Sometimes, I wonder if I spend more time typing these posts than I do actually playing the games.

• Above: The Fallen
  

  72 minutes playtime

  no achievements

Platformer. The game claims there are puzzles here, but that’s not true; it’s all just boring switch-hunts; the only time I had to stop and think was the first time I had to use the roll mechanic over a ledge, also the only time I had to use the roll mechanic over a ledge. Besides that part, the only reason you won’t instantly figure out the solution to all the puzzles is because the camera is zoomed in.

There’s some light platforming around spikes, but that’s all pretty easy, too. There’s this one area with a bunch of spikes that looks like it might be hard at first, but you can just hold the “grab vine” button and move horizontally across said vines.

You’ll have a harder time dealing with the bugs: if you’re walking up a slope and then you stop moving, you’ll bounce, which is frustrating when there’s a low spike ceiling you’ll collide with. There are anti-gravity switches, but the flipping mechanic is unpolished and can cause you to get stuck in the ceiling (especially during the final part). There’s even this one brief gimmick where you ride an elevator up and control “turrets,” but even though I couldn’t seem to get them to do anything despite pressing the buttons I was told to, I still got past that part on my first try.

The closest the game gets to having a genuine challenge is the one room with the flooding mechanic, but even that was because of cheap design: you drown when the water gets above your characters’ heads, but the block you need to press the switch will instantly teleport back to its starting position as soon as it touches the water’s surface (a surface which is constantly going up). Plus, one of the switch-hunts you need to do is partly offscreen to the right, so it’ll take you a moment to even realize it’s there, by which point it’s too late.

The ending is also very abrupt. After the skull bird flies away again like it did all the other times, you board an elevator and suddenly the game fades to credits. No fanfare, no closure, not even a music change (the game still plays the chase theme).

Not recommended.