Electronic Super Joy - Completed

And another game completed, this time its the turn of the colourful indie freaking hard platformer known as 'Electronic Super Joy'. Or as I would like to call it 'Super Wub-Wub Sex Noise Boy' (Rejected I guess by the Marketing team for being too dumb of a name. Oh well.)

Lets make no bones about it, this is a classic case of the 'Brutal' indie platformer as pushed by the likes of 'Super Meat Boy', almost every level throws up tricky situations, insta-kill lasers, enemies and missiles. However it never feels stale, which is a trap some of these indie platformers can get themselves into by repeating the same ideas through 100+ levels. It does this first via its short play length, its 3 'worlds' long, each one containing around 20 or so levels and some of those are just brief tutorials.

Then we get the actual levels themselves, each one trying to throw in interesting ideas as you progress from auto-scrolling levels, clingy walls, teleporters and other fun things to mess with appearing throughout. The constant throw of new items and mechanics helps the game from being stale indeed... even if it does mean the occasional underused mechanic (such as the flying one) thanks to the low game length.

That said, the game does feel at times like it was more designed around the soundtrack first. This isn't a 'bad' thing per-se but more of an observation. Its also not bad if you happen to really like dance and dubstep music. In fact because of this, the soundtrack happens to be one of the best parts of the game, bosses appearing to the beat, backgrounds pulsing and moving to each part of each song. Wonderful.

I cant think of many things to really say bad about the game other than there are a couple of levels which kick the player too hard, asking for pitch perfect jumping at speeds. I understand its supposed to be hard but those sort of jumps often just feel more unfair than anything.

That's nitpicking though. Most of the levels feel precise and the character usually controls well.

Oh and you were wondering about the 'Sex Noises' quip. Oh yeah... uh. For some reason whenever you hit any checkpoint, or if you die and respawn at one, theres a random female or male sex moan. No idea why, it just is. These can be turned off though in the options menu if you so want (I did after a while, they became more annoying than anything after a while).

In all: A thumbs up from me!