The game begins with a ‘Press any button’ splash screen with
the game’s main theme playing, the title being displayed with a pixel themed
font thus introducing the game’s art style early on. The music changes upon
accessing the main menu to a much quicker and more upbeat tune, continuation of
the pixel theme across all menus. The main menu features a stage select (3
stages in total), credits, leader boards and options. The options menu includes
a difficultly option which you can change as well as pretty standard graphic
options and resolution options. The music does not change when changing menus
thus making the navigation seamless. Whilst on the topic of sound, when you do
navigate the menu a little chirp noise is made. Small details hooray!
The first stage is opened with a tiny cut scene showing a
meteor (?) crashing into the world, then emerges the main character hinting he
is from a different planet, or some sort of alien. The first level starts and
you run, it tells you how to jump and gives you plenty of time to learn how to
jump before any obstacles emerge. To tell you how to jump it displays the
instructions/keys on an old NES styled controller and also has a little bit of
text to tell you what button you actually have to press, I missed this the
first time round and it wasn’t until I watched someone else play it, I noticed
it. Still, I was distracted by the pretty NES controller thing!
The first level is relatively straight forward; you jump up
and or over things. If you run into something you start over. Eventually you
run into your first power up, thing it makes the music change aside from that I
have no idea if it does anything. It makes it sound pretty though! The power up
is gained by jumping into it, whether it’s first nature to jump into floating
orb things for everyone else is another thing, although I’m fairly confident
virtually everyone will be able to identify that as a good thing seeing as the
game has not introduced any threats yet.
After each level assuming you
collect all the gold throughout the level you get to play a bonus level! This
is meant to be a retro mode whereas you just collect more coins and jump over
stuff. The only sound on the level is when you collect gold which can become
entrancing at times and thus causing you to screw up trying to keep a rhythm
going. From previous playing of this game I usually end up killing myself on
purpose on these levels just to advance in the real game quicker. The lack of
music in the level is also odd consider the game is well known for its
soundtrack, it feels odd to play a level with no music.
The second level is similar to the first, obviously trying
to get the player used to jumping over things. Although in this level more
floor hazards are introduced! Holes in the floor surprisingly mean you have to
start over should you happen to fall into one! However this level is still very
forgiving at a stage if you miss a jump and fall down you can continue running,
you just don’t get any pretty gold or a power up. Still no idea what it really
does or what it’s called. The music on
the screen which tells you how much gold you gained/missed is also nice. Very
relaxing! Also if you don’t manage to collect all the gold in a level and not
attain the bonus level the character looks down briefly as if he is sad. Not
sure why, I still find the bonus levels odd.
Third level! This time round you’re introduced to the slide
ability allowing you to apparently slide on the floor forever. (Yes, you can
complete the entire level whilst holding the slide button, I tried.) The game
also introduces more hazards! Giant worm things which you must slide under to
avoid! Also upon collecting all the power up orb things you get a rainbow
trail! The same one you saw the character had on the main menu, cool! Although
I do fell the music builds up and once you acquire the rainbow trail it dies
down quickly and goes into a chill mode. I was hoping for more awesome upbeat
music to get me through the level! If
you slide with the rainbow trail it affects the trail as well, thus jumping and
sliding makes a rainbow wave!
I was assuming the fourth level would just be the third
level but with a more things to slide under. It was, there are now random
little UFO’s flying about at points which you slide under. How… random although
it dos tie together with the earlier suggestion that you’re an alien.
Onto the visuals of
the game, they’re pretty great to be blunt. I do love how the character you
play as is a flat 2D sprite whereas the rest of the world is in 3D, the path
you run on, the things you jump over and avoid are all 3D thus making the
character seem more out of place. Throughout the game the text is always the
same style, pretty pixels! Which is lovely but I can’t read or make sense of
some of the numbers at times. Although this isn’t that important, It’d be nice
to be able to read what I’m looking at without having to stop and read it a few
times. That might just be me though!
