Remember the days of playing flash games in the computer lab at school? Or do you even remember when a computer lab was a thing? Well either way, back in the 1990s and 2000s, it was pretty common to jump onto websites like Addicting Games or Kongregate to play random free flash in your spare time. Teachers didn't usually mind as long as you got your work done first, and if they did mind students usually still got on anyway. Of course now days mobile games have kinda taken the place of the old flash games, but the concept is still pretty much the same.
Rather than being full fledged adventures, these games tended to be mini games that challenged you to shoot for the high score, or make your way through a series of levels. They weren't typically that advanced, but they were fun, addicting, and let you challenge your friends to see who could make it to what level.
Now you may be asking "what does this have to do with anything," but to put it simply, these old flash games are exactly what GeoJelly remind me of. When I was given a review copy I couldn't help but think "oh this reminds me of middle school!" And I was actually excited to play it. Well, after spending I'm not sure how many hours beating my head off of a wall (because I'm stubborn and refuse to give up), I think I've seen just about all the game has to offer... Let's just say there's a reason the game is only $10.
The Core Gameplay:
The gameplay in GeoJelly is pretty simple. You're a blob, and you hold left or right on the analog stick or D-Pad to send yourself flying. You must navigate the stages, collect all of the "gems" hidden throughout each stage, and make it to the goal without getting hit and dying. It's a very, VERY, simple setup, and it doesn't evolve past that.
The longer you hold left or right the higher and stronger your jump will be, and simply tapping it will allow you to do a little hop to reposition yourself. Stages are filled with traps to avoid, and platforms you need to use to cross gaps, and later stages start to introduce things like bounce pads, and gravity spots. Again, the gameplay never evolves past collecting gems and getting to the end of the stage, but each stage does have a different layout for you to tackle. It's nearly always the same traps and objects as well, but they're placed differently to make things more of a challenge.
The thing is, the levels aren't exactly balanced.
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Early stages try to introduce you to the general mechanics and what to expect, but some stages will suddenly throw everything at you and cause you to die over and over and over again. You'll think the game will just get harder from there, but the very next stage might be an "auto-stage," which is nothing but bounce pads that take you right to the goal. Since level progression is actually locked behind how many gems you've picked up, you can play stages in almost any order, so the weird balance can help you in some situations. Stuck on a stage? Just skip it for now, clear the easy ones, and come back later; done. You still need to finish all the stages to unlock the trophies for doing so, but that's going to depend if you are motivated enough to do so or not.
Overall there's nothing wrong with the way the game is setup, and it can be fun trying to overcome the different challenges. Again, it does give me the same feeling the old flash games did; however, there is one major difference between this game and the free flash games... The flash games were actually more polished...
GeoJelly is a game that unfortunately is held back by it's issues.
The very first thing most players will notice is the generic graphics. While this isn't truly an issue on it's own, the lack of variety in the backgrounds, and generic objects and shapes used gets pretty old pretty quick. The detailed diamond in the logo is nothing more than a triangle in the actual game, and that's a bit odd. Sure, games like Thomas was Alone, or N+ used a similar simplistic style, but it just doesn't quite hit the same here. The weirdest part is, although there are multiple "areas" within the game, they actually all look the same as well. It makes the game feel like it's in early beta, but the real kicker is actually the music.
To go along with the basic sprites and backgrounds, there is only a single song in the entire game, and you will hear it a lot. It's on constant loop, and doesn't stop playing from the moment you start the game up. It would've been nice if each stage had it's own tune, but that is not the case here. After dying to the same song close to one thousand times, it got pretty old fast. Of course one might normally say it's my fault for being bad at the game to die that many times, but that's actually because of the two biggest issues with the game...
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First of all, the moment you start to jump, you are locked in. The jump strength bar quickly begins to fill the moment you press left or right, and there is no stopping it. If you want to do a short jump, you better be ready with perfect timing to pull off that short jump. Hold it too long? You're overshooting and you'll be dead. It didn't take me too long to get this down, nor did it take me long to realize tapping could help me readjust before attempting a real jump, but this "being locked in" issue only becomes worse when combined with the complete luck and randomness the game has to offer.
Pretty early on the game introduces projectiles that you must dodge. These objects are shot off in a pattern, but they require near perfect aim to dodge. To do such a thing, not only do you have to time and release your jump correctly, but you also have to time and release the jump's strength correctly.
You can't simply start a jump and hold and release it when there's a gap in the bullets. Instead you have to predict the future, hold and release your jump with perfect strength timing, and watch your slime fly through the air after a delay to avoid said shots. Mix in the fact that shots can bounce off of walls and come back and hit you, and there's another future event you need to be ready for. As the game has awkward physics, it makes it even harder to predict what will happen, and bounce pad spaces will not always react as intended. What would be a pretty simple task in other games, becomes a nightmare of guesswork, and hoping for the best. Of course it wouldn't be too bad if you just had to beat the stage, but after spending time to collect every gem in the stage, only to then be killed by luck at the end.. Let's just say that it is not fun.
Putting aside the bad timing for dodging, other ground spaces simply do not work as intended. There is one stage where you are supposed to bounce off of a launch pad, and then ride the gravity area all the way to the stage's exit. Before this, you are expected to collect all the gems along the way, which require you to bounce off of multiple other pads, while avoiding killing yourself. This part isn't too bad, but it is time consuming, and requires backtracking. The problem comes in once you get to the gravity section, as it does not like to work as intended. Instead the bounce pad will give you too much force and make the gravity field throw you into spikes, or if you avoid the bounce pad you'll simply fall.
After at least fifty tries, I eventually got through the stage because when I hit the bounce pad I seemingly glitched, got thrown across the stage into one of the bounce spaces below, and then launched back into the air. Of course I then almost died at the end, because the stage ended with a "choose which path to drop down" section at the end, where I had to guess which path didn't kill me. It's a cheap tactic (that I've personally used...), but it's not the best game design. Especially when the stage doesn't fundamentally work like it should.
It's frustrating to say the least.
But it isn't all bad.
Generic backgrounds, a single repeating song, the lack of a cancel button, and luck based gameplay aside... It's an interesting concept, and I did like the stages that didn't rely on luck. The game managed to pray on my stubbornness to get me to keep going, and ultimately it did have me feeling nostalgic for the flash games I used to play. It's a game that has potential, but it really needs a fresh coat of paint and some polish. (Simply adding a jump cancel button would go a long way.)
That being said, it's not a game I can truly recommend in it's current state. I appreciate the developers for letting me have a review copy, but I really hope they can take this review to heart, and improve the game. I'd love to see it realize it's potential, but it is nowhere near that point as it stands. (I also like our Jelly main character, so I wouldn't mind seeing more of it...)
Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from https://www.keymailer.co
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