Review

Jan

2023

Review: Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk and Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk

Got Milk?

Go on. Judge it by its title. Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk and Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk. It’s a beast.

However ludicrous it may seem, the title encapsulates what you should expect from the duology. The repetition is disarming, but the words are mundane. Our protagonist’s goals are similarly simple—a trip to the store and a bedtime routine—but her perception distorts these events into nightmarish scenarios. The recursive title also mirrors the protagonist’s attempts to cope with the world through wordplay and obfuscation. Even the distinction between “inside” and “outside” represents the shift in perspective between the two entries. What seems random at first glance is exactingly intentional.

You can also look at the title and think it’s beyond stupid, rendering my commentary irrelevant. “Milk 1 & 2” delight in their own inaccessibility and eschew a clear narrative for surreal commentary. Being visual novels, they traded gameplay for text boxes. Your enjoyment also hinges on your ability to appreciate a slow burn which never builds to a bonfire. If you don’t buy into it, the whole affair reeks of highfalutin angst.

Considering both games clock in at under an hour total, I argue those interested should take the risk and play it without any other context. Recognizing they cost eight bucks, I acknowledge a review may be in order before you make a commitment.

What is it?

Milk 1 concerns a girl going to the store to buy milk. She cheekily frames her errand as a visual novel, casting you as a disembodied voice which either guides or criticizes her. Through her eyes, we discover an alien version of our world comprised of a sludge of two shades of red and black. This filter transforms her grocery run into a bad acid trip. Support her, and she will accomplish her task and invite you into her psyche. Upset her, and she will serve you a game over.

Milk 2 picks up immediately after the first’s conclusion, even beginning with an animated sequence summarizing Milk 1’s events. You need not worry about a game over here, and the visuals forgo the dizzying hallucinations for a more traditional anime style as we see her from the third-person perspective. The girl introduces this sequence as a point-and-click adventure, charging you with inspecting various objects in her room to help her collect her thoughts (represented by fireflies). Based on how you respond to her and if you collect the fireflies, you uncover one of five potential endings, each conveyed as a dream.

What’s good?

From the aesthetic to the soundtrack to her ramblings to our dialogue choices, Milk 1 and 2 craft an oppressive panorama of the girl’s mental illness. The first game illustrates her relationship with her psychosis and gives us a glimpse into her trauma, all the while disorienting us. The second game contributes further detail, tracking how a once semi-functional girl became caged in her own room. Gradually and almost insidiously, we discover we are not her path to relief but just another symptom of her illness. One of the most visceral realizations comes when we understand why she so meticulously cares for the order of her belongings—including her trash—in her room.
Nikita Kryukov, developer of the Milk games, has designed one of the most compelling video game protagonists in recent years. The girl’s mental illness has incapacitated and isolated her, but she is by no means a damsel in distress. She fully recognizes her likely prognosis but shows resilience by adapting to her myriad of symptoms. Many of her strategies take form as obsessive-compulsive habits, but they allow her to gain a semblance of normalcy and stability. We also see her personality outside of her illness, a witty child who takes joy in her imagination and delights in gaming, drawing, and 3D modeling. Her unrelenting determination and positive attitude add to her endearing character, a shining image which becomes all the more tragic once we understand it will be snuffed out.

What’s up to your preference?

Both games bear the label of psychological horror but don’t supply the scares associated with the genre. Certain images will invoke unease, but neither game is intended to strike fear in the player. We’re meant to empathize with the girl who exists in the chasm between sanity and insanity, a torturous limbo. This connection can stir up existential dread, which is praiseworthy of Milk 1 and 2 but is arguably not what most gamers want from a spooky game.
An hour’s worth of content may not satisfy some gamers. Unlocking all of the endings and trying out different responses will only take another half hour, if that. You have access to the soundtracks for both games, but the songs don’t exactly qualify as ear candy. With these limiting factors, your mileage depends on how much you relish ruminating on the games’ themes after you’ve reached the endings.

What’s bad?

Milk 2’s endings do their best impressions of arthouse film, translating what we already knew into esoteric musings. The Milk games succeed in their ability to depict one girl’s psychosis as a concrete reality. What she perceives is what exists, and we experience despair, confusion, and isolation as she does. The endings approach these emotions symbolically, tasking us with deciphering dreams which are as unrealistic as they are coherently thematic. Prior to her going to bed, the girl describes exactly why she has come to dislike her dreams, rendering the actual dream sequences unnecessary. Having her fall asleep and cutting to her waking up would have effectively communicated how disturbing her dreams are to her, no matter what these dreams actually contained.
Milk 2 has a glitch which softlocks the game. After selecting the vent in the girl’s room, she comments, “It’s not easy to get out of here…Ehehe…”. The fact that you cannot progress past this comment is ironic enough to make me question if this issue was intentional. The fact that this issue halts the game is evident enough it should have been fixed before release or with a day one patch.

What’s the verdict?

With most reviews, an “8” rating signals a safe purchase for the majority of gamers. When approaching Milk 1 and 2 and other games of its ilk, your tolerance for experimentalism takes precedence over whatever opinion we critics dole out. The duology is not fun or entertaining. It is neither addictive nor relaxing. It bathes you in discomfort and distress, allowing for a deeper bond with negative emotions and perhaps some clarity around them. If you’ve appreciated works like Bojack Horseman, Requiem for a Dream, and the Road and can stomach weird works like Serial Experiments Lain, Eraserhead, and Borges’ Labyrinths, Milk 1 and 2 offers another intriguing window into dysfunction.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 8
Time Played: Around 3 hours
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: Paratopic, Doki Doki Literature Club

Scoring Policy

Dec

2022

Buddy Simulator 1984 – A Game about Glitches, Infested with Bugs

It’s literally not like 1984

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have faced criticism for their numerous technical issues and lackluster performance. In the weeks since their release, they gradually fallen to rank as the worst mainline Pokémon games. Mind you, they’re still sitting pretty at 73/72 on Metacritic, but almost every reviewer has lambasted these entries for their shortcomings. The consensus seems to be your enjoyment of these games will hinge on how much you can overlook their failings and focus on the highlights. Judging by the user scores, a fair number of fans (and review bombers) could not forgive Game Freak’s mess.

Buddy Simulator 1984 presents some intriguing concepts, and somehow these concepts managed to wow reviewers despite the game’s dodgy performance. I found more in common with the angry Pokémon fans, disliking the pervasive bugs which tainted what I thought would be my only playthrough. However, publisher Feardemic pushed out an update, promising a slew of fixes. Naively hopeful, I ventured into my second playthrough, discovering the patch did exterminate some bugs but not nearly enough to prove anyone seriously play-tested the game. One update likely means another will come soon, but I’m not returning for a third disappointment.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I’ll write you a bad review.

What is it?

Upon launching the game, you’re introduced to the Anekom computer, a callback to the Amstrad home computers popular in the 80s. Like you would in those ancient times, you navigate the system’s files by typing in commands on an on-screen keyboard. Fortunately, most commands will autofill, making the keyboard little more than a clumsy inclusion. “Buddy Simulator 1984” refers to sole program initially available on the computer, one which promises an AI capable of learning from you, all in the effort to be the best buddy it can be for you.

You’ll begin by providing “Buddy” information, including your name, its name, your favorite color, and just about anything needed to answer security questions for your password. It’ll then treat you to some rudimentary games (Hangman, Rock-Paper-Scissors, Guess the Number) as it begins to form its relationship with you. Its desire to bond with you compels it to create more immersive gameplay, introducing a text-based adventure, then RPG elements, and followed by even more variations which probably shouldn’t be spoiled here.

Despite its genre-bending aspirations, Buddy Simulator 1984 plays most like a walking simulator, prioritizing story over any of its mechanics. As Buddy desperately weaves a tale of friendship, in-game glitches rip holes into its work. You can choose to listen to Buddy and avoid these problems, or you can defy it and further distort the program. The narrative doesn’t quite descend into the pure horror, but dysfunction and unease lurk within the game’s seemingly whimsical environments.

What’s good?

An unsettling tone maintains tension throughout most of the adventure. Small details or bits of text hint at morbid backstories, and the glitches present surreal scares. Although they are no strangers to death and tragedy, the cheerful NPCs rarely react to these grisly elements, seemingly gaslighting you. The soundtrack and sound effects further boost the eeriness, regularly distorting the playful ditties or giving way to discordant noise.
The game’s turn-based battle system has promise. It borrows the dynamic combat framework established in Super Mario RPG in which your attacks or blocks depend on hitting the right button at the right time. Notably, in this game, blocking not only negates all damage but recharges your special move. With varied enemy attack patterns and a cast of characters to choose as your partners, this gameplay stands out from anything else in Buddy Simulator 1984. Its simplicity couldn’t carry an entire game, but it works for the short section in which it is featured.
MINOR SPOILERS: Buddy Simulator 1984 nails the discomfort of a co-dependent relationship. Buddy is eager to please you but battles with self-doubt and a sense of inadequacy. To cope, it gambles its self-worth on making you happy, even if it has to hurt you to accomplish its goal. The relationship feels sickening and coercive, and Buddy makes for an unlikely antagonist who is as detestable as it is pitiable.

What’s bad?

Despite all of its novel ideas, the game struggles to ball them into a seamless narrative. The majority of the horror elements occur within the game-within-the-game and rarely impact the relationship between Buddy and the player directly. This results in a disconnect between the themes and the tone, and all the spooky moments have no plot payoff. The gameplay can feel similarly detached from the story because Buddy’s monologuing steers most of the character development and tension while you jump through arbitrary hoops it sets before you. The developers locked a metanarrative behind hidden collectibles, barring players from relevant backstory until they complete an aimless Easter egg hunt.
Buddy Simulator 1984 may have four unique endings but doesn’t offer enough variation in gameplay to justify subsequent playthroughs. Achieving a different ending is a matter of selecting specific dialogue options and following simple commands. Otherwise, the experience is much the same, showcasing how wordy Buddy can be and how basic the game mechanics are.
The game has more unintentional bugs and performance issues than narrative-driven glitches. Buddy complains how it needs to push the Anekom to it limits, but it certainly isn’t overclocking the Switch’s hardware, leaving no excuse for how the game stutters seemingly every ten seconds. Sprites will be replaced with white boxes if you happen to exit to the Switch main menu and then return, requiring a reset to fix. Based on where you save, you may softlock yourself because cutscenes or battles won’t trigger, necessitating another reset. The game can crash outright. The D-pad can only be used for the in-game keyboard. The keyboard, itself, is a cumbersome gimmick on consoles and should have been left with the PC version. Certain buttons commands (namely the B button) are incorrectly labeled during combat sequences, leading to failed attacks. In one of the final sections of the game, keyboard prompts flash quickly after you input button prompts, further evidence of a poor port.

What’s the verdict?

I’ll give Feardemic the benefit of the doubt and assume they’ll eventually patch Buddy Simulator 1984 into an acceptable state. If this happens, you can add a point to this score. Taking the bugs out of consideration, developer Not A Sailor Studios does deserve kudos for their emotive tale which dares to experiment with its gameplay. They may have fumbled at times in their execution, but their efforts stand them apart from the current slew of indie developers churning out metroidvanias, souls-likes, rogue-likes, and 2D side-scrolling platformers. Those interested can check out the Short Games Collection #1 which features Not A Sailor Studios’ first outing, A Game Literally About Doing Your Taxes. With both games, the developers have shown ingenuity and creativity, and if they can tighten their gameplay and storytelling, their next game should be a banger.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 6
Time Played: Just under 10 hours
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: Stories Untold, Undertale

Scoring Policy

Jun

2022

Reventure – The End is Never the End is Never the End is Never…

One can listen to only so many knock-knock jokes. This is not to say knock-knock jokes are bad. They form the foundation of our humor as children, alongside farts and “Why did the chicken cross the road?” The problem with knock-knock jokes lies with its restrictive structure. No matter how many funny puns you can think up, the joke will always start with, “Knock knock,” and “Who’s there?” Such repetition can only breed madness, a torture second only to dad jokes.

Reventure fairs much better than a book of knock-knock jokes but struggles with its own limitations. Each of its 100 endings offers a serving of comedy, the majority of which are strong enough for a laugh or a grin. Its action-adventure gameplay also acts as a varied and inventive set up to each delivery. For 30 or so endings, the formula shines. Comparatively, enduring the full 100 requires a level of patience and a passion for the game’s absurdist humor. For gamers lacking both of these, Reventure is a silly comedian who doesn’t know when to leave the stage.

What is it?

The Dark Lord has captured the princess, and you’re some schmuck that needs to save her. Well, “need” may not be the correct word. This isn’t Zelda after all. Only a few endings actually involve you rescuing the princess, so you’ll have quite a few adventures sans maidens as well. Finding the ending often requires you to literally end yourself or someone else, so feel free to kill a guard or throw yourself off a cliff for the sake of completion marks.

On its surface, Reventure styles itself as your rote 8-bit 2D action-platformer, but the gameplay has far more to do with puzzle-solving than with jumping obstacles or slaying enemies. Each adventure starts with you in your home, and you must collect items (swords, bombs, chickens, etc.) scattered across the world in order to aid your quest. You must then figure out what combination of items is needed to complete what action at which location. Do that, and Reventure will reward you with a goofy ending explaining your exploits.

At first, the map can be a little daunting, especially because you have free rein to go almost anywhere from the start. You’ll stumble upon quite a few endings naturally as you traverse the terrain or die to it. Eventually, once you get your bearings, you’ll get a feel for the map and which items are necessary to get you past certain roadblocks. The game also scatters hints liberally throughout the map which can be collected and referred to later when you need a clue to progress. This system allows you to stay on the path toward 100 endings, however long that path may be.

What’s good?

The map evolves as you find more endings, alleviating some of the repetition of beginning again and again. Some changes are only cosmetic, such as a splatter of blood on the ground or a boarded-up roof. Others make subsequent playthroughs easier, like the appearance of a teleporter or an item being relocated to your room. You eventually unlock items which also make it easier for you to find new endings, ensuring you’re never stuck for too long.
The items form a strong basis for Reventure’s puzzles. You can only carry a certain number of them at any one time, and each reduces your jump height and speed. This system forces you to re-evaluate what order you grab the items and to take new paths to reach your goal. As a result, you’ll find yourself discovering new shortcuts and adapting to the map naturally.
Although not quite as uproarious as There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension or Untitled Goose Game, Reventure still has some solid comedic chops. The humor tends to skew toward the absurd and slapstick, so if you liked the silliness of What the Golf? or Guacamelee 2, you’ll be entertained across the 100 endings.

What’s bad?

With 100 endings, repetition is inevitable, but the redundancy in endings is less forgivable. VERY MINOR SPOILERS HERE: for instance, you’ll quickly learn stabbing an NPC results in an ending. Logic dictates that stabbing other types of NPCs will trigger different endings. Consequently, any new NPC must be stabbed. You’ll find another item along the way which interacts with NPCs similarly, unlocking another slew of endings. The process feels like adding ketchup to every dish you eat: you can claim you made a new recipe, but no one is going to recognize your ketchup donut as ingenious or palatable.
A well-designed map still can’t save you from the pain of backtracking. The game has a rudimentary checkpoint mechanic, but the bandage barely covers the wound. Once you know the solution to an ending, each run will still only take a few minutes, but the majority of that time will be spent on travel, especially with the last batch of endings.
With so few tracks, the music stands out as the most repetitive element of Reventure. The 8-bit soundtrack is comprised of standard fantasy ditties which would normally fade into the background if you encountered them once or twice. If you’ve been following me this far, you know you won’t listen to them only once or twice, so the mute button becomes far more appealing after a few hours of “Time for Adventure!”

What’s the verdict?

My criticism of Reventure’s repetition is somewhat of a folly, on par with criticizing superhero movies for always having the good guys win in the end. Reventure caters to the completionist crowd who relish the consistency and incremental progress. Its bite-sized adventures will also appeal to gamers looking for a quick laugh during breaks or transitions. Where the game ultimately falters is in its lasting impression. Regardless of whether you discover 10 endings or all of them, you’ll most likely find a more satisfying conclusion in a game with considerably fewer endings.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 7
Time Played: Over 5 hours
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe; Minit

Scoring Policy

Jan

2022

Choices That Matter: And the Sun Went Out – Not My Weapon of Choice

The illusion of choice works wonders in parenting and in video games. Allow your children to choose either carrots or peas, and they feel they have control of what they eat while still getting their vegetables. Give gamers the option to be good or evil, flirt with this character or that one, and take road A or B, and they feel their actions matter in the overall story. The game, meanwhile, follows it prearranged routes, sometimes changing rails to appease us. We’re all just playing with the disconnected second controller while our older sibling occasionally acknowledges us.

Choices That Matter: And the Sun Went Out (“Sun”) promises a texted-based adventure in which your decisions carve the story. It features 2,400 either-or choices across its branching pathways. If every choice truly mattered, this game’s scope would overshadow the likes of Breath of the Wild. Sun, let alone any video game of this generation, can’t possibly be this expansive. In actuality, so many of Sun’s choices have no effect, making the game an experiment in the illusion of choice and control. The result of such an experiment is a bloated story which stops every few minutes to ask if you prefer the color blue or shooting someone.

Note: Minor spoilers moving forward.

What is it?

As the title suggests, And the Sun Went Out follows an unnamed investigator as they learn why the sun is disappearing and how to guarantee it stays. In the course of doing so, our protagonist will encounter a cult foretelling the end of the world, secret societies which speak of otherworldly energy and human sacrifices, and a growing list of murdered scientists. These exploits will send you globetrotting as the investigator follows directives from the mysterious “Company.” Although the premise has some science fiction underpinnings, your escapades fall more in the action/adventure genres in which mysteries are solved through gunfights and car chases.

The investigator narrates all of the proceedings as text against a black background. They wear a smartwatch which houses an advanced AI, “Moti,” who operates officially as a personal assistant. It’s less HAL 9000 and more Pinocchio who has complete access to the internet, minus social media and porn. Apart from helping the main character discuss plot points, Moti fulfills other AI clichés like providing inconsequential probabilities for success, updating/powering down at inopportune times, misunderstanding figures of speech despite access to the internet, calling humans illogical, and asking basic questions about morality and existence. It also functions as a semi-reliable alarm clock.

The game, itself, plays like a long-winded choose-your-adventure story. You’ll periodically select one of two options to determine what the investigator does or says. This person can’t die prematurely, so your choices will never result in a “dead end.” Instead, your inputs influence which branch you follow in a given story arc. These branches split and converge over the course of Sun’s 15 arcs, culminating in one of several endings.

What’s good?

With its varied vignettes, And the Sun Went Out likely has a few that will grip you. Two in particular stood out to me, one which follows our narrator into a secret underground facility and another which concerns a cult leader in Italy. The sun outages would make for a compelling mystery as well, if only the overall narrative didn’t devote 90% of its word count to unnecessary plot lines and characters.

What’s up to your preference?

Similar to Animal Farm, all your choices matter, but some matter more than others. Your choice can:
- impact which branch you take in the next arc
- improve your romantic relationship with one of the two characters
- change what Moti says to you in the final arc
- add an extra paragraph or two before returning you to the script the other choice follows
- do nothing

You’ll make over 500 choices in a single play-through, and 80% of them exist to justify the choice gimmick. So many options relate to whether you act polite or like a dick. The romance options straddle, “We are platonic friends, my friend,” and “My loins burn for you due to our shared trauma.” Some may enjoy how often the game requests their input. I would have preferred 100 important choices over the 2,400 included in Sun.

At around 600,000 words, Choices That Matter: And the Sun Went Out has a lot of words to read, not including the eight in the title. I played through the story twice, averaging around eight hours per reading, largely due to the massive number of words I had to read. My second go-around allowed me to experience firsthand what happened off-screen during my first reading, with two arcs being the same. Rather than fleshing out the story and world, the alternate pathways highlight the weak arcs in comparison to others. Both of my readings ended in the same way in different locations, hitting home that my choices changed the flavor of the ice cream but not the food itself. Unless high word counts titillate you, Sun’s verbosity makes for a convoluted and protracted adventure rather than a complex one.

What’s bad?

The plot suffers from poor writing, uneven tone, and plot holes. While murderers rack up their kill count and society crumbles, our protagonist worries about who’s attracted to them, complains about airports, and actively ignores any communication from their boss. Losing the sun will lead to humanity’s complete annihilation, and the narrator seemingly copes with this by chronicling everything they eat in detail. This aimless meandering leads to a bombastic climax in which both named and unnamed characters converge in one country to fight an all-out war—replete with tanks, rocket launchers, B-tier character deaths, and one-liners—against an enemy which has no logical reason to battle our heroes. Worse still, the powers of friendship, love, and soul fix the sun situation, not the aforementioned skirmish which resulted in numerous casualties.
Sun’s simplistic presentation may have worked for a mobile game, but the Switch port lacks basic staples found in other text-based adventures. You have only one save file and no way of tracking which choices or arcs you encountered in-game. You can backtrack to the beginning of a previous arc but can’t rewind to a choice or hop to any other arc. An autoread function is noticeably absent. The omission of these common features further disincentivizes any additional play-throughs.
The choices that do matter can be difficult to distinguish, and you often have too little information to reach an informed decision. This problem mainly stems from how little we know of our protagonist. They wield a silver tongue at times, but once you rely on this skill, they trip over their words and into a worse situation. They alternate between James Bond and Austin Powers in terms of combat potential, and you don’t know which one you’ll get in a conflict. The only constant is their ability to shake off consecutive concussions like a bad hangover. By the end of the story, the investigator is thrust into a leadership role when almost anyone else would be more qualified, leaving you to command an operation with little more than gut instinct.

What’s the verdict?

Choices That Matter: And the Sun Went Out resembles Icarus in that they both die to their inflated ambition. Burdened by its obese word and choice count, the story fell to the waters before it could soar. A functional narrative does exist under all the feathers and wax. Those willing to search for it would do better with the mobile version of the story, which can be downloaded for free with ads. Otherwise, the only choice that matters is whether you avoid this sun-mangled mediocrity entirely.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 5
Time Played: Over 15 hours
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: Oxenfree, any Telltale series

Scoring Policy

Jan

2022

Red Rope: Don’t Fall Behind+ – Putting Pan’s and Bowie’s Labyrinths to Shame

Some players enjoy games like their hot sauce: if you’re not in pain and bleeding from some orifice, it’s not good enough. They want brutally difficult games which mock their skills and steal their lunch money. With genres like bullet hell shooters, roguelikes, Soulslikes, and precision platformers, the video game industry has embraced these thrill-seekers and offered arenas to earn bragging rights. Many of these games, however, lack one of the greatest challenges a player can encounter: basic communication and teamwork skills, the ghost pepper of video games.

Red Rope: Don’t Fall Behind+ provides the punishing difficulty in a couch-cooperative form. You and your gaming partner must become masters of patience and solidarity to succeed, and even then, you’ll die, again and again. Red Rope’s developers, Yonder, have crafted a maze of ruthless monsters and gruesome death traps, all in the effort to destroy relationships and spirits in equal measure. Melodrama aside, this game presents a spicy test to hardcore gamers, and those willing to tackle the labyrinth will discover a smartly-designed game in which hard-fought success is intoxicating.

What is it?

You and your partner (or just you, with a character assigned to each control stick) find yourselves in a labyrinth, bound by the titular red rope. Apart from a few NPCs, everything wants to kill you, from ghosts to minotaurs to self-immolating witches. You must navigate at least six of the 12 houses in order to access and defeat the main baddie at the center of the labyrinth, thus earning your freedom.

You will dispatch most enemies by either passing your rope over them or encircling them with it. The controls are simple enough, with X allowing you to pirouette and shorten your rope while ZL slows you to a walk. Otherwise, you simply move, with the challenge being how you travel in-sync with your partner. Move in opposite directions or after different targets, and you’ll tug each other and go nowhere. Eliminating an enemy will lengthen your rope and provide more freedom to move, but this precious elbow room will disappear each time you die.

And die you will. A single touch from a monster will kill you. Falling down a pit or into spikes will do that as well. If something burns or severs your rope, the two of you will disintegrate, just like babies when the umbilical cord is cut too early. You’ll die so often the game gives you 100 lives to start. Lose them all, and you have to start from the beginning (or reload from a checkpoint, but that sounds much less dire). You can regain lives a few different ways, offering a semblance of hope as the ticker ever decreases.

Despite the number of enemies you’ll fight, Red Rope plays more like a puzzle game than a dungeon crawler. Each house is separated into several single-screen rooms which you cannot leave until all enemies are cleared. Later houses will throw in more obstacle courses and button-based puzzles which often prove just as deadly as the beasties. Careful planning—in addition to quick reflexes and teamwork—will help you figure out how to take out the monsters with the fewest deaths possible. These rooms need not be completed in one go either. Most enemies won’t respawn after you kill them, allowing you to slowly chip away at the numbers over the course of several lives.

What’s good?

Red Rope’s simple presentation belies the intentional complexity of the labyrinth. The first room of each house acts as a tutorial, following the Miyamoto school of thought where the level design gently nudges you toward how you should play. Subsequent rooms each add a variation to the formula, and you’ll adjust as you die. By the final few rooms of a house, you’ll know how to anticipate and conquer the house’s obstacles.
Many players will consider Red Rope’s difficulty as a plus. For those who find the challenge too arduous, the game implements several mechanics to promote your success. Easy-to-kill skeletons and neutral shadow people offer extra lives, and you can create checkpoints to reload if you have a particular disastrous run. As noted earlier, you only need to clear half of the 12 houses, so you can cherry-pick the easier ones (Spring, Winter, Earth, Water, Famine, War). The game saves at every room as well, allowing you to take breaks and scream into a pillow whenever needed.
Every cleared room feels like triumph, similar to overcoming a boss in Dark Souls or making any progress in Getting Over It. When you and your partner finally move in-sync, it’s like you’ve forged your soulmate through hellfire and cursing. In the past, Yonder would add you as a character if you bested the labyrinth, and now, they still encourage you to email them so they can congratulate you. At the very least, winning means you join an exclusive leaderboard of only four teams/individuals, as of the time of this writing.

What’s bad?

Certain mechanics push past masochistic pleasure and into torturous annoyance. The House of Wind showcases moving platforms above bottomless pits which demand you to move cautiously and slowly lest you fall to your death and have to restart the tedium again. The House of Pestilence’s central gimmick is a floor tile which reverses your movement, which is finicky in out of itself but gets worse when you transition between normal floor tiles and the reversed floor tiles. Because a house is often defined by one theme, if you don’t like that theme, it can be a slog to clear that section.
Each house typically has one or two dud rooms, usually caused by two mechanics. One, some enemies amble about randomly in their room, leaving you to wait until they offer a window for you to strike. Two, button-based puzzles reset when you die—unlike the enemies—resulting in unnecessary repetition. The boss for the House of Fate struggles with both of these issues, making an otherwise brilliant encounter a test of patience and luck.
The presentation is lackluster. Three minimalistic songs will accompany you during the majority of your journey through the houses, looping endlessly as you die and try again. Although pleasant for the most part, the pixel art lacks any distinctive flair. As covered in this document, Yonder injected a good deal of symbolism in their art design, but apart from the central theme of duality, all of the literary references and hidden meanings amount a to smorgasbord of disjointed ideas rather than a defining message. Bugs are present as well, most notably in the battle with the House of Pestilence’s boss.

What’s the verdict?

Red Rope: Don’t Fall Behind+ has all the trappings of a cult classic except for the cult following. Not everyone will have a gaming partner who likes aggressively difficult couch co-op indie games, and I imagine fewer still would want to venture into the labyrinth alone. Certain players do meet these criteria, even if they’re all playing Don’t Starve Together instead. For that crew, Red Rope earns a hearty recognition with its intelligent level design and strong core concept. If Red Rope remains in obscurity, it more than earns its distinction as the best hidden gem on the Switch.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 8
Time Played: Over 30 hours
Number of Players: 1-2
Games Like It on Switch: Phogs!, Unravel Two

Scoring Policy

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