The first sequel to a previous game! And, more than that, the first new release since I first became aware of the site (Dangle doesn’t count, it didn’t quite occupy the same brain space as this game did). There was a good bit of a drumroll on Nitrome’s end in the lead-up to this game’s release, and I can see why: even beyond its status as the very first sequel, this breaks the ground in a ton of ways. There are animated cutscenes, a Super Mario World-esque world map, you can customize your character's skin (and, at one point, even create your very own balloonsona), and there are even multiple save slots in the menu. This was truly something special within the context and scope at this stage of Nitrome’s lifespan, with features that even games later down the line wouldn’t have, and even though the first game was fucky when I tried to play it with Supernova I’m hoping that with the two-year gap might mean that this’ll still be beatab-

oh um

this loading screen for the intro is uh

going on forever, huh

okay refreshing puts me on the world map and lets me play the first level let’s- oh that’s just the same loading screen

uhhhhhhhhhhhh

So I tried playing it on Nitrome.com. I got stuck on a loading screen. I tried playing a HTML5 port another site made. I got stuck on a loading screen. I tried doing the same things on a different browser. I got stuck on a loading screen. Not knowing what else to do, and not wanting to give up on even playing the game, I found a dump of all the raw .swf files for… a good percentage of Nitrome’s flash games, downloaded Adobe Flash Player via an archive link, and… holy shit it ran like a dream. Genuinely. None of the lag present in either the Supernova emulation or the HTML5 ports. It played the same way in 2023 as it did in 2007. Honestly, running into these issues might have been best for the long run: while I fretted at the idea of not even being able to play a game (and such a landmark one in Nitrome’s history) due to technical issues, what it led me to means I don’t have to deal with any of the kerfuffle over what poison to pick between the emulated original or whatever HTML5 port exists. Thank god.

Especially because it meant I could play… what's easily the first truly great Nitrome game so far. It plays exactly like the first game: use the mouse to blow a fan and guide a hot air balloon to the end without touching any other walls or surfaces or enemies. It’s simple, but after a gentle difficulty curve the game starts to show its teeth. Precise movement (knowing when and how hard to blow the fan) is required if you want to make it through the level, and the little bonus objectives in stars do a lot to customize the experience: do you want to play the level the normal way, or do you want to take on all the little extra challenges so that you can do the bonus levels after? Either way, failing just once will send you back to the beginning of the level, in a way that’s absolutely brutal but in a way that leaves you ready to take on the challenge again. The game goes against Nitrome’s ethos so far in that enemies and obstacles are generally one-and-done, but this works to its benefit: levels primarily defined by one obstacle and how you navigate around them, and really neat designs that show up, play around the constraints of the game in generally neat ways (I especially liked all the obstacles that reacted to the fan) and disappear before they wear out their welcome.

The game knows how to balance its difficulty, giving you tough, genuinely stressful levels (there’s one in particular that's the equivalent of an autoscroller and even despite beating it first try I was fretting about how one twitch or mistake would send me right back to the beginning), before then easing up the throttle, giving you a chance to relax, calm your nerves, let you believe you’re good at the game for a bit before it ramps back up again. And in the midst of this you’re treated to this loud-coloured, retraux artstyle brimming with charm, both through the enemy designs and all the facial expressions — giving you new balloons is a genius reward for completing levels, and honestly if it weren’t for wanting to do them all anyway, seeing which little guy I unlocked next would’ve been the perfect motivator for doing even the post-game bonus levels. I dock it a bit for some fucky physics and some… maybe stinker levels, and it’s clear that Nitrome’s first implementation of boss fights… leaves something to be desired, but otherwise… yeah: this is Nitrome firing on all cylinders, and the first of their efforts, I’d say, that’s truly a cut above all the rest.

…I wonder, now that I have Flash Player, if I could go back and actually beat the first game…?
























































(nope)

Y’know, I probably would’ve added some checkpoints if my levels were marathon-length slogs with constant one-hit-kill obstacles that supersede the lives system already in place, with buggy mechanics where I can be affected by, say, an enemy blowing wind when I’m not even on the same plane as them, borked controls where I can literally be clicking the bottom of the screen and my spider will still move upwards into an enemy, constant leaps-of-faith where I need to know what’s ahead to make the best decision, and level design where I’m constantly fighting against the game to move forward, but I guess also “if you hit an instant death trap because you were trying to play with the physics in a physics platformer you have to go back to square one” doesn’t really seem like that big a deal compared to everything else. It starts off okay, and relatively simple, even if some of the more technical things are evident immediately, but once things feel a need to get more involved and complex it gets intolerable real quick. I spent, like, half an hour on the first nine levels, found a couple of them to be straining but otherwise bearable, then level ten took like, a whole 40 minutes of making it several minutes in, dealing with all the fiddly stuff, then hitting a one-hit kill or accidentally moving backwards into an enemy. I thought, maybe, like, this was just a low point and that the game would become better once it got all that out of its system. It didn’t. I found out level 11 was even more of that shit and decided, maybe, this wasn’t worth my time. Cowardice, I know, but having beat my head against the wall for 40 minutes only to find that there were more walls made me figure that I’d gotten enough of an impression. I looked at playthroughs of the remaining levels and even watching them felt too tedious for me to wanna stick around to the end.

The first Nitrome game I ever played! Not for long, though. I'm fairly sure when I found the site I didn't even beat the first level of this before bouncing onto Skywire and Frost Bite, and now, having actually gone through it for the first time… maybe it was for the best that past me didn’t. The core of the game is that it’s a collectathon platformer with a main mechanic of jumping from planet to planet — the gravitational pull and the traversal through the landscape almost make the game feel like a traditional side-scrolling platformer… except that platforms, in this case, are circular, and centre gravity around them as you jump. While it starts well enough, the game starts to show its warts as it goes along. Individual levels veer loooooong — like, 5-7 minutes just to complete it — and not for good reasons: most of what you do after the halfway point is just stand around waiting for planets to come near you, or stand around on moving planets waiting for another go to try and the one star you need to get to complete the level. This could be bearable… if dying didn’t send you riiiiiight to the beginning, forcing you to do the entire process from step one each time. This is even worse given how finicky the platforming can be, or how cycles can sometimes work out that sometimes there’s no way to escape taking damage and the fact that the player jumps upon taking damage can randomly undo progress or immediately lead to more damage and, as a whole, this game… does not feel polished. Or particularly fun to play, after a point. Wouldn’t call it the worst so far, but for the first game I ever played from this company, for the game that, however indirectly, led me to obsessively follow the website (and, in a way, led me to become as active on the internet as I am today)… man, past me could’ve done better.

do have to shout out the music tho

Skywire is a game where you use the arrow keys to move a gondola across a linear path, avoiding all the obstacles in your path in hopes of getting at least one of your passengers to the end of the stage. What initially seems like mostly a matter of proper timing soon, however, betrays a fairly complex system revolving around gravity, and how that impacts your momentum: the path curves up or down, the former causing your gondola to move slower, the latter causing you to rocket forward, even if you’re not holding that specific direction. Soon it becomes a matter of controlling your momentum — knowing how long in advance you need to start climbing something, knowing when exactly to start slowing your roll so that you don’t accidentally veer directly into another obstacle, and, sometimes, knowing exactly when you can abuse i-frames to gun it to the end. Its simplicity is complex, and the varying obstacles are mixed and matched in a way Nitrome is clearly adept at at this point. There are… technical issues — obstacles that spawn right on top of you in a way that’ll force you to lose a life unless you explicitly know they’re coming, obstacles with funky hitboxes that at points guarantee you lose a life when the level forces you close up to them — and there are some levels which are, like, three minutes of waiting for obstacles to go through their cycles (which if you mess up sends you right back to the beginning) but as a whole this is definitely the first game I’d consider to be above 'pretty good': just really solid execution where its quibbles don't hold it back as much. Plus! Iconic music! And uploaded to YouTube with decent recording quality this time! Can’t wait to replay the sequel and remember just how it iterates.