Fewer games in recent memory make a worse first impression than Concursion – a side-scrolling platformer by developer Puuba. The artwork is bland and generic, the music is mostly uninspired, sounds effects seem to be missing and of inconsistent quality, and the gameplay seems simple and derivative. I spent the first twenty or so minutes playing the game thinking about how I was going to articulately rip it apart in this review. I found my thoughts being distracted, however, by the later levels in the game. At some point when I wasn’t looking, Concursion actually became a pretty fun, challenging little platformer.
In case you didn’t believe me about the horrible first impression that it gives, Concursion opens in a fantasy-like setting when a princess is captured by a lizard man. No, I didn’t accidentally play Mario – this is how the game opens. There’s a little more to it than that, though. For some strange reason, the world is being infested with portals that seem to glimpse into other dimensions. The plot really isn’t that important, but what’s there can actually be chuckle-worthy, and the way they wrap up the princess trope is actually kind of clever. Nevertheless, it’s just an excuse for you to run right and jump a whole bunch.
And that is something you will do a lot of, but that is not the only thing you will do. The hook in Concursion is that those aforementioned dimensions (aforedementions?) act as a sort of gameplay altering portal. While one second you’re playing as a little knight character who can run and jump, you will walk through a dimension the next second and be a double-jumping, wall-climbing ninja. Keep pressing forward and you will end up as a little astronaut who uses a jetpack to hover through space. Obviously, you wouldn’t be a very good astronaut without a spaceship, so you go through another dimension and you’re in a side-scrolling shooter similar to R-Type. Finally, you go through a narrow tunnel-like dimension and you basically become Pacman, forced to move through little lanes collecting dots. These mechanics aren’t introduced to you in a particularly intuitive way and it seems very gimmicky at first, but Puuba finds clever and creative ways to mix and match these mechanics to make really challenging and interesting levels. Once you get over the initial mind shift of having your controls altered in an instant, you won’t think anything of it.
There are a couple of issues I have with this system: 1) The Pacman dimension is absolutely terrible. Any time I found myself in a level with one of these sections (and there are quite a few), I would let out an audible “ugh”. You can only do so much with the Pacman style of movement and they find a way to stretch it as far as it can possibly go. It wouldn’t be that big of an issue, however, if the controls actually worked as intended during these sections. I found myself turning corners when I wanted to go straight and vice versa. This often led to my demise, which means I have to replay those sections over and over again. There were three times (literally) where I thought that they did the Pacman thing effectively, but they attempt it far more than that.
2) There are several sections in the game that push this mechanic to the limit in terms of challenge. There will be long stretches where you are jumping through the air as the ninja into a dimension that turns you into an astronaut above a pit of spikes. You’re then supposed to exit the dimension, use the mid-air jump, and land into another dimension on the other side of the spikes. The problem is that you use the same button to boost the astronaut’s backpack as you do to jump, so often you would be attempting to fine-tune your rocket boost and then unintentionally initiate your mid-air jump prematurely. I got stuck on these sections for far too long because of this. I understand that the developers were trying mix up these dimensions in as many ways as possible, but sections like these occurred far too often to overlook. There are other examples of cumbersome obstacles like this throughout the rest of the game, as well.
The level design ranges from great to not great. When all of these systems click, they click really well. I had a great time with a lot of these levels. There were times where I just wanted to give the developers a big high-five and tell them they’re awesome. Then, immediately afterward, I would want to strangle them, because for every great level there is one that is designed rather questionably. These poor levels can lead to being “unfair” instead of “challenging”, or they could result in breaking up the flow of the reasonably fast-paced game. There are times where checkpoints are scarce, and there is at least one level that I can remember that didn’t even have one at all. This is kind of in the same vein as the inconsistent difficulty throughout the game. There is no difficulty progression to speak of. Sometimes it’s really hard and sometimes it’s laughably easy. It’s possible that they want to give you a break from the challenge, but there doesn’t seem to be any real pattern to it. It just seems completely random whether or not the level will be challenging. Also, there are far too many forced-scrolling levels.
Actually, there are a lot of levels in general. The game took me about four and a half hours to complete, and that was with me completely ignoring all of the collectibles and time trials. If you were a crazy person, you could collect all of the gems in the levels that are placed in difficult locations and then beat all of the levels under the par time. This would add a lot of replayability. If you manage to do go on collecting, there is a world that unlocks levels based on the amount of gems that you have at the end of the game. There’s quite a bit of content packed away in Concursion.
The bosses range from not great to really not great. There are some that are aesthetically kind of interesting (I won’t spoil it, but they aren’t typical boss fights), and ironically, these are the best designed fights in the game. The rest of them, however, are poorly done. The issue is that the game relies on projectiles being the main challenge for most of these bosses. Normally that would be fine, but a lot of the time the projectiles come from off-screen. Again, normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but they seem to spawn randomly with no pattern at all. This, coupled with the regular boss pattern, means you can find yourself taking damage that you couldn’t avoid just because you got an unlucky projectile placement. This led to me dying unnecessarily many times on boss fights. They also go on for far too long – longer than the actual levels.
I would describe the graphics as being at the level of a high-quality flash game. Despite the term “high-quality”, however, that is not a complement. There were times where I thought the game was a compilation of clipart that comes free with most software and a really detailed MS Paint job. The characters, while bland, look fine when they’re standing still. Once they start moving, though, they look extremely awkward. Some of it is silky smooth while some of it only has a couple of frames of animation. The backgrounds are very generic, and they don’t even look like they connect to the foreground. It kind of looks like the level assets were created and then a background was made separately without the consideration of how it would fit the level. The visuals definitely aren’t the reason to play Concursion.
The same can be said for the audio, too. It is oddly inconsistent. Most of the sound effects sound like they could be found on a royalty-free website, but occasionally there will be an enemy or a boss encounter that has a grunt or shout that was clearly voiced by a human being. It is quite jarring to hear. Some of them are of such low quality that they sound distorted, as if they shouted too loud into the microphone. One boss fight in particular has (intentionally) distorted speech that I found completely incomprehensible. The soundtrack is pretty decent, though.
In spite of the bland presentation and relatively frequent gameplay hiccups, I found myself having a lot of fun with Concursion. Some of the level design is top-notch and the dimensional hook is just enough to give it its own unique feel. As a first outing, I think it’s a great step. I would love to see what else Puuba could do with this concept now that they’ve had some experience and can learn from their mistakes. If you’re not into platformers, this game isn’t going to change your mind. If you’re like me and love this style of game, though, you might want to try to overlook the flaws so you can play some truly challenging and fun levels.
A PC copy of Concursion was provided by Puuba for this review.
Concursion Review
Platforms: PC | Developer: Puuba | Publisher: Mastertronic | Rating: Not Rated
Story5
Gameplay7.5
Graphics3
Sound4
Replayability8
Controls7
Some strong level design
Interesting/unique gameplay hook
Lots of levels and unlockables
Generic/bland presnetation
Poor difficulty progression
Some gameplay experiments don't work
7Overall Score
Reader Rating: (0 Votes)
0.0
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