Spirit Roots by indie game developer Fireart Games (aka Fredbear Limited), is a pleasant little side-scrolling platformer with beautifulSpirit Roots by indie game developer Fireart Games (aka Fredbear Limited), is a pleasant little side-scrolling platformer with beautiful appearance, classic gameplay elements and not much else. Although it doesn't bring anything new to the board, it is beautiful and for fans of the genre, a good diversion, if lacking originality.
The opening of the game is an amazing animated introduction to what seems like an incredible world, with multiple races, a tragedy spanning multiple worlds, and a uniquely designed hero. Unfortunately, it seems like that's where most of the imagination for the game went, as the game design itself lacks originality. While the five worlds (and the ten levels for each world) are quite beautiful, the level design is anything but inspired, with each subsequent level simply being reskinned, harder and longer versions of the previous levels.
The gameplay is fairly standard action platformer, with basic run, jump, shoot (and slash) mechanics. The standard jump is a bit touchy, I found that I had to jump a little early in a lot of cases. The double jump feels just right, giving about 150% over the standard jump and allowing directional changes (necessary for some levels), and the edge-grab is just about right for narrow escapes, if a bit... too clingy at times (grabbing edges you don't want to grab). There are plenty of environmental hazards, but only a few different enemy types.
One frustrating aspect of the gameplay is the lack of any way to view anything not immediately on the screen, resulting in a lot of 'hail mary' jumps that end up in disaster. And given the game's one-hit-kill mechanic that sends you to the nearest checkpoint, levels are often just painful steps of inching forward to figure out each level before getting sent back to the beginning. As the levels get longer and distance between checkpoints increases, this gets ever-more annoying, bordering on flashbacks to the Lion King.
The game lacks any ingenuity beyond the first level in each world. Once you finish the first level, you've learned all the new mechanics (what few there are). There are no powerups, new attacks or interesting new developments to encounter.
The levels themselves are beautiful, with brightly painted foregrounds and several layers of slightly-blurred backgrounds. The decision to include a layer in front of the character with occasional trees and bushes was interesting, though occasionally frustrating as it blocked something the player needs to see to land on, but they mostly just added a nice bit of visual variety to otherwise repetitive levels, as the number of assets are fairly limited.
Sound quality in this game is about par, with nicely composed level music and good sound effects. The music was rather Elfman-like, reminiscent of Nightmare Before Christmas, rather than Coraline (which was supposedly an inspiration for the game).… Expand
