The humble platformer is among my favorite game genres, pretty much ever since I hit that first question block with Mario. Strangely, in more recent times 2d platformers have become a  niche within the genre that has seen a steady amount of innovation in the indie scene due to its ease of art creation. In this field, Chester from developer Benjamin Friedrich has stepped up to the plate, and is ready to show us its take on the genre, with a whole host of characters and a highly unique and chameleonesque visual flair.

Gameplay

Chester is, mechanically speaking, a platformer from stem to stern. I would say its experience is most similar to that of Super Mario Bros. with lots of precarious jumps, and little critters everywhere to ruin your day — hell there’s even a few swimming parts! But the basic mechanics aren’t where Chester developer Benjamin Friedrich decided to get creative.

While the aethstetic of the game is certainly the first unique thing you’ll notice about the game, it isn’t the only thing its got going on. There is also a plethora of characters that can be swapped in and out at any point during play. Each of the characters have special traits and abilities. These can range from different bullet mechanics to jump/fall physics. The result is an additional layer of complexity to the various platformer levels where each obstacle may have a specific character in mind. While that is all pretty cool sounding, I kind of felt like the system wasn’t quite polished up yet. There seemed to be some balance issues, I actually rarely swapped out the posh Chester, who’s stylish umbrella allows him to slow fall. If you don’t know why slow fall in a platformer could be problematic for balance I can’t help you.

Each of the characters also has a special power, ranging from bullet time to omg-fireballs-everywhere. The characters base powers and special powers have leveling system associated with it. So the more you use a particular character the more experience they will receive. The experience and levels gained is retained even on failed attempts to clear levels. So even when you are sucking and dying repeatedly on a single level you’ll be progressing in some form — not that I would know from personal experience or anything.

So everything is sounding pretty good so far right? Well it is, pretty good. But here’s the thing, the game is loaded with bugs. It’s pretty clear that Chester was rushed by its acceptance into the Indie Games Summer uprising. There are some jumping issues, some odd collision, a few platforms that cascade off the screen, some textures that don’t line up right, a few instances of characters popping out of character select facing the wrong way, and I’m sure I’m missing some others. That said the game is a turd, a turd made of diamond, that I have every confidence in the developer to polish up.  Benjamin Friedrich happened to be watching me play the game on the day of release, and mentioned to us that a patch was in peer review as  we spoke. Hopefully that means fixes for all these problems are on the way quickly as well as a promise of more content to come, so check back here for an update on these issues as they very likely will effect my review.

Another negative on the game is the ending or lack there of. It doesn’t have one at all, you play through the three worlds, and the game just ends. There are no credits scrolling, there’s no “the winner is you” screen, you simply beat the last level on the third world and another one doesn’t appear. I don’t have any idea if there are any plans to extend it or give it an ending. It really isn’t a story driven game, so it’s not going to leave you hanging, as much as it is going to simply end really awkwardly.

Audio/Visual

Chester has one of the best looking aesthetics I’ve seen on the platform to date. The visuals of the game is central to one of its primary mechanics, and or gimmicks. The various characters are able to collect skins within the worlds of the game. Once unlocked the skins will change the visuals of the entire level you are playing. So every level of the game has something like six sets of absolutely beautiful assets. There are several different styles including a pen and paper sketch style, a high contrast painted style, a pixel art style, a sort of pixel art/water color mashup, and even one that looks like blue prints — the game is like an interactive work of visual art. Some skins are more conducive to play than others, with their contrasts and color palettes making actual gameplay easier or harder. So while progressing, it’s probably best to pick the one that helps you most, and then you can go back and try them all out with different visuals with dramatically reduced frustration.

The music of the game is wonderfully tranquil, it did its best to keep me from throwing my control through the face of the nearest person to me as I was repeatedly falling into the same pile of spikes. It has a great sound that matches up really well with the game’s sort of surreal visuals. I will admit I would have loved to have seen the music actually change with the visual style selected. The sound effects of the game are nice, each of the chesters has a special sound effect or two, and the enemies have unique sounds that communicate whats happening quite well. There is an occasional sound volume issue, where some sound effects are quite loud indeed. In particular the destructible walls I think had kind of a late night car commercial quality to its volume.

Summary

Update: After spending some time with the 1.0.1 patch, the game does in fact feel vastly improved. The only exception would be the issue of jumping near a wall and being automatically wall jumped, it actually feels worse, a lot worse. but never the less I feel pretty confident that I can bump this one up to a recommended buy.

Despite the many bugs and lack of closure in Chester, I had a good time both looking at and playing through Chester. I also have a lot of confidence in Mr. Friedrich the game’s developer to get things straightened out. That said, it’s not my job to recommend games on speculation and faith. So as things stand right now my recommendation is to download the trial, check things out, and keep a look out for an update to this post with patch details. The game is currently available on the Xbox Live Indie Games platform for 240 Microsoft Food Stamps(seriously indie devs use these to eat)