Bounce from towering pillar to towering pillar, the next steps forming around you as you fling yourself through the air.
Su and the Quest for Meaning, from Guillaume Bouckaert, is a wonderful platform title filled with beautiful environments, calming music and rapid platforming. Su’s rapid platforming is different than most others, however — the game embodies the sense of wind and air, with the protagonist’s scarf always flapping in the wind and new platforms bursting from the cloudline to replace those that leave when you jump from them.
Everything feels fluid, from the sliding platforms to the gentle, sweeping clouds which fill the land. Su’s colour palettes are carefully chosen, too, with most levels’ platforms made up of no more than three colours. This makes them stand out from the levels’ backgrounds and clouds.
Navigating each of the single-screen challenges is simply down to jumping, collecting markers and landing carefully, but the jumps have just the right ‘floaty’ feel to them — something made more fulfilling by the dance of your trailing scarf. It means that each successful landing, as with the N games, feels deliberate, and every failure feels like a slight miscalculation rather than a fault through lack of skill.
That said, there is some skill required. Su features a triple jump which requires some mastery to use well, and in addition to that there are f moments that require leaps of faith. It all adds to the feel of the game, but may take some getting used to for those who normally play more traditional platform games.
I was lucky enough to play an extensive amount of the game whilst at Gamescom last year, during which I cleared through several different colour schemes of worlds — each more wonderful than the last. While Su is listed as an endless runner on its website, each of the diamonds collected serves as a progress marker of sorts, ultimately turning into a beacon-like device which sends you hurtling to the next area. Later areas were not only equally beautiful, but came with new styles of platforms, including some that fell as groups, forcing you to pay attention to which were connected before leaping.
While Su and the Quest for Meaning certainly lacks any real sense of progress, each of the new worlds unlocked and the fast, flowing levels, give the game a beat and pace which is hard to put down.
Su and the Quest for Meaning is currently in development for PC, Mac and consoles. You can wishlist the game through Steam.
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