The title Team Indie leaves no room for imagination. Your favorite indie game characters are thrown together in one neat 2D puzzle platformer package and have to team up to defeat an evil cat. And guess what; they all brought their own unique skills with them. Go Team Indie !
In total there are ten characters; nine from different indie game developers and one from developer Brightside Games themselves, called Marvin The Cat. The other characters are CommanderVideo, Clunk, Super Crate Box guy, Black Fluff Ball, Tiny, Mi, J. Jitters, Dustgirl and Tim. Don’t worry if you don’t know one or more of these guys. I had trouble linking some of them to their original games, too. And besides, the game doesn’t expect you to know every one of them, but let’s face it; it’s cool if you do.
The game plays out like a traditional platformer at first, with you collecting diamonds and carefully placed trophies. After a level or two you’ll get to bring some of your friends with you. You can’t select who you want to take with you; the game assigns the characters for you. But, once that happens, the game turns into a puzzle platformer where you have to try and collect all of the diamonds and trophies. Of course, things are easy in the beginning but later on it becomes harder to find/collect them all.
Levels start with you controlling just one character. That is, until you touch another ‘character box’ (that is literally what it is; a box with a different character’s face on it). After touching it this new character is now under your control. If you get hit by an enemy or get hit by something else (like spikes) the game will reverse everything back to your last touched box. You can even rewind further by pressing another button. This is something you’ll probably do during a boss fight and/or some of the later levels. There’s no way to fast forward a primary character (only a secondary), so if you accidentally press the button too many times you’ll have to redo the next part all over again. I did feel the game could’ve used more checkpoints because sometimes you’re reaching the end of a level and by getting hit you’re sometimes being sent back to the beginning of a level and have to redo the whole thing all over again. These moments are rare, but they are there.
There’s nothing wrong with the controls, by the way; these are amazingly responsive and using a specific character skill is easy and makes perfect sense. They’ve done an excellent job here.
Each character has a unique skill that has to be used in order to be able to move forward or to collect certain things. So, for example, Tim from Braid can hit a switch and rewind time allowing him to progress further, CommanderVideo can’t stand still or turn around and has to dodge objects and enemies and Dustgirl can double jump, walljump and explode in order to get rid of packs of enemies.
Some of the later levels have you juggle multiple characters at the same time (but only one of them is actively controlled at a time), making things both a little bit hectic and confusing. Still, it never becomes too hard and even though it isn’t perfect, the idea behind the game itself is executed very well.
I do want to point one thing out, however: some of the last levels are very glitchy with your characters falling through obstacles or enemies not disappearing properly after being killed. This unfortunately resulted in me not being able to finish the game properly (yet). These game breaking bugs seriously need to be fixed because you really don’t want to have to repeat some of the harder levels. I was almost ready to break my controller at one point.
One last thing I almost forgot to mention is that the trophies found in the levels are stored in your Medal room (they honestly look more like trophies to me). You can’t view the trophies in full 2D or 3D high resolution glory but you can see the cabinets filled with (a couple of) them and if you stand still the game will zoom in a little closer to give you a better look. It’s a cool idea but I wish there was more to be found, seen or done there. It feels a little barebones.
This is a colorful game with beautiful art. It looks great in full HD and above. The intro movie uses too much compression unfortunately, and it shows. And some of the characters could’ve used more animations, but other than that, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. If you want to play and see a game that makes people happy Team Indie will do just that.
There aren’t many sounds in the game, except for maybe the ‘plinging’ of collecting diamonds and rewinding time, so it all comes down to the music which is great, cheerful and surprisingly atmospheric (if that’s the right word for it); If you’re being chased down the music will be more rapid and tense and if the mood is normal then the music will also be quite relaxing. It adjusts very well, depending on the situation you’re in.
Over fifty levels have to be completed and there’s also a boss you have to defeat. Three times to be more precise. These usually consist of dodging objects, enemies or attacks (or a combination) while, again, using multiple characters (what else did you expect here ?). A full playthrough will take you anywhere between 5-15 hours depending on if you’re going to collect every diamond and trophy. I did at bit of both and ended up with 6 hours on the clock (but didn’t yet complete it because of the glitches), which is basically the ideal length for me since I also have other obligations and things to do.
Team Indie is yet another excellent puzzle platformer game filled with colorful and unique indie game characters. If you ever enjoyed playing with any of these characters then you’re in for a treat. It has great controls and there’s plenty of character variety to keep things fun and interesting.
The only thing I can do is to just recommend this.
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