A 2D Arcade Platformer, this game is extremely simple – you are a marshmallow-like blob who can jump (including wall jump).
Your goal is to make your way up as high as you can.
Blocks contstantly fall from above and pile up at the bottom of the screen. These blocks are of variable sizes, and can be jumped off of – but will squash you if they fall on your head.
A rising tide of lava (and, later on, at higher elevations, stormclouds and eventually a sweeping laser) will pursue you upwards as well, meaning that you cannot fall too far behind the avalanche of blocks or else you will die.
In addition to the blocks, there are enemies. Some of these spawn on the blocks, such as leaping snakes and chickens (which can be killed by hopping on their heads), spiked blocks (which hurt you if you land on their heads, but can be pushed off), and super chickens (which spit rolling lava balls at you). Others can fly – there are birds which try to drop eggs on your head, flying squid which try to run into you, and dragons which spit fireballs at you. All of these can also be dispatched by hopping on their heads.
To help the player, there are chests which spawn as well. These chests can contain various powerups, which fill up red squares on the right hand side of the screen. At first, you can carry only one powerup, but as you acquire more of these squares during your climb, you can carry up to four. These powerups have highly variable abilities, from a pogo stick which makes you bounce continuously but lets you jump higher, to a teleporter which lets you go through solid objects, to ram’s horns which allow you to smash blocks above you by jumping into them twice as quickly, to a shield which absorbs multiple hits before breaking. Every time you are struck, you lose one powerup – and if you have no powerups, you die. Thus, powerups serve as a sort of life meter, and continuously collecting them (and losing them as you get hit by enemies) is a major part of the gameplay.
There are also “followers”, three static powerups which follow you around and allow you to move faster and jump higher. Each of these can be upgraded up to three times. In addition, there are green extra life mushrooms which totally aren’t ripped off from Super Mario Brothers (*cough*) which can also follow you around and allow you to respawn regardless of your method of death – you can even come back from being squashed by blocks or falling into the lava, which ordinarily kill you regardless of how many powerups you’re carrying!
Breaking up the climb are various bosses at various set points. These give you a breather from the constant platforming, and are mostly very easy to beat – indeed, they are mostly welcome breaks from the much more intense platforming gameplay present while the avalanche of blocks is ongoing.
Climbing up to 1800 feet allows you to confront the final boss, but to gain all the achievements you need to climb all the way to 3000 feet and confront several “double boss” fights, where two bosses from earlier in the game spawn at the same time and you must defeat them both.
Every time you die, you must start your climb over, but there are coins you collect over the course of the game which can be spent in a shop in order to give yourself permanent bonuses (or buy cosmetic items). These coins can allow you to start with various items, companions, or even alter the gameplay in various ways, such as increasing the rate of lava rise but doubling the number of coins which spawn. These coins can both be spent on in-game items during a climb in various shops which periodically spawn, or can be stored away in in-game banks and then spent on the out-of-game items.
There are also missions and quests which periodically drop from the sky in the form of scrolls; these missions and quests give the player coins and experience for grabbing them. Experience is used to unlock all the in-game items, while the coins are useful for the same reason as always.
So, given I have now explained EVERYTHING in the game, how IS it to play?
The reality is that it is a pure reflex platformer. While it starts off fairly slow-paced, by the time you’re trying to reach for the stars (and the last few achievements), massive numbers of blocks fall from above and huge numbers of dangerous enemies spawn constantly. The game is essentially a reflex-intensive 2D platformer with moving platforms at that point, and it is likely to take you 10 hours or so to 100% the game – and probably about half that to beat the final boss.
Ultimately, how much fun you have with this game is probably up to the kind of player you are. Do you like endless arcade-style games? Are you apt to be frustrated if your ten minute long session ends with you getting crushed below a block a hundred feet before your destination? Does a game which has no story or much variety or really much of anything but the pure straightforward platforming gameplay appeal to you?
In the end, I can’t say that I didn’t find this game interesting in a sense, but at the same time, I could never really shake a sense of cheapness – it feels like a glorified flash game. It is extremely simple, and there really isn’t much to it – it is just you trying to beat your high score and climb ever-higher in the avalanche.
If that sort of thing doesn’t appeal to you, you really probably don’t want to buy this game. If it does… well, maybe there’s something here for you.
2.5