Usually I don’t review every little iOS game I play, but this one was kinda an encapsulated experience and I decided not to be so lazy. It’s one of those spritey pixelly retro-style games, an action platformer this time. The controls were quite good unlike a lot of iOS platformers. It’s kinda like uh the stage-based Castlevania games? I haven’t played those but it’s got a whip as a weapon so I thought it might be a reference. It’s fairly linear most of the time, you go from checkpoint to checkpoint dealing with the occasional enemy but it’s mostly platforming in an explore-y kind of way. There’s a ton of gold-like things for you to collect if you want more challenge.

I’m explaining this pretty boringly, aren’t I? Well It’s just before lunch, so… Seriously though I had fun, it kept me coming back and the music was super great, although there’s only a few tracks. It has the quality of quickly returning you to the last checkpoint when you die so it’s easy to try again. I love games that do that in a streamlined way, no fanfare, no life counter, just go back and try again.

The idea is that you and your evil brother are in one of those eternally-locked-in-battle scenarios, but he gives you a cosmic nerf so you have to crawl through these caves and stuff and get your powers back one at a time, like double jumping! I like the ability progression, slowly empowering you but not overpowering you and any game with a double jump gets a pass from me.

Part of the reason I want to review this is because I got it in one of those free promotions that are constant in the App Store, and it was quite good so I hope I can convince someone to buy it to support Maximilian Csuk. There’s a free demo too so go try it out. It doesn’t do that much to stand out from the aforementioned pixelly retro crowd but it’s well put together, short and sweet and of course cheap.