- Spoiler: show
There was a lot of buzz around this and since I've typically enjoy this difficult platformers, expectations were high. They were met and more. The controls are very responsive and the level design make the way through a screen fairly obvious with your repertoire. Doing that, though, can be a different matter entirely. Dying will be your friend here (it took me 5801 deaths to 100% everything except the no death runs) but the respawn is immediate so there is no downtime. The revive checkpoints are every screen (with a few in the middle of them) so progress isn't really lost. The interesting design here is that the more difficult platforming is often closer to the start of each checkpoint instead of being towards the end like is typical. This way you can get through the harder sections and get some breathing room for the rest or able to master the difficult portions first instead of regularly going through the easy sections before hitting the hard one and dying.
There are a total of 9 chapters and each one has its own little gimmick to it that gets used very well and there are iterations that make full use of it as you get deeper into the game. As an example, the first chapter has blocks that move when you land on them, the second chapter has blocks you can dash through, and so on. Each gimmick largely stays in its own chapter but they get used very well.
The story is also nice but won't get into it to avoid any spoilers. I've followed Matt Thorsen's work ever since An Untitled Story so it's been interesting seeing his platforming design evolve. I really have no complaints at all about this time.
Dec 6 - Immortal Planet (PC)
An isometric Dark Souls, essentially. It is fairly short and needed some work balancing out the weapons as there aren't many but most have no reason to be used as they all do the same damage and swing speeds. They only have minor differences in attack arcs and what their charge attack is. The only real annoying aspect here is that dashing into an enemy will stun them if they are out of stamina but doing so while they have stamina will stun you. The stun lasts fairly long, enough for a single enemy to get a hit, usually two, on you which will easily be over half your life. When dashing to avoid their attacks, it is very easy to accidentally dash into them, getting you stunned and killed. Fun for what it is but needed some kinks worked out.
