Runbow (NSW, PS4) Review

Earlier today, I posted the Review Round-Up for June 2018. I say, let's not waste any time by posting the first review for July! It's for a game I was quite enthusiastic about on the Wii U, it's Runbow! Here's my review of the Nintendo Switch version, though the PS4 is also mentioned.

Taste the Runbow

Originally a Wii U exclusive, Runbow has thankfully branched out and hit several other platforms, most recently, the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. Why "thankfully"? More people than ever before get to experience the wacky, wild, colorful wonder that brings hectic multiplayer mayhem that Runbow consistently delivers to players. Now, that the audience for Runbow is no longer limited to a struggling console, many more gamers around the world can finally get a taste of the Runbow.

Runbow is a chaotic 2D platformer where the goal is to complete the objective of each level without dying. Most of the time it's as "simple" as reaching the trophy at the end of the level. Other times, Runbow asks of you to collect a certain number of coins or defeat a specific amount of enemies. I put "simple" in quotes because Runbow has a highly creative mechanic to it that makes rushing through its levels to complete one of its three objectives far more challenging than it otherwise would be.

As you run through levels, the level's background every handful of seconds swipes its way to a different color on a consistent basis. For example, platforms that are orange and solid on a blue background disappear by sight and by touch when an orange background slides into view. Different levels offer a varying range and speed of colors being swiped, making for some truly tricky platforming.

Guest character Shantae from her titular Wayforward-developed
series leads a cavalcade of characters through this blazing cavern.

Runbow is easy to control, giving you access to a basic assortment of moves: a jump which can turn into a double jump, a normal punch to attack enemies when a normal bounce on the head just won't do, a rocket punch that can propel you upward for extra height or to the left or right for extra distance, as well as butt stomp to smash through floors and to defeat certain types of enemies. Sometimes I would find myself entering a double jump too quickly, resulting in deaths that I didn't feel were my complete fault, but when the game allows you infinite tries, it's a minor frustration.

The main Adventure mode sees you going through nearly 150 levels of color-swapping, platforming goodness, and these take place on one of four different, interconnected grids. You start at the bottom left corner, and as you complete levels, the spaces adjacent open up, allowing you to play them. Some levels are more difficult than others, with green levels being the easiest and red being the hardest. The nonlinear way you can go about picking levels makes it so if a particular levels is finding you frowning at its challenging, you can select an alternate one to attempt. Of course, completionists will want to complete every grid space and level possible--all the while looking to beat the top target time in order to earn three medals on each level.

Neither spikes nor enemies will stop our crew from reaching our prized trophy!

Medals are but one way to unlock a seemingly endless amount of content that Runbow has to offer. From over 15 guest characters from various indie games like Shovel Knight, SteamWorld Dig, Hyper Light Drifter, Freedom Planet, Shantae, Mutant Mudds, Azure Striker Gunvolt, The Fall, and more, to concept artwork and new costumes, Runbow is packed with more goodies inside than a pot of gold. Completing in-game achievements such as beating Adventure Mode, playing 10 multiplayer games, perform 10 butt stomps in one game, among others, unlocks new content, so you're essentially always unlocking something to keep you playing--which is no problem as the gameplay should do that for you by itself.

Outside of the Adventure Mode that can be played with friends cooperatively (or competitively as it sometimes was in the levels I played) there are three multiplayer modes available for local or online matches. Up to nine players locally can engage in a match, and for Nintendo Switch owners, this is made much easier than the Wii U original, where you needed to link controllers together just to play. Just with one JoyCon by itself, you have two controllers already accessible to you. I can only imagine that the PlayStation 4 version is a little tougher to rustle up multiple controllers to play locally, but thankfully, as stated, online is very much an option where on both platforms up to nine players can compete.

Modes in multiplayer include Run, Arena, and King of the Hill. Run is as simple as it sounds, having players rush from the start of a level to its end. The first player to nab the trophy at the goal is the victor. Arena is a survival mode where opponents fight to be the last one standing in one of multiple battlefields with varying hazards and power-ups in play. Finally, King of the Hill tasks players with taking command of a stationary point for seven seconds. You don't have to stand in the hill for seven concurrent seconds, just seven total. It can get insanely competitive and wild seeing players duke it out for the hill, smashing one another out of the way as they vie, however futile it is, to capture the hill for themselves.

This arena is only big enough for Juan player--Me!

Finally, for solo players, there's the ultimate challenge in Runbow that has you entering a colossal monster known as the Bowhemoth. This is an endurance run of the game's hardest levels, and you play through them one after the other. A tally keeps track of your deaths, and for those seeking a true trial, they can attempt to get the in-game achievement and unlockable goody of beating the mode with 10 deaths or less, or in 20 minutes. Either way, you're in for a stiff challenge with no way to save your progress until the very end.

The digital versions of Runbow on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 do not include the DLC of the Deluxe Edition. Those are included in the physical release coming at the end of the month, but need to purchased separately for digital downloaders. I didn't get to try the DLC out on the Nintendo Switch build I was playing, as it will be available at launch on Tuesday before the date this review was published. If the content is just as good as the Wii U's Deluxe Edition, then I believe it's worth buying, as it's a fair amount of content added to the Runbow package for those who are enjoying the game and want to experience even more fun that it has to offer.

The latest ports of Runbow mean that the game gets an wider audience, and that excites me. Not only was Runbow an incredibly good game on the Wii U, where it originally exclusively launched to a much smaller audience, but it definitely needs to be played by more people to catch Runbow fever. Between the clever color-swiping mechanic, the charming presentation with satisfying salsa and mambo music played on top of it, brilliant and challenging level design, nearly perfect controls, and a multitude of content to unlock, Runbow will colorize and brighten up your library, regardless of which console you get ready to Runbow on.

[SPC Says: A-]

Review code provided by Headup Games.

Earth Atlantis (NS) Review

It's starting to become a tradition here at SuperPhillip Central for the final full week of the month to be loaded with reviews. While I aim to change that for November, let's start off this week of new reviews with Earth Atlantis, an underwater, exploratory shoot-em-up developed by Pixel Perfex.

Scouring the sepia seas

On a planet Earth where over 95% is now covered in water (something that is really topical, now that I think of it), humanity is at the brink, and ocean creatures have now combined with machinery to become terrorizing beasts. As a pilot of a special submarine, your objective is to explore the deep, eliminating targets in the form of dangerous sea life. This is developer Pixel Perfex's Earth Atlantis for the Nintendo Switch, a recent eShop release that tries out something different with the shoot-em-up genre and doesn't sink for it.

Earth Atlantis is spread across a single map in Quest Mode, tasking players with piloting their submarine (only one is available upon starting the game with a handful others to unlock) through the mechanical monstrosity-heavy ocean to arrive at points on a mini-map. These points are where the game's numerous -- and I do mean "numerous" -- boss battles occur. These are room-wide fights against enormous underwater creatures like killer kraken, massive octopuses, deadly squid, and other deep sea terrors that excite and delight. (Every encountered and defeated boss can be looked at any time within a special bestiary on the main menu.)

The creatures of the deep have certainly undergone some changes since Earth flooded.

Actually, these deep sea terrors generally excite and delight. Other times they can be absolutely brutal. You see, bosses have a nasty habit of jumping in difficulty to severe levels. One boss you might defeat with ease with its attacks merely depleting your sub's health slowly with each shot, while other fights have bosses that can easily destroy your sub with one hit. I generally don't like one-hit kills in any type of game, but it's especially a problem when these boss fights happen so early in the game, followed by a slew of much easier encounters. The difficulty scaling here is amiss with some bosses being easy while the next leaping in challenge soon after.

Defeating bosses generally reveals once blocked off passageways that are then made open, offering shortcuts to previous portions of the ocean or completely new areas in general to explore. These shortcuts are great to have, as there's a substantial amount of time in Earth Atlantis that features backtracking. Bosses appear in both new and previously traveled parts of the ocean, meaning you'll be moving back and forth between the rather sizable ocean again and again. You won't get most of the shortcuts open to you until pretty far along into the game either.

This slight annoyance is compounded by the mini-map, that merely shows locations of your sub, power-ups, and bosses. Everything else is blank, meaning there is no geography on the mini-map to assist or guide you in the ocean. Because the ocean is so labyrinthine and confusing to explore, offering many dead ends within the early half of exploring (bringing back up the lack of shortcuts starting off), for a player like myself, it was difficult sometimes to reach certain bosses without reaching a dead end or two. The backtracking combined with the challenge to navigate, combined with the quickly re-spawning enemies meant that traveling long distances wasn't the greatest experience imaginable -- though not at all ruining my enjoyment of the game.

These little torpedoes hone in on nearby targets. 

While Earth Atlantis may use the same ocean to travel across seemingly ad infinitum which brought me a feeling of occasional tedium, actually controlling the submarine through the ocean's cavernous system of passageways and channels was a delight. There's an instant response from the sub to each button press and analog stick movement made. The A/ZR button shoots, the B/ZL button turns the submarine the opposite direction it's currently facing (which makes your sub vulnerable for a quick second as it's an extended turn animation), and whether playing with both Joycons or just a single one, you're guaranteed to be satisfied with the controls.

Earth Atlantis isn't a bullet hell shooter by any stretch of the imagination, but it will surely have you bobbing and weaving your sub through heavy fire and bullets being fired and bounced from all directions, particularly in boss confrontations. Thankfully, you have heavy fire on your side as well because as you plunder the deep, defeated enemies generously drop weapon and discovered barrels hold upgrades like missiles, homing torpedoes, electric rays, and more. Like most shmups, you lose these after so many hits, and definitely so when your sub loses all of its health. Death isn't too substantial as you are placed right back into the ocean at the last starting point you uncovered on the map.

You can immediately tell by this review's complementary screenshots that Earth Atlantis is quite unlike a typical shmup, even if you hadn't read anything about the game or the words in the review at all. The game's sepia tone visuals help distinguish it even further from other similar games in the genre, as well as leaving an impressive artistic direction as well. Plundering the ocean in my sub, seeing seaweed flow from side to side, taking a peek at the top of the Statue of Liberty as it sits submerged in the ocean, and scoping at all the detail in the environments really implanted some seriously nice impressions of Earth Atlantis for me. Perhaps the only downside of the visual style is that every thing in the ocean world looks so similar, making it like an old black-and-white Game Boy game where it was a bit challenging to tell one area of the game to another (or worse, what was an enemy bullet and what was one of mine). Wrapping up my talk on Earth Atlantis' presentation, the one song played while exploring the ocean gets tiring to listen to, but the orchestrated boss battle themes definitely pick up the ocean theme's slack.

Don't get me wrong, though -- Earth Atlantis' visual style is much more a good thing than a bad thing.

Earth Atlantis manages to keep its head up above water, though at the same time not exactly serving up a spectacular deep sea adventure. Rampant backtracking, a mediocre mini-map, and insane difficulty jumps hurt the overall experience while superb controls, engaging combat, and a stunning visual style make for an enticing ocean odyssey. Just expect both tedium and frustration at times.

[SPC Says: C+]

Review code provided by Headup Games.

Slime-san (NS, PC) Review

The reviews on SuperPhillip Central for August continue with Fabraz's Slime-san, now available for the Nintendo Switch. Check out my detailed thoughts on the game with my review!

Goo-ed to the last drop.

Poor slime. Just casually strolling about, doing his own thing, and not causing trouble for anyone when all of a sudden a gigantic worm consumes him from behind, completely whole. Now, our slime-tacular friend is in need of finding his way out of the worm's massive insides by running, jumping, and sliding through 100 levels of twitch-based platforming in Slime-san. Released on Steam and recently the Nintendo Switch eShop, Slime-san is a terrific take on games like Super Meat Boy and N++ that does enough to separate itself from the competition and in general just be uproariously good time.

Slime-san's 100 levels are split up between five worlds of 20 levels each. Most levels feature four rooms to them, and completing each room serves as a checkpoint, which is a godsend--or in this case, slime-send-- as it's one hit and your slime is no more. And you will be dying a lot. Thankfully, being brought back to try the current room again is a swift process. Rooms have a set way to move through them, but speedrunners and genre experts can use high risk, high reward shortcuts to slice off sizable chunks of time. It feels so very good to go off the beaten path from the way Slime-san intends for starting players to go through levels and get rewarded for it.

It's not a hop, skip, and a jump to finish levels in Slime-san. It's more of needing a wing and a prayer.

A strict color palette of only five colors is not only an artistic choice in Slime-san, but it is also prominent for gameplay reasons as well. White walls and ceilings are safe to the touch while anything red is generally instant death upon touching it. Meanwhile, our slime hero has the ability to switch between a solid form and a transparent form with the press of the left shoulder button. This allows him to pass through green blocks and walls when transparent. Quite quickly in Slime-san, levels require shifting between solid and transparent forms in succession with great precision to survive.

A general lesson of Slime-san: Red is bad; Green is good.
There are also color blind options, if you have problems distinguishing between colors.

Levels in Slime-san constantly introduce new mechanics, obstacles, and challenges into the fray to keep things fresh, even towards the final levels of the game. From blocks and walls that disappear when in transparent mode and reappear when the slime is solid to gravity segments that flip the slime from running on the floor to skimming along the ceiling, to color-coded key-like doors that unlock gates to vines that allow Slime-san to swing across chasms and up to higher areas, this game is not shy about bringing a lot of variety when it comes to new mechanics to be taught to the player and for the player to overcome them.

Slime-san controls well. One button is there to jump, one to become solid and transparent, and one to dash, either on ground or in midair. Sadly, this is where Slime-san can become a little confusing to play. The neat thing about Super Meat Boy is that the controls are simple; one has but a small amount of things to worry about while playing: running and jumping (the latter in both normal jump and wall jump forms). Slime-san makes it so you have to concern yourself with multiple moves at once. Many times it felt like I was attempting to pat my head while rubbing my tummy. Okay, well, doing those two things isn't exactly tough, but you get my point with the reference there. It can become difficult to do a series of required movements with all of the options available to you, merely complicating the platforming and causing more deaths than I would have liked because of it. Mind you, you'll die a lot even when you have become accustomed to all the maneuvers in Slime-san's repertoire, but being flabbergasted by the controls at moments is annoying all the same.

This early level features boxes to dash into to create platforms to safely cross this hazardous pink goo.

If you wish to run through each level of Slime-san to reach the end of the game, your playtime might last about eight hours or so. For those that desire the most bang for their buck, there are a lot of side content to sink your teeth into. For one, each level, outside of boss battles that conclude each of the five sets of 20 levels, has four apples to collect, one in each room of a level. Not only do these serve as nice collectibles, but they're placed in some pretty crafty locations. I don't mean cleverly hidden or anything like that. Instead, they are situated in precarious spots. Sometimes you'll need to do some dangerous, risky jumping to reach them, others will require you to take the long way or more so, a detour to nab them. While this might not seem so bad, each room in the game has a timer of sorts that when it reaches zero, pink acid starts to move through the room from a predetermined side. Touching it like any hazard in Slime-san results in a swift and slimy death. Also, some levels in particular feature hidden areas that lead to NPCs within, and Slime-san can invite them to the town within the worm.

Yep, there is a town within Slime-san (talking about the game here) that serves as a special site where Slime-san (talking about the character now) can visit to accomplish a number of tasks and see all the sights that the city has to offer. He can use his bravely collected apples to trade with NPCs to do things like buy new costumes and accessories, new slime types that deliver positive and negative powers depending on the one purchased and equipped (such as higher jumping prowess but slower speed, for instance), and much more. The town in question, Slumptown is a happening place where you speak to the townspeople, including the NPCs you rescued from the bowels of the worm beast.

This leads me to talk about what further content is available in Slime-san. There are your standard time trials to earn trophies for beating the record time in each level, of course, but there is also post-game content as well! After beating the initial 100 levels, you can play a New Game+ mode that alters the enemy and obstacle placement of the original levels. Additionally, a Boss Rush option opens, and these boss fights are quite clever, because Slime-san can't actually attack any enemy, he has to use obstacles and other means to bring these baddie bosses down. They're action-packed fights that lean heavily on puzzle-like approaches.

Boss battles require quick thinking, quick platforming, and quick reloading for when you die many times trying to figure out what to do to beat these big, bad bosses!

To me, Slime-san has a polarizing graphic style to it. Obviously it's retro-focused, but looking at the game in screenshot form, the look is a bit too rough on my eyes and almost gives me a headache on the closer-in shots. The more zoomed out ones are much more pleasant to look at. Regardless, Slime-san looks much better in motion, but you really need to appreciate old school styles to get the most out of it. For a further, more authentic retro experience, Slime-san brings with it several visual filters that you can add to the game by purchasing them in Slumptown, whether VHS-styled, CRT-styled, and even a shout-out to the doomed Virtual Boy, an all red aesthetic headache in the making. While Slime-san generally performs well with regards to its frame-rate, on more than one occasion have I died to the FPS plummeting into the single digits. With a patch on the way according to the developers, though, this shouldn't be an issue on the Nintendo Switch version very soon.

You can purchase borders to line the sides of the play field as well from a shop in Slumptown.

Slime-san is a much welcomed addition to the Nintendo Switch's arsenal of indie games. Bursting to the seams with content, packing in 100 levels in both classic and remixed modes, levels themselves consistently providing new hooks and additions to the gameplay, creative boss battles, a hefty challenge, and 5-bit visual delight, Slime-san presented me with a slimy and sticky situation that I didn't mind being stuck in at all.

[SPC Says: B+]

Review code provided by Headup Games.