Perfect Universe is a wonderful, monochrome, hand-drawn platform game by Will Sykes Games. It’s comprised of 3 single player modes, and 6 smaller multiplayer modes (playable in local play, or with AI). Each of the games focuses on either gravity, propulsion, or pesky, separately controlled limbs.
Perfect Moon, the first of the modes sees you running around objects with gravity pulls, dodging lethal saws – oh, so many saws – to collect stars. It’s major play is on gravity fields, as you leap, or glide between the objects by angling yourself in the 2D plane appropriately.
Moon Life sees you controlling a very shifty-looking alien, Mr Legs, who you control by using the two analogue sticks (if you use a controller, as recommended) to control a leg each. It’s an art that won’t be alien (oh-ho!) to anyone who has played QWOP, however I haven’t played that, and so most of my brief, current time with Mr Legs was spent hopping around on a single leg, narrowly dodging death.
Star Light is the final of the single player games, which sees you controlling a rocket, jetting around to collect small explosives, this is actually – despite that sentence – the safest of the games, as hitting into the walls simply bounces you off of it. The real challenge of the game comes in the required mastering of propulsion in regards to direction, and turning (Rocket Science).
Despite the fact that the 80+ levels of the game divided between those sound as though they might be tough, the wonderful sketchy art style, and the peaceful music have actually left me laughing at my failings rather than cursing – both are absolutely magnificent, and some of the level designs are outstanding, thus far I’ve jumped around a spinning clock, and made my way around a moody graveyard. I’m hoping to talk about a lot more of them in the review we’ll be launching on release.
Then, very importantly, there’s the multiplayer games; a gravity-pushing version of dodgeball where you can literally run up the walls; rocket-football with a cool triangular pitch in 3vs3; a top-down rocket-racer; a beautiful little golf game; a game where you are all Mr Legs, and have to pop as many balloons as possible; and, finally volleyball on a moon.
The podcast team had a go at all of the multiplayer games, and while it was a little bit frantic due to the difficulty identifying players in the monochrome world, we had a whale of a time – and there’ll be a video going up soon.
Keep your eyes peeled on the site for a review, which we’ll launch as the game goes live on Steam.
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