It's Easter n stuff...yaaaay.
Flip's Adventure can best be described as a very competently put together 2D platformer with a few fundamental flaws.
Let me get the praise out of the way first. As I said, it's very competently made. I say that because the presentation is beautiful. Color theming, high framerate, satisfying sound direction, etc. You'd be hard pressed to fine even a professionally made 2D platformer out there with objectively better presentation than this one.
That said, I think the team behind Flip's Adventure was a bit too eager to get a-programmin' and, as a result, made one major fundamental design contradiction that makes the game seem quite reminiscent of the Bubsy series. The level design and the control contradict each other. What I mean by that is that the level design is somewhat akin to Castlevania's level design in that it's all designed around the path you would take if you just tried to zoom through it. The challenge comes from the unexpected; the game demands that you think about what you do before you do it.
On the other hand, the controls are kind of similar to the controls from a Mario game. The jump is super powerful and you gather momentum as you run. Both the level design and control are nigh flawless on their own, much like perfectly made peanut butter and marinara sauce. Put them together, on the other hand, and you have a monstrous concoction that you'd feel guilty giving to a goat.
Okay, that was a bit harsh. Flip's Adventure is still very fun and is definitely one of the better freeware 2D platformers out there (yeah, I said it). That said there are just too many moments when my momentum forces me to slide into a wall of spikes or when my rocket jump is so powerful that holding it down for an extra quarter of a millisecond sends me careening into a wall for me to give it my seal of approval. Everything else about the game is very well done, though.
Well, I suppose I should probably mention the whole "achievement" part of the game. See, for every level, you get rewarded for completing a perfect run (no deaths), a speed run (with a very convenient little meter on the bottom left corner of the screen to tell you how much time you have left) and/or collecting an item (or puzzle piece) somewhere in the level. This is all fine and good, but I don't think it's even possible to get a speed run and not also get a perfect run. What's even the point of treating them as two different things if the clock doesn't reset when you die?
Ah, well. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay pretty.
Links:
What's with DigiPen 2D platformers and the word "flip?": https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25439
here are some videos of Ego and Jontron talking about Castlevania and Bubsy, respectively:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aip2aIt0ROM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTAlr5raV2U
