Art | Cookie | FAQ | Index of Posts | Links | Main | Oracle | YouTube
Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5
Three kids, running down the street and over rooftops for some reason. Running away from someone - or something? Then, one kid gets pulled into the two-dimensional world of grafitti and platforming. Can he survive long enough to find out what's going on?
Nope.
I'm bad at platforming. I enjoy it, but it's not something that comes easily to me. Throw in a few perspective flips (and there are quite a few of those), and it just doesn't quite click for me. I can press the buttons in the correct sequence, but timing is key, and I often don't have the right response at the right time.
I like the aesthetic, though. They do a good job of representing a cartoonish two-dimensional world. I do wonder who these people are that have decided to paint on the rooftops rather than the more traditional sides of buildings, but I can count the number of times I've been on a rooftop on one hand - so who knows? Maybe lots of grafitti is up there. I have no way of knowing, and it doesn't really matter all that much, anyhow.
The story also doesn't matter. Like most platformers, it's a thin veneer to give you some justification for bouncing all over the place like a madman. Does it really matter why the kid is suddenly two-dimensional. Like the princess being kept in another castle, it only matters personally to the protagonist, but the player just wants to see what other devious mechanations the developers have in store.
So the art is nice, the story is basically non-existant, nothing really stands out with the sound design - what about the actual gameplay? The episodes didn't really seem to go much beyond the first couple of levels (again, I'm bad), but during that play I couldn't say that it was a very complex game with a lot of intracies. There's one clear way to finish the level, and you pretty much have to progress along that path to succeed. There's little in the way of a possible speedrun or being able to break the game. The levels are OK, but it's difficult to get an idea of the entire level because of the constant shifts in perspective.
The save system is somewhat forgiving - as expected, there's a checkpoint system that seems fairly liberal in its placement, and you hardly ever have to start a level from the beginning. Those two last points may actually relegate this game to the bargain bins, though: there's little in the way of challenge, and no real impetus to do them again and again. Compare to, say, Super Meat Boy or I Wanna Be The Guy, and this game won't scratch the same itch. The only thing it's got going for it is that it embraces the inherently absurd nature of the two-dimensional landscape, but that wears off quickly, and then all you've got is a somewhat decent platformer.
Take a look through the gameplay footage and see if it's something you'd like to play through. I only got through a small portion of the game; it's possible it really livens up in the middle. From what I've played of it, though, I'm not grabbed, so I say give it a miss unless you really want to play this particular kind of platformer.