This is much buggier and less polished than… a good portion of the Nitrome games I’ve played up to this point. Sometimes jumping on enemies damages you instead of them. Sometimes enemies will remove all your health instead of just one-third. Sometimes things will clip through the walls and die instantly. Sometimes there’ll be a wall or a floor when there shouldn’t be. It’s still playable — I didn’t have to finagle much to be able to beat the game — but it’s less functional than it should be, which is a shame, because otherwise I generally like this! I love the dual world of the black and white, both in terms of how it looks and how it functions: how what could be a moving platform for one character can be a moving tunnel for another, and how it provides a really simple reference point for what one character can interact with and what that same character can’t. The game does a really good job at dispersing mechanics throughout the game, providing a steady flow of new enemies and puzzle elements as you progress, never making you get sick of them, but also never letting you forget about them. This also extends to level types, too: levels where interacting with both of the worlds is integral to get both characters through, juxtaposed to levels where each character must simply get themselves to the end. It’s decently cerebral, too: there were levels I looked at and didn’t quite know what to do, but then as I began to work out the solution it felt so satisfying to put it all together. Ultimately… it’s neat both visually and mechanically, it doesn’t take too long to play, and so long as you’re willing to deal with a bit of bugginess then there’s a really solid puzzle platformer to be found here.

Reviewed on Dec 21, 2023


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