L.G.C. |Reviews| — On Rusty Trails

Your intrepid heroes change colour, stick to walls, and take care of business. On Rusty Trails faces the CHAIRQUISITION!

Game: On Rusty Trails
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/277700
Devel: Black Pants Studio
Engine: Scape Engine
Price: €/$ 12.99 | CDN$ 13.99

Wazzat: You are Elvis! Your home is gone! Blast through this fast-paced platformer and instantly shift from rusty red to hairy blue. Don’t stick to one side or it will turn on you…

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Makes with the working

V-

These lot have been making Linux games before Steam on Linux was a thing.
The performance shows.
You nerfed my save.

J-

P-

They noped errybody’s saves.

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

No mistaking that this is from the creators of Tiny & Big.

Wicked strange artstyle, and that’s a good thing.
Little Elvis, why U so small?
Eat some fried peanut butter and banana sammiches!
Elvis gets lost in the background sometimes.
- Beautiful, detailed, (albeit slightly dark) backgrounds.
It has sounds but that’s not how I platform.

J-

The character design is pretty good.
I love the visual storytelling in this game
The soundtrack was kind of forgettable. Every once in a while, I’d start to notice it and wonder where the noise was coming from. THen in dawned on me and the sound faded away

P-

I actually very much enjoyed the sound design.
From the background music to the always satisfying “twang” when you make a leap of faith and hit one of the metal platforms at high speed.
I guess that’s a good thing because, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know I have little love left for platformers.
Venn brought up an interesting point.
Your character tends to get lost in the middle of all the crap that’s going on in the level.
Especially in those crap-heavy sections of levels, where the camera zooms out and your tiny little red pyramid gets lost in the lasers, showers, and red platforms.
But it’s not just your character!
In fact, more than once I made a leap of faith because I couldn’t for the life of me see where the next set of platforms were.
The blue platforms (when they recoil) are basically the exact dark shade of brown as the rest of the sky box.
I have these Asus VX239H-W IPS 80M:1 contrast ratio monitors with said contrast jacked all the way up.
And I still can only see those if I stop and take stock of what’s what.
In a game which is very clearly aiming for a faster pace and outright grades you on your speed, that’s bad!
But more on that in the Fun.

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Control

V-

Tight controls are tight.
We’re talking Super Meat [cis] Gendered Male tight.
And they have to be, since Elvis is in the business of taking care of the business… and business is good.
Keyboard controls function but I was unable to summon the self-hate required to test them further.

J-

Games like these basically require tight controls
If it were any other way, it’d get one chair

P-

No complaints from me here.
You push a button and there’s no noticeable delay.
If you cock up and miss a jump, it’s your own damn fault!

Total-

FUN

V-

Short levels and minimum ragequit.
Mechanics: Colour, bombs, wind, jump pads
WAR, good god.

J-

I don’t normally like games like this, but On Rusty Trails is actually pretty fun
The character designs are fun to look at, and what little story it has unfolds in a matter reasonably paced with the game play
All the puzzles are tough but fair. At some point I had to walk away, but then you start going over how you done fucked up.
I’d recommend picking it up.

P-

Remember that world switching mechanic from Guacamelee?
Remember how they only really start fucking with you and the precise timing of said mechanic when you were 2 or 3 hours in?
This game will expect you to have mastered it in less than 3 minutes after acquiring it.
And they grade you at the end of the level.
That’s… That’s just rubbing it in!
“What’s that? you picked up the little currency thing but used it on a checkpoint? Bitch!”
“Oh! You finished the level in like 10 seconds, that’s cute! 57th place.”
Well then, fuck you too game! I’m gonna go play something that isn’t a freakin’ 2D platformer.
I don’t suck at platformers. I don’t even inherently hate them. I’m just tired of the genre.
I spent the entirety of the 90’s decade playing platformers day in and day out. (With some Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake and Fallout in between)
On Rusty Trails is a good platformer. Hell, it’s an awesome Rage Platformer which manages not to be completely cynical.
- You know the type! The ones those screechy “let’s players” often feature.
But I’m just so goddamn burnt out on the genre.

Total-

Final –