Developer: Wishfully | Released: 2023 | Genre: Platform, Puzzle
This was a beautiful side-scrolling puzzle platform game with great variety, featuring a boy looking for his sister abducted by mechanical aliens. Early in the game, the boy rescues a small pet which opens up for cooperation puzzles. The kind where the pet can do things the boy can’t do, and vice versa.
The pet is really cute and you can pat it.
Although the game does have its challenges, for most of the game they were spaced out far by stretches of easy jumping and contained cooperation puzzles. As always it does get a little more challenging towards the end, which also introduces a few QTE – including the quick tapping kind. I would say these are not the worst QTE I’ve encountered, but you do have to pay close attention.
I also liked that many puzzle set pieces had an exit with a rope on a ledge that required the pet to go fetch it for the boy to climb. First, this made sure the puzzle couldn’t be exited until both characters were able to leave together, and second, it made it impossible to leave until the puzzle was solved. Later on in the game, the rope on a ledge is replaced with a tentacle creature but it serves the same purpose.
Apart from the usual cooperation puzzles, where the pet has to access an area the boy can’t, or the boy has to bring the pet across the water it doesn’t like, there are also stealth sequences. These are short and of the kind where the boy has to avoid being detected by a patrolling robot or a predator.
The story and its levels lead you into all kinds of environments and ends up being quite the adventure. Epic views are frequent and expertly designed, and the story also tugs at your heartstrings. These emotional breaks are also among the best I’ve experienced in a video game.
Pros
- Beautiful background art in a myriad of parallax layers and a variety that keeps you engaged.
- Excellent symphonic music and a few perfectly placed piano chords in tender moments.
- Fun cooperation puzzles for the boy and the pet, each having their own advantages.
- The emotional turns in the story are very well designed and may put something in your eye.
- Stealth sequences are short, typically one or two screens and then you’re past it.
- If you die, you are rarely set back much. Sometimes you’re spawning in the same spot.
- The boy acquires small items that opens up for new ways of controlling animals or robots.
- The game recommends a gamepad but controls fine with a mouse and keyboard too.
Cons
- Slightly confusing when you have to order the pet to do something specific the first time.
- The games often fades to black before and after a scene, which can be slightly distracting.
- If you’re averse to QTE, there are two or three sequences of these later on in the game.