There is something to be said for the simplicity of old school platformers, primarily those that were around in the glorious 16-bit era. Slinki, recently released on Steam, brings back some of those fuzzy feelings through its animalistic protagonist and its gimmicky method of movement and combat.

 

Much like platformers of the time, Slinki is set in a forest, at least I think it was. Not much context is really provided throughout the game, instead I was forced to explore the steam page just to find out what was going on. This made it much more difficult for me to care about the game, I didn’t know who the character was, where the game was set, what the enemies were meant to be.

 

Slinki is a rabbit. A rabbit with some sort of electro-magnetic arm. This is where Slinki goes against the platformer grain, adding a small amount of innovation in the mechanics surrounding this magnetic arm. Basically put, Slinki can use his arm to gain extra jumps in a similar vein to something like Spiderman, just without the need to hook onto anything physical to gain the extra lift. It is a fun mechanic and gave the game a bit of speed when it came to some levels with constant jumping segments. Unfortunately, every other aspect of the gameplay falls into the dredges of mediocrity; boring enemies, frustrating bosses, clunky jumping and a handful of bugs. It was these little nit-picks that really brought down the experience for me, even when I was having fun I would end up finding myself losing the flow of movement to poor design choices.

 

In addition to the gameplay issues dragging down the game, the presentation does nothing to help its cause. This game is ugly. Just plain ugly. Assets are strewn around and look wonky, out of place and disjointed, with no sense of cohesion. Other times I found issues with the way in which the different planes of scope were presented, with many cases of myself misjudging what was background asset and what wasn’t. Music follows suit, providing monotonous, repetitive music throughout the entirety of the game. It’s serviceable but thoroughly uninspired, thankfully there is an option to switch the BGM off. Sound effects are also lacking and don’t have any impact at all. Even small things such as the lack of widescreen support and the big ugly boxes it left behind and the poor menu system just annoyed me further, they’re little things that just highlight the amateur feeling behind the game.

 

Slinki isn’t a bad game, but it definitely isn’t a good game, it is very firmly on the equator of mediocrity. For everything the game does right, it ends up balancing this with a host of issues. The arm magnet gimmick is a fun one and it does hold promise, which hopefully we may see expanded upon one day. At £3.99, Slinki might be worth a gamble for fans of 2D platformers, but those who aren’t too caught up in the genre may want to pass on this one.