Quite a funny survival platformer where, playing as a ssbbw, you evade death. The game is not very diverse and sometimes the missions (of which there are only 30) make you burn out, because all progress is immediately reset upon death, but there are also advantages. Very convenient controls, nice pixel art, and for a small indie project this is very good.

Достаточно забавный сурвайв-платформер, где играя за жиробасину, уклоняешься от смерти. Игра не слишком разнообразная и иногда миссии(которых всего 30) заставляют пригореть, т.к весь прогресс сразу сбрасывается при смерти, но есть и плюсы. Очень удобное управление, приятная пиксельная картинка и для небольшого инди проекта это очень неплохо.

I've written a fair bit about obstacle escalation theory in 2D platformers over the last couple of months, but I realize that I haven't quite covered the other end of the spectrum in detail. You see, from my experience, most 2D platformers tend to create difficulty through two different design philsophies. The first such philosophy is the aforementioned obstacle escalation theory, where different combinations of hazards and movable parts are inserted and improvised upon to create shifting obstacle courses that force the player into increasingly tighter execution tests, often encouraging players to utilize movement tech to make headway. These tend to be some of my favorite platformers in the genre, such as Donkey Kong Country and Rayman Legends, and have tons of room for optimization and speedrunning strategies to allow players to really exert creativity through fantastic character control.

Then, you've got the opposite end of the scale: a design philosophy that I have dubbed "monkey in the cage" platforming. It's not a "this or that" separation theory that neatly places 2D platformers into two distinct boxes mind you, as some platformers will borrow from both philosophies and others in fact would fit neatly outside of trends that characterize either philosophy. That said, if you held me at gunpoint and forced me to name the key examples of "monkey in the cage" platforming, two names come to mind: Cloudberry Kingdom, and this game, Penarium.

"Monkey in the cage" is pretty apt for this particular title, funny enough. I refer to the term here as this concept of the player character essentially acting as a monkey in a small iron cage, unable to escape the prison while viewers sling hazards from outside the bars and the monkey must jump and run around to avoid getting splattered with shit. In this case, you play as a farm boy named Willy who's bored of his rural, backbreaking lifestyle, and has decided to embark upon "adventure" in the death defying game show high stakes and high thrills circus named the Penarium. There are 30 different campaign stages, but they all boil down to the same general idea; you have to jump around these elevated wooden platforms while various randomized hazards, such as bowling balls, icicle guns, beehives, rockets, machine guns, shuriken launchers, and more rain down peril upon you. Movement is not particularly complicated; you have a double jump and can utilize screen wrap to quickly get from one side of the stage to the other, unless one of the hazards happens to be a spike or flame wall blocking your path. Meanwhile, the given objectives are always some degree of "stay alive while we force you to move around the cage" by introducing barrels you must destroy, spotlights that you must stay long enough in, potions that you must collect and bring to cauldrons before they shatter on the ground, and the most annoying variant being a Simon Says button relay that also takes places during the hazard spam.

Here's why I take particular issue with Penarium: I don't think it's difficult, I just think it's boring. All 30 of the campaign levels look extremely similar with the same exact visual style while utilizing the same basic wooden platforms. The general design philosophy is never really iterated upon or even disguised with different music and theming; by the middle of the game, you've basically seen all the different "objectives" and hazard types and combinations, and levels are only getting more difficult because they take longer to complete (for example: you now have to press 50 buttons instead of pressing 20 buttons) and thus you get punished more heavily for dying since there are no checkpoints in the middle of levels and gameplay begins to feel like bashing your head into a wall until the randomized elements and item placement becomes just favorable enough to proceed. There's little experimentation to be had because layouts are so basic and there's not much to the movement tech; you just have to keep going through the motions until you finally break through. I guess that just throwing more shit on the screen will eventually make me succumb to the difficulty, but that doesn't make the design particularly interesting or engaging; it sort of reminds me of the infinite monkey theorem that given enough time, monkeys on typewriters will eventually produce Shakespeare. To summarize, this is a case of quantity over quality: Penarium feels more like obstacle vomit over obstacle escalation, and it's meant to be rage inducing not from tougher execution tests, but rather by throwing more and more execution tests your way endlessly until you eventually slip up.

There's an arcade mode to this game too, but it unfortunately feels about as grindy and repetitive as the main campaign. You have to spend multiple runs farming coins to purchase powerups in the store (which is separate from the main campaign by the way, so all that time you spent in the tedious campaign will not progress the store in any meaningful way), many of which will allow you to get more coins to purchase additional power-ups that have to be selected with careful timing slot machine style (which also costs money by the way), just for that one perfect run of 100 barrels broken for a single achievement. It's the same game ultimately, just with magnet/invincibility/infinite jump/etc temporary powerups, which do help a little bit but ultimately will not remove the sensation that you're just playing another version of the game with more obvious progress mechanics. The developers could have removed story mode entirely and slashed the price in half, and honestly, I think I'd be a lot more satisfied with just arcade mode alone.

Anyways, that was a lot of words for me to explain exactly why this ten dollar pixel indie game that I got in a Humble Monthly several years ago felt like an absolute waste of time 100%ing, but at least I was able to get my thoughts out there on exactly what happens when the laziest 2D platforming design gets combined with RNG hazard spam, repetitive circus tunes and tedious progression mechanics. It'd be easy to just call this a product of its time as yet another indie from 2015 that doesn't understand how to create satisfying and engaging difficulty curves, but then again, Flywrench came out that same year. It's three bucks cheaper and is way more slick and thought-out, so go play that instead. You'll thank me later.