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Developer: Magiko Gaming
Publisher: Magiko Gaming
Format: PC
Platformines is a 2D platform-shooter that hennishly feels like if the gameplay style of Cave Story met the outskirts of the world of Borderlands. It's got the baddies The plot is essentially to rebuild the robo-dig machine in order to get out of the chaotic caves. It's not a complex plot, and given to you right out of the gate, so it's really there to really provide a goal for the player.
The gameplay is an interesting ordeal, but let's just get the basic mechanics out of the way. You can do about two things, those things being to jump and shoot. The shooting isn't bad, allowing you to aim left, right, up, and down, although hitting a target can be a pain with some weapons due to the small bullets. All the directions you can shoot in adds up to a lot of fun when mixed with the platforming. Trust me, platorming is a big part of this game. It wouldn't be in the title otherwise. You can jump at a minimum of five times, allowing you to do a lot of things. You can jump out of a pinch, across chasms, or just all over the place. It's really fun and adds variety to the way you approach nearly everything. It even makes the fall damage a bit less of a problem.
Now one thing I hate in any platformer game is fall damage. I find it annoying and ludicrous in almost any situation of almost any game. This is no exception. There are many times that the player would need to save a jump to use right before hitting the ground, considering the massive amount of times you're in giant or at least tall rooms, allowing a chance to loose masses of health because of fall damage. This is mostly the level design's fault.
Now the world around you is randomly generated, so while this is good for the game's replay value, it sacrifices the polished experience of what a well-made hand-crafted level would have. While all the levels are randomly generated, it doesn't really feel like it because of multiple reasons other than the standard lack of memorability that randomly generated levels generally have. One reason would be because of the fog mechanic. This is just a fog that only goes away when it comes in contact to your energy's radius. Your energy's radius is determined by the amount of energy in your energy belt. This means that the radius gets smaller and removes less fog as you get hurt (and there are no health items). This can clash head-on with the cluster-f*ck of the level design. It's literally just a much of health-draining obstacles everywhere. It's manageable when you have lots of health and can see where you're going, but with low health it can be terrifying.
The art has a neat, clean, and unique pixelated style to it, which is really nice. Everything looks really unique and the character sprites look cool. The music is really nice, with a lot of remixes from the ballet "The Nutcracker". It's got its original music as well, which isn't too shabby.
Now while Platformines has a lot going for it, the gameplay can be pretty repetitive and frustrating due to it's level design. There's a good variety of weapons, with there being pistols, shotguns, machine-guns, and rocket launchers, all with their strengths and weaknesses, but this game is one where you just find a favorite weapon and stick with it, kinda hindering the variety a bit. I feel like I'm beating up this game a lot, I should mention that it's still a fun play, and is worth downloading the demo.
