Unless Review | New Game Network

Unless markets itself as a joyful 2D platformer, and it certainly lives up to that description. The upbeat chiptunes and saturated pixel graphics are pleasant and inviting, but there’s still a stern challenge awaiting those willing to put in the effort needed to speed run its twenty five levels in search of an elusive ‘S’ rank.

Story is kept to a bare minimum. The player character is a girl called Mari who is tasked by her Owl Sensei mentor to rejuvenate a petrified forest by collecting golden leaves. Each of the five trees she brings back to life leads to a series of five short platforming levels that each contain three golden leaves to collect. A vague ecological theme emerges through Mari’s conversations with the Owl Sensei, but that’s about as deep as it gets, and the tale, such as it is, ends rather abruptly after the last area.

Levels are extremely short, usually only two or three screens deep. They each contain several gates which you can use to ‘bank’ golden leaves once collected, and to exit the level. A single hit from an enemy or hazard will send you back to the last gate you touched, and you’ll lose any golden leaves you failed to bank. There are also berries scattered around, which you can collect and spend to unlock a handful of bonus levels.

Mari’s move set is very simple: she can jump and wall jump. That’s it. Complexity comes from the level layouts and the enemies and hazards contained within. There are pairs of portals within many levels that allow you to jump down one to appear out of the other. The higher your jump on the way in, the faster you’ll fly out the other side, allowing you to get to platforms and golden leaves that would otherwise be out of reach.

Enemies often pull double duty as obstacles to your progress and tools to help you get around. You’ll often need to jump on the heads of enemies in classic Mario style to gain enough height to reach new areas. There are pumpkin platforms that drop down to attack you when you come near, which allows you to jump on top of them and bounce to higher areas, and ghost platforms that must be activated by hitting them from underneath. A typical section has you jumping on an enemy’s head to activate a ghost platform above you, then wall jumping quickly off the side of one ghost platform to reach another before it deactivates.

On your first attempt through any given level, the game feels like a puzzle platformer, where you have to spend some time working out how to use the enemies and objects to navigate around and avoid getting hit. Levels are mostly nonlinear, with plenty of vertical movement and doubling back on yourself.

When you’ve completed a level, you’ll be awarded a grade from C to S based on how quickly you grabbed all three golden leaves, and you’ll be told the time needed to achieve the next rank, as well as the current world record. There’s also a link in the menu to leaderboards for all levels, as well as a speedrunning option which sends you back to the start of a level when you take a hit with the clock reset, rather than starting you at the most recent gate.

How much mileage you get out of Unless will depend a lot on whether you’re in the mood to lace up your speedrunning shoes. With only twenty five short levels comprising the whole game, I grabbed all the golden leaves in less than two hours. Once you’ve finished the game (in the sense of beating the last level), the game nudges you towards speedrunning. You can try to get on the leaderboard for the game as a whole or for individual levels. You’ll also unlock a shuffle mode which randomizes the position of leaves and gates within levels, and daily challenges, which are essentially a specific instance of shuffle mode in which you have one chance to compete with other players for a fast time each day.

After finishing the last main level, I enjoyed collecting the berries I had missed and unlocking the few bonus levels I hadn’t already played. After that, I spent some time trying to get some S ranks. This is probably where Unless shines brightest. Figuring out the optimal route through a level then trying to execute the moves perfectly can be very satisfying, and helped me – someone who has only ever admired it from afar – appreciate the appeal of speedrunning.

Unfortunately, Shuffle mode left me underwhelmed. The levels don’t change at all, only the positions of leaves within them, and with so few levels to start with, a sense of monotony quickly kicks in. This is where I have to say I feel a bit torn about the length of Unless. On the plus side, the game is cheap and is plenty of fun while it lasts, and the speedrunning options are well implemented. The levels are short but dense and full of intricate enemy and hazard placements that will challenge your thumbs and brain equally. Mari moves with a precision that leaves you in no doubt that if you mess up, it’s down to you and not the controls. The visuals are bright and polished, bringing to mind many of the classic 2D mascot platformers of the 90s. The soundtrack, although it fits with the visuals, was so incessantly bright and bouncy that it had me grinding my teeth before long.

But all this simply wet my appetite for more. The level design is really good in places, but I felt that the various traps and enemies were not explored to their full. I’ve played many games in which a small amount of content was stretched too thin – but here the opposite is true. Doubling or tripling the number of levels would, I think, have given the developers the chance to wring the most out of the gameplay.

Still, for the price ($4.99 USD), Unless is still an attractive prospect, particularly for anyone who wants to dip their toe into speedrunning for the first time.

Presentation

73

Looking like a lost mascot platformer from three decades ago, Unless is pleasant to look at and levels are easy to read at a glance. I found the chirpy chiptunes a bit grating, but your mileage may vary.

Gameplay

70

While it lasts, this is a fun and well crafted precision platformer. It’s just a shame there isn’t more of it.

Single Player

70

With only twenty-five short levels, most players will see all of the game’s content within a couple of hours. After that, Unless tries to entice you to earn S ranks and compete on global leaderboards by speedrunning through levels.

Multiplayer

NR

None

80

I experienced one audio bug while exiting out of a level, but otherwise had no performance problems.

Overall