Platformebruary 2016

This series originally ran on our Steam curation group in February 2016. Many of these reviews have been revised or updated for 2017.

For the month of February, I’m going to be taking a look at indie platformers! Each of the 29 days, I’ll post a review of a platform game that I’ve played and let you know if it was good or not. The reviews will be posted in full in this thread, and I welcome any and all discussion on the topic.

I’ve already made a list of the most obscure platformers I have, based on how many of my Steam friends have played them. That means I won’t be hitting big names like Braid or Shovel Knight, but as the month rolls on I’ll move from stuff you might have heard of to little titles that may have flown under the radar.

If you’d like to play along at home, find the most obscure platformers in your library, fire ’em up, and let everyone know about them! The more viewpoints we have on a title, the better.

Links to review pages are listed here and also at the top of each post. Rate them up if you liked them!

  1. Cargo Commander
  2. Freedom Planet
  3. Capsized
  4. Knytt Underground
  5. Rochard
  6. NightSky
  7. Canyon Capers
  8. Intrusion 2
  9. Mutant Mudds Deluxe
  10. Teslagrad
  11. Tiny Barbarian DX
  12. Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken
  13. Snapshot
  14. Lunnye Devitsy
  15. Wake
  16. Cast of the Seven Godsends – Redux
  17. Nihilumbra
  18. Akane the Kunoichi
  19. Chaos Domain
  20. Gateways
  21. 6180 the moon
  22. Gunman Clive
  23. BasketBelle
  24. Just Get Through
  25. Gravilon
  26. Taimumari
  27. Probability 0
  28. Pid
  29. Elliot Quest

 

 

PLATFORMEBRUARY FINAL STAGE

Thirteen thousand words about indie platformers. Jesus, I need a break.

I will say that I feel a lot better about throwing in on random bundles after this. Indie platformers are more often than not worth a look, especially if you have a weakness for pixel graphics or exploration games. There’s also a lot of derivation from more popular titles to be found, which isn’t really a bad thing if you want more of a particular kind of platforming. The real danger is that when a game goes bad, it goes really bad.

The biggest flaw I’ve seen in my roundup is difficulty. Indie developers, probably taking misguided inspiration from Super Meat Boy or Spelunky or even Dark Souls, tend to make their games a bit too hard for to a general audience. A lot of the games I played probably could have hit it big if not for their punishing difficulty, like Snapshot, Teslagrad, and Elliot Quest. Even some of the games I enjoyed went too far with the challenge, which made more moderate titles like NightSky and 6180 the moon stand out a lot more. Given that I was looking for the most obscure indie platformers in my library, it’s not hard to conclude that the common thread of difficulty may have pushed them to the bottom.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my rundowns of the many ways to fall onto spikes over the last month. Maybe you even found a title or two to wishlist. I’m glad I rummaged around in the dusty corners of my library and found a few little gems, but I’m also very glad to not be playing any more platformers for awhile. A long while.