A Pair of Petite Platformer Recs: Transiruby and Flynn: Son of Crimson

I have an idea for another fairly-large article in the works. However, the writing on it has been going slowly (in addition to some real-life delays), and I wanted to do something in the meantime. It’s been a while since I did my last round-up of smaller recommendations (my two-parter on 3D Platformers way back in November and December… wow, it does not feel like those were that long ago…), so why not another one of those?

Once again, I’m looking at platformers, but today we will be remaining firmly in the realm of two dimensions and red-themed names, with Metroidvania title Transiruby and kinda-sorta-Metroidvania-like Flynn: Son of Crimson.



Transiruby (SKIPMORE)

I’ve said in the past that the Nintendo Switch is a great platform for indie games, but this was even more true early in the console’s life. It was much easier for a small but well-made game to stand out in the eShop back when there just wasn’t as much on the console. One of the big beneficiaries of this was Kamiko (which you may recognize from waaaay back in my 2017 year-end round-up), a title by solo Japanese developer SKIPMORE that was released about a month and a half after the console launched. I had heard basically nothing about it when I saw it while browsing the eShop for new games to try. There weren't a ton of bigger games overshadowing it yet, it wasn’t expensive, and it looked solid, so I gave it a shot and enjoyed myself.

I hadn’t thought much about it lately, until I was browsing upcoming games and saw Transiruby. Once again, it looked like a cute little 8-bit Metroidvania. Of course, given the current crowd of the eShop, that wasn’t enough to just give it a try on a whim; so I looked into it a little more, at which point I went “Oh shoot, this is the Kamiko guy!”, which was enough to convince me (although for those who don’t have that past experience, there is also a Steam demo you can give a whirl to see if it’s your thing).

Phoenotopia: Awakening is a Great Game, and an Even Greater Experience

Today, we return to focus on a game that I first mentioned back in my 2020 year-end roundup, Phoenotopia: Awakening, by developer Cape Cosmic.

I knew very little about Phoenotopia (pronounced “FEE-no-topia”, like “Phoenix”) going in. I first saw it when it popped up on the “Upcoming Games” section of the Nintendo Switch eShop last year, and unlike some other indie games, it hadn’t been released on other platforms yet (it was released on Steam finally earlier this year). But something about it drew me in. It looked beautiful, rendered in gorgeous pixel art with beautifully-detailed backdrops, and the story promised some sort of mystery set in an expansive world. Compared to a lot of other game releases, there just wasn’t a lot to go on pre-release, but I was intrigued, and picked it up pretty quickly after it came out.

And what I found was pretty incredible! In fact, it went on to become one of my most-played games of the year. So, what exactly is it? Well, that’s hard to describe briefly, so bear with me for a second.

Phoenotopia: Awakening actually has a pretty substantial history that I wasn’t aware of until after I started playing it and looked around even more. It was largely the project of a single person, developer Quang “Quells” Tran, and was preceded by another game simply called Phoenotopia, which was uploaded to Newgrounds back in 2014. Awakening is something between a remake and improvement of the original game that was worked on for the next six years, expanding on and changing around various things as needed, until it was something new and substantially bigger, with only a general outline of the plot in common.

With all of that real-world background out of the way, we can move on to the story itself. In the distant future, humanity’s ever-escalating wars and weaponry eventually destroyed a lot of the Earth’s surface, driving humans underground. After centuries below ground, humans eventually re-emerged to find that the planet had recovered enough to sustain life once more. Society began to reform, and hundreds of years after that, there are once again towns and nations in a world that’s largely medieval-style agrarian towns, but with a number of technologies from the modern day around helping everyone out.

That’s all just the opening text scroll establishing the world. The story in question follows a teenager named Gail, from the quiet farming town of Panselo. After retreating into the nearby forest to round up the local children for dinner, the group witnesses a UFO visit the town. After rushing back, they find the entire town empty, with the only clue being some machinery from space they found in the forest after it fell to earth the previous day. As the eldest remaining person from Panselo, Gail sets off across the continent in search of anyone who can help them find their missing neighbors.

Quarantine Game Recs: Underhero

In my first Quarantine Game Rec back in May covering One Step from Eden, I discussed orphaned game mechanics and gave a whole bunch of examples, many of which were unrelated to the subject. One of those examples I namedropped was the original Paper Mario*, with Underhero being named as a successor to the mantle. As it turns out, that was what we like to call “foreshadowing”, because it’s the game that I’m covering today.

*Which, funny enough, has gotten a new sequel announced that looks much closer to the original two games in the month and a half since I wrote that.

Underhero is the debut game of studio Paper Castle Games. I played it on Switch, but it’s available for PC, Mac, and all game systems (and, in fact, if you chipped in for the recent itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, it was included in there as well!).

And, as I alluded to, it’s a sort-of platformer-slash-RPG, with the notable twist on the formula being that the battles trade the normal turn-based system for a more free style approach, where you and your foes are limited solely by your stamina bar. You can attack or dodge only as long as you have the energy to; do too many things and you’ll be helpless until it recharges, with successful dodges speeding up the process. It means that you need to learn to properly balance the two elements while not strictly limiting you by a turn counter, which makes for an interesting dynamic.

Of course, for as interesting as the battle system was, that wasn’t my favorite element of the game. No, the single biggest draw for me was the writing, which was clever and amusing at every level, from the broad concepts to the minute-to-minute banter.

Let’s start at that broad overview: you play as a Masked Kid, a Shy Guy-like minion in the army of the evil Mr. Stitches (who has a great villain design for an evil overlord, I might add, with an iconic “burlap puppet being piloted by shadowy evil core” feel). You’re not even a particular memorable Masked Kid, just number 745.

Of course, it turns out that what actually sets your Masked Kid apart is that they dare to ask the hard questions in life, like “why fight the Hero of Legend directly when we can just drop a chandelier on him while he’s distracted?”, which leads to you successfully offing him. Of course, that just catches the attention of Mr. Stitches, who can’t stop being creepy even when he’s treating you as his newly-promoted assistant.

This leads to Stitches sending you on a mission that is ostensibly to return the magical artifacts to the Boss Monsters of his army in preparation for the inevitable next hero, but there’s clearly something deeper going on. And further complicating matters is that you have wound up in possession of Elizabeth IV, the magical talking sword of the late hero, who is adamant that you take up the late hero’s quest to overthrow the tyrannical grasp of Lord Stitches.

And, as far as short pitches go, that’s a pretty fun set up for a game. There’s a pretty clear “juggling of dual lives” conflict that Paper Castle is great at milking for comedy and drama. And really, that applies to most aspects of the game; it’s great at taking the broad tropes of other games and crafting them into something recognizable, yet also recognizing the potential for adding their own unique twists to make them into something more interesting.

One of the more common ways it does that drilling down into those common tropes even more to come up with unique ideas, either by looking at the mundane side of the fantastical, or looking for silly twists on genre conventions. For example, the main hub world is the backside of a traditional video game “Final World” level, complete with minion break room, cafeteria, and service elevators to both the boss’s lair and generic apartment complex for minor enemies. Or the main buddy duo being taken to an extreme, consisting of a jaded, sarcastic, but still all-in mentor and a cowardly, semi-reluctant protégé, who happen to also contrast in that one is an extremely talkative sword who can only instruct you, and the other is your expressive, yet still totally mute Masked Kid minion.

The other surprise Underhero uses is a gradual change in its genre. It starts out as a sort of “heroic quest buddy comedy”, and it takes the main happenings largely seriously even if the characters engaging in it are a little goofy. In that way, it also inherits a lot from Paper Mario; like, it was always still a Mario game with bright visuals and a colorful supporting cast, but in the end, they still wanted you to take the threat of Bowser (or whoever took over his role as the final villain) seriously. Same here; chatting with a lost moth minion at the local bar, or frat bro ghosts desperate to end their patrol and go party, or a nerdy shark on a Segway , or whoever else about their problems is good fun, but at the end, you still have to do something about the looming horror that is Mr. Stitches and his plan to take over the world.

And like many other things, it even plays that in an unexpected, original direction. As more and more big questions pile up, Underhero never loses its sense of humor, but does move from a “big epic adventure” tone to more of a conspiracy thriller. And you know what? They do a really good job with it! Wanting to figure out where it was going, what secrets they were hiding, Mr. Stitches’s ultimate evil plans, it all worked. And there’s enough there that it never feels like it’s being done for the sake of it; you can even pick up on a lot of the twists, or at least the general direction of where they’re going. There were several times where I said “Wait, we haven’t dealt with this dangling plot thread for a bit,” right before it was brought up and explained more. That’s a good sign that the writers did a good job of foreshadowing their ideas.

So yeah, if any of this sounds interesting, I can’t recommend picking up Underhero enough! I loved every minute of it, and I’m looking forward to whatever Paper Castle Games does next. There are a few more elements of Underhero that I want to discuss, but they’re all extremely spoiler heavy, so I want to give anyone who hasn’t played it yet a chance to duck out and try it first. If you’re ready for discussion of the end of the game, feel free to check in after the skip.

Quarantine Game Recs: A Fold Apart

My second quarantine game recommendation isn’t quite as long as my first one*, but then again, there’s not really a weird concept like “orphaned game mechanics” that I need to explain. Instead, A Fold Apart by Lightning Rod Games is a straightforward puzzle platformer that executes its simple yet complexly multilayered idea to perfection.

*Although in a lot of ways, One Step From Eden does feel kind of like the exact opposite of A Fold Apart; they just both execute their different visions extremely well.

It starts at the basic conceptual level; the game’s set up is that each level is a piece of paper, where you need to get your character from the starting point to the ending point. Your options to do so are limited, though: you can only walk your character along the path and conquer small height differences. To help cross larger obstacles, you can manipulate the level like an actual piece of paper (to the point where, when I got stuck, I could experiment with a real piece of paper to help me think through it) with various folds and flips. It feels like a simple and obvious idea, but I certainly don’t know of any other games that have tried it, and the puzzles get pretty tricky and creative.

And if it were just that, it would be a pretty solid game; a creative gameplay idea and well-built puzzles making good use of that idea are a strong core. Of course, you can also build off of it to something more, which is the route A Fold Apart takes. The entire game’s art style builds off this paper theme, using an art style that feels like a cross between papercraft art and Pixar-style computer animation, filled with strong, bright color palettes, and it’s extremely appealing to look at.

The story is what ties it all together, though. It’s an extremely intimate portrayal of a romantic couple (genders of your choosing) beginning a long-distance phase of their relationship, and you use the levels to walk them through all the issues that will come up. There’s the sanguine, outgoing teacher Red, and the more melancholic, studious Blue who accepts a prestigious one-year architectural opening some distance away. The pair continue with their normal conversations via messaging, but challenges that come with a lack of in-person contact and general uncertainty in their shared future casts serious questions about what would normally be minor aspects.

The writing is extremely solid in its application, presenting a realistic look at the challenges that arise. With only two characters to focus on, each one gets a lovingly detailed portrayal; you really get a sense for what makes these characters tick. And the disagreements that come up don’t feel at all contrived in the way that misunderstandings in relationships often can be in fiction.

Each set up gives you a clear sense of where the conflict will arise, thanks to your fleshed-out understanding of the characters’ desires and needs. You see a text that you know is well-intentioned, playful banter, and can tell how the sender meant it while viewing their side of the narrative. But you also know their partner’s unspoken insecurities through their levels and monologues, so the small remarks that will cut them the deepest and send them into a spiral instantly stand out in a way that will make you shudder a little as you read them, even before there’s time for the characters to react.

It really is a well-rendered portrait. After a while, it almost feels mean; I joked while in the moment that it felt like I was driving my protagonists to mental anguish just to play more puzzles. But it’s not just the desire for more levels that drives you forward, but also the hope that they’ll finally both be able to talk candidly about their fears and wants, and work to help each other through their current situation, hopefully reuniting in the end.

And of course, there’s all of the extra layers of meaning. Paper works as an apt metaphor for the two sides of the relationship, with the characters feeling on the same page in what they want but unable to see each other eye-to-eye. And there’s some flexibility involved to bridge that gap, bringing the two sides together; origami and papercraft really are perfect metaphors for the story, in addition to being a fun mechanic to play around with.

If there’s a downside, it’s that the game is a little on the short side, but better to leave you wanting more than overstay your welcome. So if any of this sounds interesting, I’d definitely recommend checking out A Fold Apart.

Timespinner Is My Favorite Game of 2019 So Far

I suppose it's not too surprising that Timespinner is one of my favorite games of the year. After all, it has a lot in common with Iconoclasts, which was one of my favorite games from 2018: both are Metroidvanias designed largely by one person over several years with a focus on deeper, theme-heavy narrative, intricate world building, and a lovingly crafted set of characters. And there are even some overlaps in the themes Bodie Lee (the designer, artist, and programmer of Timespinner's Lunar Ray Games) and Joakim Sandberg (aka Konjak, the developer behind Iconoclasts) choose to focus on.

But the two spiral off beautifully into their own little corners, each exploring those story and game design choices separate, to the extent that they feel almost like counterpoints, and it makes me appreciate both of them even more. But we'll get into that more in a bit. Let's just start at the basics, though: Timespinner is a Metroidvania platformer from Lunar Ray Games released on most current systems (I personally played it on my Switch). The game tells the epic story of Lunais, a girl from a small, peaceful society that's constantly in fear of interstellar Lachiem Empire looming above them. When Lachiem finally makes their move, Lunais uses her people's ancient relic, the Timespinner, to travel through time and space in hopes to stop them before their attack ever begins. It's a good enough basic set-up for a large scale space opera story, but the story here goes deeper than just the surface-level details.

We'll come back to that in a minute, though, since it's getting into spoiler territory. Before doing that, let me hit the more general stuff. The gameplay here is all great; the movement feels as good as it should, and the RPG elements give a nice extra bit of complexity and a sense of progression. The world layout is some of my favorite as well; Timespinner does a good job at teasing you with locked doors to come back to, new abilities that open the world map, hints at secrets, and more. And the two overlaying maps, set across two vastly different time periods, do a nice job of lining up in ways that make you say "Ooooohh" and feel smart once you catch on to the clues it's laying down (both narratively and gameplay-wise).

The pixel art is just fantastic; it stands with the best of the best from the 16-bit era and takes me back to playing the Super Nintendo as a kid. The same goes for the music, really; if you played any sort of “epic” 16-bit RPG or Metroidvania, Timespinner learned from the best and perfectly recaptures that feeling. The characters and their designs all look great and I love them, but my favorite understated strength of the game’s art direction might be the world design.

The gameworld, as the same locations separated by centuries, are a good example of all the small bits that go into setting a scene. You’re initially set up in the modern, sterile, dystopian version of Lachiem, and every aspect of it contributes to that. The music is harsh, people are sparse, and dark machines hound you in mechanical corridors. Even relatively humane locales, like the library, still feel alienating in small ways.

Then, you get dropped back in the pastoral past, and even as a harsh, largely-unexplored planet with a technically-lower population, it just feels so much more welcoming. The game’s layout does a good job of allowing you to accidentally wander into places you’ve been before, and the transformation it takes to get to the bad future version is so shocking that it may take you a while to make the connection that you found an area you’ve been before (even when the landscape hasn’t been totally decimated).

Not every game can stir emotions this noticeable in me, but I found myself subconsciously attacking my to-do list with a heavy focus on the past because of the discomfort from the future world and the relative pleasantness of the past. And to avoid big spoilers, I’ll just say that one of the final sections in the game, set in the future world, maximizes this emotional tug, with a design that gave me the biggest sense of unease I’ve felt while exploring a game level since the True Lab section of Undertale. It’s a well-executed surprise, and I really wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.

Of course, while the art direction and design does a lot of that work, the writing carries a lot of weight here as well, and it might be my favorite part of Timespinner, the part that kept me up thinking about it in between play sessions, desperate to get back. Of course, digging into that will hit spoiler territory, so if you want to go in as blind as possible, know that I fully recommend this game if any part of this sounds interesting, and you can come back to read the rest of this once you try it for yourself.

If you want to go a little further though, I’ll keep things vague at first, to serve as a “themes to look for while you play”, but give another jumping off point when I get deep into specifics.


--spoiler break--

Alwa's Awakening Is a Solid Little Indie Metroidvania

My last few indie game reviews have been really, really big, in different ways, touching on big, thematic stuff and more in-depth analysis. But doing only deep dives on the best of the best is exhausting and limiting, in a lot of ways, and I think there are also a lot of smaller titles that are incredibly solid and deserve love and attention, too, even if they aren’t in my running for whatever the video game equivalent of the Oscars or Pulitzers would be.

So this one is more in the vein of my Blossom Tales review, which is fitting since there are quite a few similarities. Alwa’s Awakening, by first-time developer Elden Pixels, is an incredibly well-designed little throwback number that has clearly learned from the best. An 8-bit Metroidvania/platformer that feels like the perfect distillation of the genre, playing it on my Switch made me feel a connection with my younger self hunched over my Game Boy, while at the same time feeling like it’s own distinct unique thing rather than a recreation of a specific classic.

Of course, that nostalgic feel makes sense; Elden Pixels really feels like they’ve taken an old-school approach to designing things here. There was definite attention paid to focusing the game on specific set of elements the designers wanted to include and an emphasis on refining them, rather than letting the scope of things sprawl out of control. The player character only has two abilities in the start of the game, a jump and a staff attack, and every ability that you unlock over the course of the game is a spell that you cast with that staff attack. Not only that, but the game decides to pare that spell list to just three, with improvements to those three being the late-game finds that finally open up the entire map to you. There's a beauty in that level of straightforwardness.

And there’s a deeper deliberateness in all of that. It becomes very clear what types of abilities you’re going to be finding, as you come across areas of the map that are clearly kept inches out of your reach. Every challenge feels like a puzzle that you can solve if you just piece it all together, whether it’s dead ends that clearly just need one more tool, or learning the trick to spotting fake walls, or even finding ideal strategies for toppling bosses.

There are other nice things about their world design besides just the puzzle aspects, too. The different sections of the map are distinct enough in their design to stick in your mind and make it easy to remember spots to return to later. And the map is a very solid example of Metroidvania game design; secret tunnels connect you to areas you didn’t know would come back up, branching paths make you feel clever when you find them and explore them fully, everything is connected enough that it doesn’t take too long to get anywhere from any of the warp points which makes jumping between areas to further explore not a problem, and all of that good stuff.

Too many games in this genre stray into making things too linear, but Alwa’s Awakening has the good sense to leave things open and let you explore at your own pace with only general checkpoints for you to go towards at your leisure. You can poke into various parts of the map pretty early, a nice preview for what’s coming and a good way to get a sense of how things are laid out, and most of them have secrets to reach even if you can’t do much else yet. It’s all appropriately twisty and turny, and you can really jump ahead at your own pace in some areas (sometimes with ways forward that are clever enough that you feel like you may have accidentally broken the sequence the designers intended, even when it is all part of the plan).

The non-gameplay elements are all solid as well, if a little basic. Most of the character designs are lovable, if a little basic (particularly main character Zoe). Most of the story elements are pretty standard, but there are enough interesting hooks in everything that it certainly feels like the team is capable of more with more time, resources, and experience. The interludes in towns or up mountains add some nice variety from the dungeons and tunnels that make up the rest of the world, and again, with more time, I’m sure Elden Pixels would come up with a host of more interesting locals and characters to populate them.

The makers clearly studied their fundamentals of game design from the best, especially of the Game Boy/NES era, and applied that to creating their own vision of that style. All in all, it was enough to keep me coming back for ten hours or so in an attempt to find every secret and still leave me wanting more, which is always a positive experience. The things Alwa’s Awakening is good at are enough to grab your interest, and even it’s weakest points are never weak enough to make you feel like the game is missing out on anything. I look forward to seeing where Elden Pixels goes from here.

Wandersong, a Groundbreaking Musical Video Game, Is One of 2018's Best

One of my favorite games of 2018 was Wandersong*, and I wanted to write something about it for a while, but wow was it difficult to come up with something that didn’t just devolve into gushing praise.

*note: I played the Nintendo Switch version, but it’s also available on PlayStation 4 and PC/Mac via Steam.

Not that gushing praise wouldn’t be merited; the game is beautiful in every capacity, and the team of Greg Lobanov (creator), A Shell in the Pit (music), and Em Halberstadt (sound) deserves all of the compliments. Everything clicked with me. The game looks beautiful, with a strong art direction full of bold colors and a look that brings to mind construction paper and Paper Mario. The writing and story is fantastic, and full of probably my favorite cast of characters I’ve seen; even random townspeople stick in the mind, and the main cast are all incredibly endearing. And man oh man, the music.

I mean, the game is called Wandersong, so of course the music had to be good. But it really is something else. The soundtrack is, naturally, amazing, and I’ve been listening to it on repeat since even before I finished the game. It’s loaded with memorable tunes, and so many are tied to key moments in the game that instantly call them to mind when you here them. It’s a perfect synergy.

It’s more than that, though; everything in the game revolves around music, from the biggest story themes to the smallest game mechanics. It’s a level of focus that many games don’t have, especially games in the rhythm/music genre. Every action in the game more complicated than basic moving in a 2D space (basically left/right/jump) is undertaken using the singing wheel that serves as the game’s main mechanic. Puzzles to cross large gaps or scale large heights? Casting magic spells? Dialogue with non-player characters? Encounters with large monsters? Every one of them, you use the wheel to get the Bard to sing, and the Bard’s music in turn interacts with the game environment in some way to meet the challenge.

Iconoclasts Is One of the Best Games of the Year

Few games have hung in my mind like Iconoclasts. Hell, few works of narrative art in any medium have, and I knew I wanted to write about it immediately upon finishing it. But wow, does it feel like a big thing to tackle.

So let’s start from the top. Iconoclasts is a one-man project, the culmination of seven-plus years of work by Joakim Sandberg (also know as Konjak). And yes, he made every part of it; the art, the music, the programming, the story, and the stuff he didn’t know how to do already, he taught to himself, simply because he wanted to make this specific project. This gives the game a unified creative vision that just isn’t at all common in projects of this scale, and it’s amazing in so many ways that I feel I can’t adequately capture in language. And it’s easy to forget while you’re playing the game as well; I did, until I got to the credits, which, to pad out their length to fit in a full “Where are they now?”-style epilogue that plays simultaneously, lists the name of every character in the game after starting with a simple “Game by Joakim Sandberg” and getting through all the testers, special thanks credits, and such in under two scenes.

For anyone who hasn’t ever given much thought to video games as a unique art form, games like Iconoclasts are some of the best examples of the medium. The game has an epic fantasy/science-fiction world and lore that I find utterly compelling, hinting at intergalactic refugees settling a strange, new world and building a entirely new society off of what they had left, with what they find on their new home shaping the new society. Konjak’s art style is beautiful, distinctive, and detailed, giving several unique biomes that feel lush and real. And it all feeds into a story that does what the best science fiction does, using its novums to build a compelling story that explores universal things like society and human nature.

The plot follows Robin, a mechanic (with an iconic, physics-defying wrench-shaped ponytail) who has inherited her passion from her father but lives in a repressive, dystopian theocracy that has outlawed the practice. When caught fixing some of the world’s advanced machinery, she goes on the run from the Agents of One Concern (the local religion), working with various other fugitives as they try to piece together what’s causing the shortage of native miracle fuel Ivory that’s killing their planet. It’s a pretty straightforward general plot fleshed out and enhanced by the uniqueness of the world.

From a gameplay standpoint, Iconoclasts is a rock-solid entry in the Metroidvania genre. The decision to make a wrench one of the key central mechanics is a fun and memorable gameplay decision that ties in nicely with some of the themes, and the boss battles against a variety of large machines stand out as some of the biggest highlights and challenges (although the multiple difficulty settings keep things accessible for novices and challenging for experts). All of them are impressive in their own way, but there’s also a sense of skill in their design that makes them all feel like big and important moments within the story; yet, the important ones get a little extra something to them that makes sure you grasp how monumental they are within the story, which etches them into your mind.

And Konjak’s skill for visual design doesn’t stop with just the setting; the characters are a visually eclectic and loveable bunch, fleshed out even more by his strong writing. Everyone in the main cast is deeply nuanced and relatable, if not likeable in spite of the deep flaws they are each working to overcome. And as mentioned, their exploration through a twisting narrative is an emotional roller coaster, buoyed by some fantastic twists (including an absolutely brilliant one in the final boss of the game that I would absolutely recommended not spoiling yourself on).

If any of this sounds appealing, I would absolutely recommend checking it out. From here on out, I’ll be discussing a little be of story and thematic bits, so if you want to remain totally unspoiled, now would be the place to start playing. I’m pretty vague about most of the specific details; it’s mostly about the big, overarching themes, so don’t worry too much if you’re still unsure and want to learn more, but if you want to go in with a total blank slate to form your own opinions, go check it out first and then come back. Iconoclasts is available on just about any or any game platform (I played the Nintendo Switch version, and it ran perfectly smoothly on that), so you have plenty of options if I’ve piqued your interest.


--mild spoiler break--

Celeste Perfectly Unites Story, Theme, and Gameplay

Continuing my ongoing attempt to highlight and analyze amazing indie games (especially those on the Switch), I would like to discuss one of the year’s best titles, Celeste by Extremely OK Games (previously of Towerfall fame*). For anyone curious, I played the Switch version, but it’s available on pretty much any platform you’d want to play it on.

*Which, it was recently announced, is itself coming to the Switch at the end of September, if you haven’t tried it yet and are looking for an excuse; it’s wonderful in its own right!

Celeste is a rare beast, a game that is mechanically tight, incredibly well-designed level-wise, and fun to play while also being an incredibly moving narrative and thematic experience. For those who haven’t heard of it yet, the premise is pretty simple: a girl named Madeline arrives at a remote peak (the titular Celeste Mountain), looking to escape some sort of (initially undefined) personal trauma by climbing it. Along the way, she meets a variety of figures that aid her in her journey, with the entire story rendered in some simple-yet-beautiful pixel art graphics, and with one of my favorite game soundtracks supporting the whole thing.

The game is an incredibly tough platformer, challenging players in a variety of ways while also being one of the more forgiving games of its kind. Save points are frequent in the normal course of a level and carry through between sessions, and on top of that, the game has a variety of options to tweak the challenge in almost any way imaginable so that anyone can feel comfortable playing it, regardless of whether or not you’re the type of person who can beat a classic Mario game in ten minutes. That in and of itself is pretty notable; Game Makers Toolkit has more on these features, which is definitely a worth a watch.

If you’re at all curious about it and want to go in unspoiled of the deeper plot details, I would absolutely recommend trying it! From here on out, I’ll be getting pretty deep into the nitty-gritty of the story.