Nintendo.com microsite – Metacritic – ChubbyPixel
Since I started blogging, I have some developers reaching out to me with the question to review their game. One of these developers is Chubby Pixel, the developers behind Woodle Tree and Suicide Guy. Now, this game might have a trigger word in the title, the game doesn’t handle depression or actual suicide at all. In this series, our goal is to wake our dude up by ending his dreams as fast as we can. And how can a dream continue if we die in a dream? So, is this new entry in the trilogy a good entry or did the series run its course? Let’s find out in this article together. Since the developer gave me a free, press key to give you my 100% unfiltered opinion on the game. If you have any thoughts on this article and/or the content of the game, feel free to write a comment in the comment section down below.
Editorial note: this article is written on v1.1.
Let’s find a waking solution
We still play our beloved guy in this game. This guy already went on two previous adventures in his dreams to try and save himself from disaster. In his first adventure, he falls asleep while watching TV and the beer in his hand is falling towards the floor. He wakes up in a diner, where the screens in the diner are warning him on the danger of his favorite beer falling towards the ground. Our beer loving guy doesn’t want that, so we try to end his dreams as soon as possible, so we can catch that beer bottle before it hits the ground. And in the second adventure, our dude drinks an even stronger version of the beer, and let’s just say that he has a very strange drunken adventure.
In this third game, we don’t really know the trigger that sends our guy in the hell that’s layered dreams. Probably, it’s either the influence of his mind playing tricks on him. You know, when your mind creates some strange dreams sometimes? When you are exhausted or just have a lot going on.
Anyways, the story in these games isn’t the main focal point. It just provides an amazing setting for an interesting first person adventure game where the goal of each level is to wake up from your dream, so our guy can wake up and continue with his life. It’s an amazing setup for this subject, since it might be sensitive to some people. Also, while this is the third game in the series… You don’t need to have played or completed the previous two games. These games can be played in any order and the only link between the three games is the main character and the gameplay mechanics.
The main hub in this time around is a spaceship. We have 18 new levels to complete, so we can wake the guy up and let him continue with his life. If you have played one of the previous two games in this series, you know what to expect in this game. Let me cut this article short for those who played one of the two previous games by saying, if you enjoyed those games… You’ll enjoy this one as well. Since, it’s a total new set of puzzles for you to figure out. But, allow me to talk a bit more in-depth about this game for those who either forgot things about these games or just want to know more.
The references game
In the previous two games, you may have one or two levels referencing another game or a franchise. In this game, the amount of references is just through the roof. Quite often during my playthrough I was happily surprised at the references in this game to other games without it being overpowering and stealing the show. Various levels are also themed around big franchises, and I just love it. While I haven’t reached that point in the game just yet, I’m especially looking forward to the Indiana Jones level near the end. The reason I know that there is an Indy themed level is that I saw the trailer and our guy is just running around with a whip in a tomb… The amount of references I counted during watching that trailer was impressive to say the least.
At the moment of writing, this game is currently only released on the Nintendo Switch. Later this year, a Steam port will be released. It won’t surprise me that this game will come to other platforms as well in the future. At first, I found it a bit unfamiliar to not play this game on a mouse and keyboard, but I really quickly got used to playing this game on a controller.
The first level is an excellent tutorial level where most of the mechanics of this game get introduced. Don’t be silly and jump down at the end of the tutorial, since you’ll be back at the start and have to go back using the long away around. The tutorial in this game is excellent and teaches the mechanics to new players and is a quick refresher to those who played the games in the past since it has been quite some time since the previous title got released.
In general, the controls are quite responsive and great to use. Although, sometimes the controls felt a little floaty. Especially while jumping, I sometimes felt I didn’t have control on where I was going to land. Maybe adding a small black shadow underneath the guy, so players can judge the landing more, would be an ideal way to solve this issue. Currently, we have only a shadow to the side, but this isn’t enough to judge distance since you can’t exactly see where the shadow starts.
At first, I also wanted to complain about the slow turning of the camera. But, I was able to crank that up in the options’ menu. A bit higher sensitivity and voila, we were in business. You can also invert the camera controls there, if you want. There are quite some settings you can adjust, so you can optimize the game to how you want to play. Another example is you can enable or disable the rumble. But that seems to be bugged out, since each and every time I went to check on rumble it gets disabled.
If I’m allowed to nitpick, I have a few minor complaints about the options UI. First, in the main menu when you choose the “options” button, you appear on the second button instead of the first button of that menu. Secondly, in-game… You have the language option, but you can’t interact with it. There are also two “apply changes” buttons in that menu while in the game. Thirdly, there is no way to go back to the hub once in a level, only to the main menu. And a final nitpick is, why are two of the sound effects buttons (ZL and ZR) working while in the menu and not the others? I’d disable that, since the other solution would drive people who use the D-pad for menu navigation insane.
Now, the previous paragraph might sound like I’m giving the impression that the menu’s in this game are broken and unusable. But, that’s not true at all. They have some minor issues that should be polished out and that’s that. It wouldn’t surprise me that after the release of this article, the developer fixes several of these issues with a patch. Knowing Chubby Pixel, they are extremely open for feedback and bug reports, and they try to fix as many as they can. Once, I posted a YouTube video on a glitch I found, and one of the lead developers commented sometime later that they fixed that bug. Also, I notice that they really take advice to heart. So, if you have any feedback for them, just go to their Discord server and tell them or contact them, and they will help you out!
This game is quite linear and is mostly a puzzle game. After finishing the tutorial, you arrive at the hub, where you can go to the next level. Each level has a certain theme and your goal is to end that dream while exploring the level and using the tools provided to you. The fun in this game is that you have to figure out how to end the dream, since there is always one solution per level. There is also some replay value in this game since in each level there is a hidden collectible statue you can find. And let me tell you, some of these are quite tricky to find.
If you want to play this game, I highly recommend that you don’t use a walkthrough. Since, most of the fun in this game is trying to figure out what you need to do to complete the level. I’d only use a walkthrough when you are truly stuck and don’t know how to progress. Most levels can be finished in give or take 5 minutes, there are a few levels that are a bit longer, but not that much longer if you know what you are doing.
Since the levels are so short, I honestly don’t find it a big problem that you can’t save during a level. If you exit the game during a level, you’ll have to restart that level from the start once you reboot the game. And sometimes restarting a puzzle with a fresh mind might give you the solution. There is only one save slot and the game automatically saves after finishing every level. So, we don’t have to worry about that.
It’s getting better and better
When I’m honest with myself and look back at the previous games from Chubby Pixel, I’m really seeing growth in quality. While this game would take you around an hour when you know what you are doing, I rather see quality over quantity. When I started to play this game, I encountered barely any strange physics bugs or objects behaving in strange ways. These were present in the two previous games and patched out, but not this time. Also, weird little quirks like you seeing the player object (floating arms) when crouching and looking to the sides aren’t present in this game anymore.
There are also more details in the environments this time around. Visually, I felt like every level was a complete package and felt like a real dream somebody could have, while it still looked cartoony and colorful. I can’t exactly explain why, but I feel that the charm of the series is reaching its full potential in this game. The only thing I can be critical about in terms of the visuals is that if you go to the edges of the levels you can sometimes clip a bit in things and see a bit more than you are supposed to. This also very rarely happen inside the levels, but I only saw one time.
I really mean what I say in that the quality is improving each and every game. The puzzles are more clear, the visuals get better, the world design is improving… I also still adore how the music in this game is played through radio’s in the level which you can enable and disable to turn the music on and off. It also acts like a true radio where if you move away from it, the music grows more quite.
The music in this game just fits the charming atmosphere like a glove. It’s relaxing and just helps you to put your mind in a relaxing state. This game is a perfect game to wind down or just try to solve some interesting puzzles and relax.
This game also has quite the stable framerate. I didn’t notice any moments where the game started lagging or had slow downs. In terms of visuals and preformance, I only have one minor complaint about the animations. And that is that you can’t always see the punching animation when you move the camera a bit to the top.
I think that a great summary for this game is that this third entry in the Suicide Guy series is the best entry yet. The experience of the two previous games really shines through and this game is even more polished than the two games that came before it. I’m really having a difficult time trying to find things to critique. Especially since the quaility we are getting for a game that costs only €8 is insane to me.
Also, most things I can point out to critique could be patched in an update. Earlier examples I gave where mostly UI but let me give an example of a gameplay mechanic. There is a level where you have to jump on red elephant plushies to reach the sun. The level is extremely well built but I found it quite annoying that the red elephants could fly off if you jumped on the wrong area. I’d love to see a way to make these plusies more solid since it got quite frustrating if you were backtracking to get another plushie to complete the route and you jumped on one plushie the wrong way and it flew off to the ground. Another solution would be a midway checkpoint since if you complete the plushie part, you have to jump on the clouds and if you miss there, you can easily climb the castle via a ramp. Maybe I got a few times unlucky but I feel that either making these plushies more solid or giving a mid-way checkpoint during this part would improve that level quite a lot.
And that’s exactly my point I’m trying to make in this section of the article. In the past, there were more glaring flaws in the levels or just frustrating (timed) levels… Looking at you Rube Goldberg machine level from Sleeping Deeply. But in this game, a lot of the issues I found in the previous titles aren’t here anymore or in a way smaller capacity. A lot of things I talked about in this article aren’t dealbrakers. Some of them are (extreme) nitpicks even. I may repeat myself now but a lot of them can be fixed with a patch.
In conclusion, if you enjoy puzzle and/or adventure games, I’d totally recommend this game. This game doesn’t take itself too serious and that makes it a blast to play through. It’s an amazing game to spend an afternoon or two trying to beat all the levels and find all the hidden statues. I’m happy to see the newest entry in the series and looking at this entry, I’m sure that we are going to get more amazing games from Chubby Pixel. A small Italian indie game studio totally worth following.
I enjoyed my time playing this game and I’m thankful that I could write an article about it. But, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I hope you enjoyed reading the article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.
Wikipedia page
The story of this game has a simple premise. You play as Rorona, a young girl who is an apprentice at a local alchemy shop in the Arland Kingdom. Her master Astrid is so lazy that business isn’t going well at all. As a matter of fact, she didn’t get off her lazy bum for so long, the kingdom is considering to close down the shop. Rorona doesn’t want this to happen so she takes on the challenges provided by the kingdom. She gets a deadline of three years. During these three years, she has to prove that she can run the alchemy shop and make a profit. If she fails one of these challenges, the shop will be closed without any further questions.
Let’s talk about the visuals. This game looks quite nice in my opinion. While the game could have benefited from a free camera, I actually didn’t mind too much since the camera allowed me to watch the nice city and fun dungeons in great detail. Some enemies suffer from the recolor syndrome, like the slime enemies. There are at least 3 variants and only the color has been changed. I wish those games added a few extra details. Oh well. At least I never had slowdowns during gameplay and I was able to play the game at a decent frame rate.
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