Making an original video game is never easy. If it’s a fully fleshed out, well designed piece then it demands time, care and respect from a range of people both inside and outside the studio. Drawing on the creative talents of designers and programmers to bring a world to life and then testers to smooth out the final product is critical. But what if you created a video game that was built off bugs or glitches?

Sir! I’d Like To Report A Bug! answers this eternal question, by giving us a stylised 2D platformer with a range of deliberate flaws that are designed to make the gameplay even more challenging as the player progresses. While hardcore platformers have mostly died out on the mainstream market, this is one not to be missed for fans of the genre.

As the story, logically, goes, you take control of Jim, a twenty something game tester who has been contracted to use an experimental piece of Virtual Reality gear (that isn’t available anywhere else on the planet). In a sequence that’s seemingly a homage to The Matrix, Jim’s reality is somehow corrupted by the equipment, meaning that he has to live with the same bugs that he was testing in the first place.

The concept and execution of these ‘glitches’ is actually extremely funny to begin with, as you inevitably marvel at the NPC’s that are sticking themselves to your body or that car in the distance that just flew into the cosmos. However, as you progress through your working week, the problems gradually escalate in severity and lethality, which is where this game’s unforgiving 80’s mindset comes into play.

Spikes in difficulty, especially from Wednesday morning onwards, will have you yelling all sorts of profanities at great volume as the additional sentences “that shouldn’t have killed me” and “are you kidding me” float around constantly. Fuelled in a truly nostalgic manner, this title even uses pixelated art and chip music to make players who enjoyed this, now lost, genre originally, feel right at home without alienating the rest of the audience.

But with the style, come the pitfalls. As previously mentioned, this game does have an infuriating high learning curve that can properly put you off if you’re not one for suffering through an experience. Or if you can’t be bothered spending a good couple of hours making sure you understand everything about the jumping mechanics. Some of the deaths are wholly unfair to boot, which is a tad off putting should you die right next to a checkpoint and are then forced to head right back to the start.

Aside from the one player story mode, there are also challenge modes that promise to be even harder than Thursday morning (in the game). Unfortunately though, these are slightly, ironically, broken at the moment. Loading up the dollar-rain dodging challenge simply forces you to be instantly kicked back to the main menu. This trend is similarly continued in other selections too, and while it’s a defect likely to be fixed, it ruins the whole point when your score isn’t logged by the system.

Sir! I’d Like to Report a Bug! is a fantastic throw-back platformer that surrounds itself with nostalgic mechanics coupled neatly with modern references that create a fun game which will inspire players to keep playing even when you’re wanting to kill everyone in the immediate vicinity. It suffers with regulating difficulty between levels but makes up with charm and delivery overall.