TL;DR - Randall is a short, somewhat janky collectathon 3D platformer. It's broadly satisfying, but a few things didn't get enough attention. The chief problem is wasting your time by putting real challenges after a series of easy obstacles, so death or falling mandates repeating both the easy and hard stuff. If you enjoy 3D platformers, I recommend the game on sale or not.
Randall The Grape Jelly Cube Goes To Soda Valley For Some Reason succeeds at SEO, and somewhat at 3D platforming. You have four major abilities - a jump, a slowly-descending double jump, a wall jump, and a clunky-feeling slide kick that can be used as an attack. There are an additional two types of jumps you can perform out of these existing moves, which for some reason are only taught to you at the end of a path in the final area. These moves are a long jump and a high jump, performed by performing a slide kick in midair, and then timing a press of either the slide kick button or the jump button on landing, similar to the triple step jump in Super Mario 64. These latter two jumps feel a little awkward to pull off, because you have to time the slide kick late in the air, or else the move ends before you land, cutting you off from the special jumps. My other complaint is with Randall's inertia, as he feels slippery and unresponsive during times when it matters, especially after a long jump.
There's a number of different collectibles to grab, none of which are given names. The major collectibles are six-pointed stars, with 12 to find across the game, and 7 mandatory to beat the game. While the number you've collected out of the total is displayed after you beat the game, there's no real reason to collect any more than the minimum, since there is no reward, no additional credits sequence, and no achievements. There are also purple and blue trapezoids, which end up totaling (to my knowledge) 838, and 400 and 800 of these are used to get two of the six-pointed stars. There are yellow diamonds, which if you collect all of them in an area, it spawns a six-pointed star. And finally, there are colored keys in the final area, to clear away matching color blocks.
There's no story or motivation given to anything (hence the "For Some Reason"), and so there's just some orange blobs who have a vendetta against you, as does their boss you fight at the end. The story and the combat both are the things that had the least attention paid to them in the game design. The enemies with spears that homed in on your position in particular felt cheap, with almost certain death if you attempted to kill them. The final boss also wasted your time, because it repeatedly randomly chose attacks that you might not be able to hit him during, and sometimes those glitched out to be unavoidable, meaning you died and had to restart the fight.
On that note, the primary issue I have with the game is wasting your time, and it crops up in the level design a fair amount. Checkpoints frequently only appeared after a long stretch of easy platforming followed by one difficult segment, meaning that with every death, you would have to repeat all of the stuff you breezed through just to likely die again as you try to figure out the intended approach to the difficult portion. Only after which you got to a checkpoint. One particular six-pointed star to collect in the final area requires you to travel for a minimum of 25 seconds between attempts, since you fall to ground level, with no checkpoints higher up. Similar problems occur in two challenge courses you enter. The level design also needed some attention in spots, with collectibles misaligned with the environment, and even demanding death in the process of collection. There are two race challenges initiated by jumping through rings, and it can be unclear at certain points in these which way you're meant to go, since the next ring in the sequence isn't immediately visible. Even so, these provided a nice small challenge.
The music is good, and the visuals are... deliberate, I guess I'll say. Not polished, not shooting for a retro vibe, but adequate.
Cutscenes don't pause time or restrict control while they take place, and that means you quite likely will die between phases in the final boss fight at least once. There's also some issues with respawning putting you in the wrong position, especially if you jump or perform a slide kick just beforehand, which is a consequence of your character merely becoming transparent and the camera locking when you "die." I think you inherit the momentum as you respawn, and it can put you in some odd places as a result.
But if you come into this with the understanding that it's an indie 3D platformer that's a little underbaked, I think you'll enjoy it. I got close to 3 hours of gameplay out of it after struggling with the final six-pointed star and the final boss. I paid the full price, and I don't regret it.
