How’d you like your platformers prepared? Tough and meaty? Then you might enjoy a thick slick of Micronytes
There’s a phrase “Masochistic platformer” that’s used to describe a platforming game where fun is gained through succeeding despite the insanely high level of difficulty. Perhaps the best example of this brutal platforming sub-genre is the Meat Boy games (LINK), where the difficulty brings you back for more rather than discouraging you. The biggest thing that a game of this type needs to work is for the controls to be absolutely spot on, the moment that the player is blaming anyone but themselves for dying then the frustration is no longer aimed at themselves and instead is directed towards the game. This is the difficulty with games that are designed for touch screen devices, the controls are never as precise as hard buttons and making a game of this masochistic style would seem to be a fool errand, but that said Gibs & Gore did a fine job despite the cards stacked against them.
There are a pair of control methods: You can either tap on each side of the screen to move and shake to jump, or use the on screen controls. There is no one ideal control method as depending on your device you might have a more capable and larger touch screen, others might have difficulty with the rather small on screen controls but have responsive accelerometer. Whichever control method you decide on things will not be perfect, but with Gibs & Gore releasing several updates to to the game recently we might end up seeing support for more methods of control, or improvements to the existing options. The Micronytes you control are quick to learn, with their simple repertoire of moves: run, jump, wall jump. There is a tutorial to help get you acquainted that lasts only a matter of seconds as the levels already gently ease you into the difficulty
There are 80 levels spread across 4 different worlds and while these levels are perhaps roughly 30 seconds long it’s highly unlikely you’ll fire though the game in under an hour. Each wold amps up the difficulty on a gradual scale and introduces more ways to die until you’ll find yourself spending a great deal of time just beating a single level, if you can move past it at all. Each level also has a trio of challenges to beat also and you’ll only get the best game ending if you’ve beaten every level by collecting all of the collectibles, without dying, under a time limit. Fortunately you don’t have to attempt all of these challenges at once, so you can rush through a level without dying and then go back to find the collectibles. Each world has its own unique textures and music to keep things fresh although this might be of little consolation to those who are stuck repeating the same level.
The game may be brutally tough, but if you fancy yourself as a platfom game master then for a few dollars Micronytes is ready to take you down a few pegs.
