Right before I played this again, I was right ready to bask in my fond memories of playing and replaying the game to destroy as much of the level around me as possible. Having now refreshed myself… I think most of said memories are actually of Toxic II, but that’s not to say this isn’t fairly solid. It plays mostly like a 2D platformer, where your goal is to reach the exit portal, but the core mechanic is that by pressing the space bar you can drop a bomb at your feet, which will explode, after a time, destroying the walls and floor in a small radius around it, creating a way through otherwise unpassable barriers and fighting back against enemies. There are different types of bombs, which all have different side effects, but the game gives all of them to you immediately, robbing the player of things to learn and new mechanics to play with as they all go along. This mechanic also makes the game feel… rather slow: not only does the game give you way more time than you’re ever going to need for the bomb to detonate, it'll oftentimes take several bombs to actually get through an area, causing a rather tedious loop of walking to an area, laying a bomb, walking out of its radius, then repeating the process once the explosion happens and you’re sure the hitbox is no longer active.
On the other hand, though, there’s… surprisingly little rigidity in terms of how the player is allowed to approach the level. While there’s usually a given path to the end, you’re usually given the option to stray off that path however you like, provided the tools you require are in the level. You could take the path to the left, and deal with the clump of enemies that'll get in your way over there, or you could instead use your Throw Bomb on the ceiling above you, bypassing the tricky bit and reaching the end early. It’s freeform in how fast it lets the player do the level, rewarding both outside-the-box thinking and platformer know-how — an approach, I believe, is expounded and further iterated on in the followup released a year later. And while this game… certainly has the basics down, I have a feeling once I reach the sequel it’ll be clear how much this is mostly… a proof of concept. Not bad, on its own, but definitely a bit obsolete when put side to side with what it later would allow Nitrome to do.
On the other hand, though, there’s… surprisingly little rigidity in terms of how the player is allowed to approach the level. While there’s usually a given path to the end, you’re usually given the option to stray off that path however you like, provided the tools you require are in the level. You could take the path to the left, and deal with the clump of enemies that'll get in your way over there, or you could instead use your Throw Bomb on the ceiling above you, bypassing the tricky bit and reaching the end early. It’s freeform in how fast it lets the player do the level, rewarding both outside-the-box thinking and platformer know-how — an approach, I believe, is expounded and further iterated on in the followup released a year later. And while this game… certainly has the basics down, I have a feeling once I reach the sequel it’ll be clear how much this is mostly… a proof of concept. Not bad, on its own, but definitely a bit obsolete when put side to side with what it later would allow Nitrome to do.