Capsule Review: Bloo Kid 2
A retro-styled 2D platformer with a lot of goals to complete but little mechanical depth.
A 2D platformer. Progress through a series of levels, each of which has several optional objectives - including finding all the collectibles, defeating all the enemies, and reaching the end before a timer elapses.
The brightly-colored pixel-art graphics, chiptune-like music, and sound-library sound effects can come across as a bit amateurish, but they absolutely get the job done and also carry a lot of charm.
Mechanically, the game is extremely simple. You can walk, jump, and double-jump (including when bouncing off enemies) and that’s basically it. There’s only so much that can be done with such limited interaction and although the level design is often imaginative, it still runs out of tricks in a hurry. What complexity the game does have comes from things like obscurely-hidden collectibles, sometimes with limited chances to reach them in a given run-through of a level. One-way doors or areas that are only reachable by carefully bouncing off enemies (which permanently kills them) means you often need to restart an entire level to get another chance to try for the collectible, even if you know what you need to do. On top of this, it’s not generally possible to achieve all of a level’s objectives on the same attempt (taking the time to find all collectibles and kill all enemies will certainly mean the timer is long since elapsed when you reach the end). So a lot of the play time that comes from the game’s challenges is in the form of replaying levels multiple times with identical content.
The challenge and complexity thus comes far more from the game’s structure than its mechanical core. If you don’t mind the repetition and the shallow mechanics, you might have a good time here. I found the core too simple to keep engaged with and didn’t enjoy the complexity that came from unreasonably-hidden paths or the need to replay levels.
I Stopped Playing When: I played through several levels before losing interest.
Two Stars: Meh. The game has some merit - it probably held my attention for at least an hour or I came back to it for more than one play session. But there wasn't enough draw for me to stick with it for the long haul.