Man, I miss the nice outdated days after I’d spend $1 on a small-scale indie and two hours later I’d have a assessment posted for it. Back after I was the Queen of Xbox Live Indie Games, many of the video games I’d choose to function on this weblog, for higher and for worse, didn’t require a large time funding to ship a verdict on. This week, I used to be feeling significantly nostalgic for that, so I threw on Maddening Euphoria by Allison James and her Chequered Ink studio. I didn’t even notice I’d already accomplished a sport by her, 2019’s Gyro Boss DX. It was, you realize, positive. Nothing particular, but additionally nothing particularly incorrect with it. It’s a Top 100 sport on the IGC Leaderboard (#79 as of this writing) that additionally holds the uncommon distinction of being a kind of video games I’ve stored taking part in after the assessment was over. To at the present time, if I’ve my Switch and I solely have 5 to 10 minutes to kill, I’ll both boot-up Gyro Boss DX or Not Not. I’ll have much more enjoyable messing round with them than I’ll having my iPhone scream at me to purchase micro-transactions even on video games that in principle shouldn’t have any. The medium NEEDS these fast burst, nothing gained, nothing misplaced kind of video games that make in any other case boring wait instances cross quicker. I can’t think about somebody in a line or a ready room saying “I only have ten minutes. Let’s see if I can get a little further in Breath of the Wild!”

Maddening Euphoria has easy, stark graphics that remind me of Lumines. Along with the soundtrack, it offers the entire sport a music video-like vibe. Oh, and since there’s actually no place within the precise assessment for me to bitch about this, that is a kind of video games that blocks you from recording clips along with your Switch. Screenshots solely. Very maddening, however not euphorically so.

Maddening Euphoria is reduce from the identical material as Gyro Boss DX in that it’s optimized for brief play periods and primarily based round difficult your individual excessive scores. And, after I say brief, I imply most of my rounds lasted a matter of seconds. It’s kind of like a randomly-generated model of the Impossible Game. A punisher the place it’s essential to outrun a tempo bar whereas leaping over pits and spikes. I’ve acquired a variety of grievances to air with it, so please remember the fact that I finally loved this sport. I believed I’d put an hour or two into it and be accomplished. Two days later and I’m lastly typing this assessment WHILE nonetheless taking part in it, and that counts for one thing. Of course, I’m nonetheless taking part in it whereas typing as a result of I’m making an attempt to determine the way to clarify what precisely is going on. Besides the random layouts, the hook is that you just’re working on an ever-rotating cylinder. You’re all the time someplace close to the highest, and the additional you distance your self from the tempo bar, the earlier the structure in entrance of you appears to spawn. I believe.

Is {that a} llama or an alpaca? I can by no means inform the distinction. One or the opposite spit in my Mom’s face as soon as. She had it coming. She referred to as it ugly. It was sort of ugly. The better part was it smiled proper earlier than it did it. One of essentially the most unforgettable moments in my household’s historical past.

There’s no tutorial, explanations, or directions apart from telling you to maneuver and leap. This led to some bizarre points. Like, I believed the excessive rating listed within the nook was damaged. Nope. You see, there’s 36 totally different “themes” which is principally coloration schemes, and the displayed excessive rating is just for the precise theme you’re taking part in. The sport defaults to shuffling randomly by way of themes, and I didn’t notice that. This made me assume “oh, wait, it’s NOT randomly generated and the themes are like levels and do specific objects in specific orders.” Nope, they’re positively randomly generated. If sure themes usually tend to spawn sure forms of ranges, I didn’t catch onto it. There’s solely so many forms of methods Maddening Euphoria’s components can generate a stage, and if the themes affect it, it’s subtly so. Of course, 36 themes implies that, as an alternative of getting one excessive rating to problem your self time and again, you may have 36 to undergo. That will get annoying. Why not have each the theme excessive AND the general excessive on show?

In addition to play modes the place you’re all the time leaping or the place you run robotically and might’t transfer backwards, there’s 155 particular challenges you could play individually. Do you realize what the issue with these are? YOU GUESSED IT: the degrees are nonetheless randomly generated. It begs the query: why even have challenges separate from the principle modes? Why not simply have them test off like achievements by way of regular gameplay? Once I noticed that the maps for the challenges had been randomly generated, I give up taking part in them, as a result of I’d reasonably go for a excessive rating. In the unlikely occasion I’ve a sport that lasts an hour (the a hundred and fifty fifth and last problem right here) I’d legitimately kick myself for losing it on the problem and never the principle sport.

The cylindrical platforming is a pleasant novelty, nevertheless it additionally creates visibility points. One of my greatest gaming pet peeves is blind leaping the place you can presumably both fall to your loss of life or stick the touchdown, with no approach of with the ability to logic out the way to fall. Unless I’m simply horrible at this (don’t rule that out), there’s a variety of blind jumps in Maddening Euphoria, particularly when you need to bounce off a trampoline and/or clear a big hole earlier than seeing what comes after the hole. The nature of the sport calls for split-second judgment, however I’ve been killed by moments the place, on the time the leap occurs, there was no approach of understanding the place to land till I used to be too dedicated to alter route. Actually, there have been many situations the place I actually query whether or not the structure was even survivable. I’m positive it was, nevertheless it in all probability required absolute perfection by way of what pixel to leap off of and the way far you needed to press on the stick mid-air. Maddening Euphoria is a sport the place your excessive scores will probably be closely influenced by how fortunate (or unfortunate) you had been with the sport’s degree lottery. I want that they had simply accomplished 36 ranges hand designed levels. Mind you, I’m not anti-procedural. The #1 ranked sport on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard as of this writing, Dead Cells, can also be randomly generated. But, as I’ve famous in evaluations for video games like Chasm (which I liked) or Cloudberry Kingdom (which I didn’t), whereas I’m positive creating an algorithm that works each time is tough, randomly generated ranges will all the time be inelegant and make luck think about as a lot as talent.

When the tempo bar is near you, a meter fees up. Fill up the meter and also you achieve a “second wind” which supplies you a large velocity increase. You can use this strategically by intentionally teasing the bar, however there’s many dangers concerned. If you’re mid-jump and the structure is spitting out slender platforms when the meter fills all the best way, the second wind will in all probability kill you, since aiming your jumps with the improved velocity may be very tough. Oh, and Second Winds spawn flashing triangles that provide you with a letter in E-U-P-H-O-R-I-A. When you fill that up all the best way, you get an extended velocity burst and all of the spikes disappear. I don’t know if it lasts endlessly. I all the time died shortly after getting it. The controls are stable, till the velocity boosts kicks-in, at which level you lose precision. In a sport that calls for precision, it is a drawback.

Personally, I don’t actually get the enchantment in randomly generated levels. I by no means will. They’ll by no means have the class that hand-crafted levels have, and that’s all there may be to it. Procedural era’s promise of “never being the same game twice” is totally bullshit. It’s all the time the identical sport, each single time, and to say in any other case is like saying any sport with random components corresponding to cube rolls or playing cards is rarely the identical sport twice. To Chequered Ink’s credit score, Maddening Euphoria doesn’t use the bullshit “never the same game twice” spiel in its promoting. Plus, it solely prices $1, which is a steal. For all of the bitching I simply did, severely, that is price greater than $1. I turned this on and anticipated to play it for an hour and write this assessment. That was Wednesday. Now it’s Friday and I’ve put seven hours into it. And I actually, actually hate blind leaping and leap-of-faith platforming, in order that speaks volumes for good that is. For all of the unfairness and problematic design, each time I turned on Maddening Euphoria, I couldn’t put it down for over an hour. It has a potently addictive “just one more round” high quality that the perfect fashionable arcade-style video games have. Yea, I want that they’d gone one other route with it, or no less than hand-crafted the problem ranges, however I preserve going again to how I’d discover myself trying on the clock as I performed this and say “shit, where did the last hour go?” Only time will inform if this may discover its approach completely into my “I only have five minutes to kill” lineup. I’ll say this: if that point is spent with Maddening Euphoria, it ought to cross fairly shortly.

Maddening Euphoria is Chick-Approved
Leaderboard Ranking: #134 of 304 Ranked Games*
Top 79 Percentile of All IGC Indie Reviews
Top 56 Percentile of All IGC Approved Indie Games
*Rankings primarily based on time of publication. Check the Leaderboard for up to date standings.

Maddening Euphoria was developed by Chequered Ink
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, Steam

$1 was spat on by an alpaca within the making of this assessment.