that feels like if you scrunched a 10x bigger game into a tiny ball and shoved it into a gameboy. You can have such polar opposite feeling segments next to each other, but in this way where the contrast is gorgeous, like the bright blue waterfall is surrounded by deep dark spacey backgrounds giving it an ethereal feel that was simply magical & cozy to me. The game even mixes in beautiful angelic marble tiles contrasting brightly over peaceful night skies, and hellish red danger pits in mechanical factories far below, with cluttered jungles, and even entire ant colonies in between. Tons of variety with a new place to discover every 5-10 minutes with a whole new set of great NPCs that somehow manage to get me to laugh sometimes in 3 words or less. The unique way you collect the game's main collectible; Gems, is also subtly genius. Something I think a lot of platformers can get wrong is that frustration that comes from having to be perfect on a set of obstacles to clear a section, so your performance on most of it does not matter if you flub the final part of a sequence and it can quickly feel grindy and like you're just muscle-memory'ing your way through an obstacle you are *So* mentally over. Jubilee lets you make some progress in an obstacle, safely jump away from it, hit a checkpoint, and keep what you collected which helped a lot and made me almost feel like I was tackling some platforming obstacles in several attacks like it was an RPG miniboss. It was super fulfilling getting every last gem in a tricky slice of a zone. Pacing is perfect and I pretty much 100%'d the entire game in a single 2.5ish hour session that never felt like any of my time was being wasted. I had fun from beginning to end with only the most minor of nitpicks on some obstacles. Otherwise, this is kind of the perfect game for what it set out to accomplish. High recommend to anyone in love with platformers that just get it right.