THIS is MY SHIT man. Removing the competitive element of the Toree games and wading chin deep into the waters of Vibes Only, Siactro has really unlocked something within me here. Visually a direct homage to Rare's Nintendo 64 ouevre, Super Kiwi 64 puts you in the backpack of a cute little guy with a surprisingly robust set of verbs at their disposal.

You've got your sprint and your single jump only (!) along with a very empowering glide and a stabbing attack that ACTUALLY is mostly useful to lodge you into the wall and refresh your jump. With these abilities in concert (which the game elegantly and confidently leaves you to discover with no tutorials) you are essentially fully able to navigate all spaces at all times. Ostensibly you have a few units of health and I guess you COULD die but enemies and environmental hazards are SO unthreatening as to be so much more set dressing for the potent atmosphere on display.

The atmosphere is pitch perfect too; Siactro replicates a genuine facsimile of N64 textures and colors than anyone else I can think of here, from the deep greens and purples of the underground levels to the representation of the inexplicably omnipresent-in-the-era pirate level set, it's all pitch perfect and admirably un-fluffed up for modern tech. You get an infinite draw distance, sure, but I can't think of another game I've played this year that looks this blurry on my shitty tv on purpose!

Super Kiwi 64 is a relatively mild collectathon, with a small list of objectives to spawn your six gems in each of your eight levels (and two lil secret guys if ur paying attention wink wink), but the small levels that aim really just to evoke the Feeling of their influences rather than provide an homage to them coupled with the complete lack of challenge anywhere could be seen as a negative for others but it made a for a really meditative tone for my hour spent with this game before bed.

Honestly it was really nice! I would not trade this experience for one that was more traditionally gamey. I've been shifting this year towards valuing the movies I watch and games I play as overall aesthetic experiences, not even for the emotions they produce as much as the ambient feelings they put into the room, and Super Kiwi 64 is doing that before it's doing ANYTHING else. Another one knocked right the fuck outta the park from Marcus The Siactro Guy and his collaborators.

Alright I'm going to bed ya girl's tired as fuck good night everybody

Sigh. I hate to be the resident Backloggd Bitch™ this time around but there just isn't enough to love here. The music's good, keyboard/mouse controls feel perfect (I'm not a fan of the controller, especially with the camera,) I like levels 4 through 6, and the aesthetic is all right there... but like, that's it.

The gameplay feels a bit dry, I suppose. I don't mean the simple moveset, nono - that's all fine and dandy, plus the game knows how to make it interesting in a few cases - I mean the levels. There's not a single nook or cranny, no real scavenger hunt, a grand majority of the powercells are in predictable places and it ends up feeling more like a to-do list as a result. There's enemies... I guess? They're big hunks of metal that never attempt to attack you with a walk speed slower than Patrick Star's pet rock. They present no remote challenge, in-line with most of the game, which otherwise (aside levels 5 & 6, though they're not really open-world) have no obstacles to speak of.

Now there's nothing wrong with a game being a cake walk if it's putting something interesting or engaging forth, but Super Kiwi 64 (again aside levels 5 & 6) doesn't do that. MACBAT 64, a Siactro game from 5 years ago, gets creative with its gameplay far more than this does. Super Kiwi 64 only really mixes it up with the addition of keys or the occasional level gimmick like lava, switches, or when you get extra speed for no explicable reason from your dog pilot partner. I won't nitpick the lack of explanations or plot - that part's fine, good games don't always need good writing, though it does feel like Siactro tried to set one up and left what he had in after deciding against it.

It's a shame, really, because Siactro is a talented guy (Toree 3D is damn solid and I need to raise my rating for it) and there are definitely the makings of something great here - enough so that the game is, honestly, not bad. Enjoyable, even. It just needed more love, more soul, more time in the oven. It's almost there.

Also, Siactro forgot to put in a Quit button on the PC version; an inaction that says a thousand words.

This one appeals to my personal tastes way more than Toree honestly. Just a chill as hell collectathon with great movement in a wonderfully chunky N64 style.

Also can I say that I adore Siactro's approach to weird visuals? Their games don't try overly hard to be creepy or disturbing moments and instead just presents strange things without fanfare. It really helps evoke that feeling of coming across something in a childhood game that inexplicably creeps you out but you're too young to understand why. I wish more developers were willing to be this delightfully strange.

Apesar de cumprir o que propõe, minhas expectativas para Super Kiwi 64 eram outras e eu não pude deixar de me decepcionar.

No quesito mais técnico de um plataforma 3D, o jogo acerta muito. A movimentação é flúida, precisa e controlar esse kiwizinho é uma delícia. O level design também ajuda na fluidez dos movimentos. Com certeza é um jogo feito com speedruns em mente.

Mas nossa, falta muita substância nesse jogo... Falo com tranquilidade que o Kiwi 64 tem muito mais personalidade do que esse. Aqui você é jogado numa hub sem introdução nenhuma, existe apenas um personagem com diálogo, você vai encontrar no máximo uns dois NPCs por fase (e são inimigos) e em alguns momentos, por algum motivo, o jogo tenta ir pra um caminho meio creepypasta que não se encaixa muito bem. Estranhamente, em vários momentos me senti sozinho, triste e com medo.

O que tinha potencial pra ser algo divertido e wholesome como o próprio Banjo-Kazooie, virou uma experiência melancólica e desarranjada.

A very short, pleasant little game. Not anything particularly remarkable, but fun.

I will say, I got 100% in about a half hour. Not that I mind, I went in knowing it was small. But I can't help but wish that there were some additional elements here and there to give a bit more substance to the overall package. For example, achievements for beating the game under a certain time, or introducing modifiers that make a repeat playthrough a bit different. Something like that would be (relatively) easy to implement and could elevate the game a lot. Anyways now I'm just talking game design, which is a sign it's time to stop writing.

Four stars feel a little high, but I can only give half-stars, so...

It's a $2 game, and I think meets any expectations from that price point. The main reason I love this developer's games is because it just captures vibes so well, better than I've seen with other such games, but it's also fun in its own right. I'd love for a longer and deeper game to come of this because it has the momentum to be great.

Also, the music slaps.

I would easily play through something 5 times the length of this with an actual plot, a short ass Rareware-like collectathon that pays homage to the good ol’ days when cheery all-ages platformers would suddenly have these out of nowhere weird sections that just didn’t seem right. Nothing outright scary, just… off. Textures are different, colors are strange, things have… faces.

Loved the little kiwi dude and zipping around the stages. Please make sure to seek out the hidden secret level too, you’ll know it when you see it

bro this is something special

dont be fooled by the fact that i gave this one and toree the same score because really this is something of an entire different league if you ask me

if you had come up to me one day while i was probably drawing some gay furry stuff and told me hey pal check this abandonware they dug up from the n64 repertoire i wouldve believed you

i cannot overstate enough how this is such a great modern adaptation of what the n64 collectathon games used to be into such a fun and quirky platformer

you play as titular character kiwi armed with just a jetpack a beak and a suspicious yearning for jewels and yet this is some of the most solid movement in a 3d platformer ive ever seen

now now now hold on boys this is not super mario odyssey but what i meant is the usage of its unique moveset lets you explore the entirety of the levels to such an extent that you can get to a point of the map either jumping or gliding or climbing literally you can do whatever the fuck you want and the game will let you do it

theres 8 levels and some special content but i swear theyre so mindfully put together every single one is crafted to put the full moveset of the bird into motion while also making you look for collectibles and stuff to destroy along the way

the ost and the environments really do give a weird vibe that i cannot actually put into word its like this is a forbidden land and you should not trespass but you already did so whatever plus the hub world is a stinky sewer so

that being said this was such a great time and i dont remember 3d collectathons ever being so fun but i guess i should check more stuff out because this one UGHHHHHHHHH this one was such an elite time i cant wait for the developer to put more juicy stuff out in the wild for me to consume and revere

I want to love this game thanks to the developer being awesome, the game being quite inexpensive to pick up and the overall fun feeling when playing....

But... Agh... I feel like such a Grinch. There really just isn't enough polish here. The game starts abruptly, the levels are a hodgepodge without any real personality to make them stand out, the music just flows from level to level without breaking, there's no stage transitions, there's no real ending and the camera is a pain in the ass at all times.

But even then, there's still a sense of passion and love here that's difficult to ignore... I still cant ignore the shortcomings though.

I had played Toree 3D a couple years ago, and I thought it was alright. A bit too linear for my taste, but an otherwise fun platformer. The same developer made Kiwi 64, and it definitely hit more into my taste buds. It's a collectathon with really good game feel, atmosphere, and level design.

The sense of movement you get and the little animations to perform your movement tech look and feel really nice. It's constant forward momentum if you can time your buttons just right, and it feels really fun to blast through levels like that. You can even glide and traverse up walls with your beak like one of those enemies from Mario Odyssey, albeit without the physics to fling yourself. This gives the game an even larger sense of movement and freedom. It feels really fun to just control this little fella.

One of the things I liked about Toree 3D was that it had glimpses of something stranger in the background. Sadly, it never really did anything with it, as far as I could tell. This game tends to lean into those aspects a lot more, and it's honestly really intriguing for a 60 minute game. The sense of atmosphere was really well done, the sky boxes have these vibrant colors, the music is a nice twist of David Wise-ian style songs. The level design is built with these little pieces of lore in mind, where you see this militaristic futuristic culture domineering multiple areas, with tinges of forgotten jungles, desert fortresses, unsettling metallic bone-filled dungeons, and a pirate's cove. For a game that's 3 dollars and only about an hour long, it really gave a nice sense of exploration and wonder.

My only real complaint with the game is that, because of it's length, it doesn't play enough around with the mechanics it has. After a certain point, the core loop begins to stop being as engaging, given that there's no real progression to what you're doing. It would have also been nice to get a bit of variety with each world's music, since they tend to double up on a single track for the areas with the same theming.

For what the game is though, it's a very fun time! I wish it got expanded upon more, but it utilizes it's ideas, mechanics, and sense of atmosphere very well!

For $3 (or $2 as I paid in the Steam Summer Sale), I think it's a fun little romp. Being made by the same creators of the Toree games, you can definitely find a lot of that 'style' here - where you get to play as a small bird in a cutesy but somewhat creepypasta-ish aesthetic that also has the 5th gen early 3D look to it, albeit this time mimicking the N64 style rather than the PS1 style in the Toree games.

And what's there I think is solid. The controls and movement overall feel good with some different abilities such as a glide, corkscrew-attacks and the ability to stick to walls to climb, and the levels are well designed. It's very comparable to something like Banjo-Kazooie or Glover but with the game design and presentation style of the Toree games. If you liked those, you'll probably enjoy this.

Though I will say this is more of a 'comfort food' type game. The game's rather short and can be beaten in less than an hour once you know what you're doing. For the price you're paying, it does do a fine job, especially if you're looking for a platformer or game in general to play through real fast while you think about what title you want to play through next, but I wouldn't go into it expecting anything amazing or full replay value. Even completing the game doesn't take much more than an hour at most and once you've done that I don't really feel like there's much for me to go back to aside for maybe potentially speedrunning the game.

To nitpick a bit too the game's pretty much completely lacking graphical settings of any sort, even on PC, and on that note... well, I do have some issues with the game's visuals. The game is kinda blurry, which I get is to pay homage to the N64 look but it kinda just comes off as if someone just used a bilinear filter to scale up a retro game, and on top of that I noticed some Steam reviews mentioning the lack of VSync resulting in screen tearing - which I didn't notice myself (playing on Linux Mint via Proton) but worth mentioning. It's not too game breaking, but I kinda wish there were some graphical settings at least available. To add to that too there isn't a "Return to Desktop"/Exit option in-game so you have to either ALT+F4 or Alt+Tab and close the game from your OS which, again, not game breaking but an odd move.

Overall though it's a good experience for what you're paying. Nothing spectacular or oozing in replay value, but it's definitely worth checking out if you just want a nice little platformer to play through, especially if you enjoyed Toree or just PS1/N64-esque indie games in general.