Diplodocus has pivoted from a 3D charmer to a less novel 2D jump ‘em up for its second Regina & Mac game.

After creating his first game, a Banjo-Kazooie homage, Sebastian Küpper worked on console ports for a few of Siactro’s games. Siactro has made his own Banjo tributes, Kiwi 64 and Macbat 64, so it was nice to see Küpper’s next project would be a crossover between his own Regina & Mac and Siactro’s Macbat.

Unfortunately this particular piece doesn’t make the best use of that potential. It’s a pretty standard indie pixel-art 2D platformer. Takes heavy cues from Mario, but has some fresh ideas of its own. You play as Mac most of the time; Regina is there on the sprite but doesn’t have much presence, not contributing to gameplay and only having the occasional line of dialogue in between worlds (all of which are the same text repeated except at the start and end). Macbat’s role is to have one level of the ten in each of the nine worlds, where he plays like the helicopter game, or DKC Returns’ rocket barrel levels if you like. These just suck; the little chap feels leaden to control and having him take on separate challenges makes the crossover feel disconnected.

The 2D platforming is decent, except for the bizarre and atrocious ice physics. Mac is a bit more floaty than in the 3D predecessor, answering my request there. You have a wall jump, and a slide move which can get you under things, deal damage to some of the sparse enemy roster (mostly little sawblade contraptions and fireballs, including one that follows you like Mr. Dark from Rayman), and gives you a burst of speed that a jump can carry along. There’s two power-ups that give you a new ability; a top hat as a reference to Ducktales’ Scrooge lets you pogo bounce, and a strawberry that I think is a reference to Celeste lets you air-dash. There’s also a shield to protect you from a hit, which you also get for each 100 gems you collect in a level.

So it’s got these fun little mashup elements, but I feel let down that it seems to have lost its identity as a Rare homage, aside from carrying over the musical identity from the previous game. The intro establishes a nice little shared universe including Kiwi 64, and the computer U64 returns from R&M in the plot, but the game itself is kind of muddled and bog-standard, not at all fulfilling the exciting promise of an indie crossover of N64 3D platformer tributes.

Plus, it’s very hard! I get the feeling that it’s all too easy to create difficult platforming levels; but making fun and fair levels is a different story. They do have variety but they get very demanding and there’s no checkpoints. If you get all the way to the end there’s a set of extra levels, labelled Regina & Mac World Friends and so presumably designed by guest devs listed in the credits; to unlock them all requires getting tons of the optional medals from each level for finishing in a strict time limit or comprehensively grabbing lots of gems. I was fine with not doing more than the two I had unlocked, as by that point I was feeling well and truly “done”.

Regina & Mac World was disappointing to me. Like R&M itself, it is full of ideas despite its amateur feel. It’s just that the indie 2D platformer space is way, way more crowded than the “3D adventure throwback” genre where R&M stood out, so R&MW finds itself drowning in much better alternatives. It’s priced very cheaply at least, but it doesn’t have the novelty factor, and squanders the crossover concept on mediocrity. Definitely check out Dilpodocus and Siactro’s other works over and above this.