In 2013, a little game called Rayman Legends was released, and a 7-year-old me (this is the part where you comment on how young I am) would fall in love with the game’s release. The sheer variety in the game’s art style, music, and levels had me dumbfounded. I would play the hell out of the game’s demo on my Xbox 360, and when I finally got my hands on the full release, my love grew for it even more, and it stands as both one of my favorite platformers, and one of my favorite games of all time; and is a wonderful showcase of what video games can accomplish. In 2017, a tiny game called splasher was released, although I wouldn’t hear about it until this year when a friend of mine mentioned it to me. They mentioned that the team who made Splasher comprised of the same staff that worked on Rayman Legends, which made it an immediate must-play for me. Sadly however, I ended up disappointed by Splasher.
One thing that you immediately notice is the artstyle of the game. While it does have some charm due to looking like a high-tier Newgrounds or Xbox live arcade game, it's hard to deny that it lacks polish. Loading screens not having any animation, assets sliding around during cutscenes like someone dragging around a .png in an image editor, and other little tidbits throughout the game rob it of its charming artstyle. Game performance is also pretty poor, with lag spikes happening every so often, and even a game crash on my end. What also doesn’t help Splasher’s case is the fact that it takes place all in one location, a laboratory. There is an attempt made to spice up the level variety, but in most cases it’s a basic aesthetic change that feels at odds with how the levels are laid out due to a lack of flow between these themes. The level layouts also force you to go back and forth between multiple points within the hub worlds, which can get grating real fast.
Ink is the main gimmick Splasher, letting you traverse the levels in more unique ways and help solve puzzles for collectibles. However, the ink is also something the game never really nails. Throughout the game, your collection grows as you collect the 3 main types of ink. The progression of giving you this ink overtime rather than giving you all the abilities at the start. This is a common motif in games that I’ve never really been a fan of, because it personally makes me feel as if I’m playing two thirds of the game with an incomplete moveset and makes the earlier levels less fun as a result. The game never uses the ink to its fullest potential either, since after a level or two after getting a new type of ink, it becomes apparent that the level design can only think of the same few scenarios to use the ink in. It comes off as very repetitive as a result, and I think changing the layouts of the levels slightly or allowing for more experimental ways to play around with the ink would have been for the better.
The gameplay is another very noticeable downside to Splasher, with its fast and slippery movement, a lack of control in the air in certain circumstances, and a jump that feels like its arc was cut in half. These issues wouldn’t be much of a bother if the game were made for it, but Splasher takes inspiration from the more modern design philosophy of platformers to be more difficult, like Super Meat Boy, Celeste, or The End Is Nigh and it doesn’t gel well with the level design, making the difficulty seem like an afterthought. I found multiple points where deaths felt cheap or even unfair, resulting in many restarts within big chunks of the levels. The number of times I had to slow down in the middle of a fast jump to land on a platform was absurd and ruined the overall flow of the game. However, the gameplay really starts to take a nosedive when these issues are combined with the ink mechanic. Aiming the ink uses the same stick that you use to move, with no option to stay still while doing so. This is used to create a ‘think on your feet’-type of pace to the game, but since you go so fast this causes more issues than anything else, and the amount of times I found my ink would just not aim correctly resulted in handfuls of deaths that really tested my patience.
It's not really fair to compare Splasher to the team’s previous work on Rayman Legends. Splasher has its own unique gameplay, design, and is overall going for something completely different but even disconnecting it from Rayman, it still feels disappointing. I hate being negative about something that very clearly has a lot of passionate people working on it, but Splasher had too many kinks that I think could be ironed out before it could have been something truly great. I hope the team is able to make a sequel to this game that can address these issues and turn it into something truly worthwhile (which I have hope for because I’ve heard the studio’s other game, Tinykin, is pretty good!), but for now, Splasher remains a disappointing first go for the studio due to its overall lack of polish, variety, and engaging gameplay.
(special thanks to my friend ConeCvltist who helped me out a ton making this review)
One thing that you immediately notice is the artstyle of the game. While it does have some charm due to looking like a high-tier Newgrounds or Xbox live arcade game, it's hard to deny that it lacks polish. Loading screens not having any animation, assets sliding around during cutscenes like someone dragging around a .png in an image editor, and other little tidbits throughout the game rob it of its charming artstyle. Game performance is also pretty poor, with lag spikes happening every so often, and even a game crash on my end. What also doesn’t help Splasher’s case is the fact that it takes place all in one location, a laboratory. There is an attempt made to spice up the level variety, but in most cases it’s a basic aesthetic change that feels at odds with how the levels are laid out due to a lack of flow between these themes. The level layouts also force you to go back and forth between multiple points within the hub worlds, which can get grating real fast.
Ink is the main gimmick Splasher, letting you traverse the levels in more unique ways and help solve puzzles for collectibles. However, the ink is also something the game never really nails. Throughout the game, your collection grows as you collect the 3 main types of ink. The progression of giving you this ink overtime rather than giving you all the abilities at the start. This is a common motif in games that I’ve never really been a fan of, because it personally makes me feel as if I’m playing two thirds of the game with an incomplete moveset and makes the earlier levels less fun as a result. The game never uses the ink to its fullest potential either, since after a level or two after getting a new type of ink, it becomes apparent that the level design can only think of the same few scenarios to use the ink in. It comes off as very repetitive as a result, and I think changing the layouts of the levels slightly or allowing for more experimental ways to play around with the ink would have been for the better.
The gameplay is another very noticeable downside to Splasher, with its fast and slippery movement, a lack of control in the air in certain circumstances, and a jump that feels like its arc was cut in half. These issues wouldn’t be much of a bother if the game were made for it, but Splasher takes inspiration from the more modern design philosophy of platformers to be more difficult, like Super Meat Boy, Celeste, or The End Is Nigh and it doesn’t gel well with the level design, making the difficulty seem like an afterthought. I found multiple points where deaths felt cheap or even unfair, resulting in many restarts within big chunks of the levels. The number of times I had to slow down in the middle of a fast jump to land on a platform was absurd and ruined the overall flow of the game. However, the gameplay really starts to take a nosedive when these issues are combined with the ink mechanic. Aiming the ink uses the same stick that you use to move, with no option to stay still while doing so. This is used to create a ‘think on your feet’-type of pace to the game, but since you go so fast this causes more issues than anything else, and the amount of times I found my ink would just not aim correctly resulted in handfuls of deaths that really tested my patience.
It's not really fair to compare Splasher to the team’s previous work on Rayman Legends. Splasher has its own unique gameplay, design, and is overall going for something completely different but even disconnecting it from Rayman, it still feels disappointing. I hate being negative about something that very clearly has a lot of passionate people working on it, but Splasher had too many kinks that I think could be ironed out before it could have been something truly great. I hope the team is able to make a sequel to this game that can address these issues and turn it into something truly worthwhile (which I have hope for because I’ve heard the studio’s other game, Tinykin, is pretty good!), but for now, Splasher remains a disappointing first go for the studio due to its overall lack of polish, variety, and engaging gameplay.
(special thanks to my friend ConeCvltist who helped me out a ton making this review)
Reviewed on Dec 11, 2022
rek
10 months ago