When I saw screenshots for this game, I thought it was gonna be a Klonoa-inspired platformer. But a quick look at a gameplay trailer showed the truth: this is a DKC-inspired game. That got my attention way more. So I picked it up. Yay.

Let’s go and see if this DKC-like is the good stuff.

Developer: PixelHive
Publisher: Soedesco
Release date: March 26th 2021
Platforms: Switch, PC, PS4, Xbone
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer

So like I said this game takes heavy inspiration from the SNES Donkey Kong Country games, with some segments that are a bit similar to some things you may see in Tropical Freeze. The jump physics are a slight bit more floaty but not much, you jump a decent height and you can slow your fall Dixie-style by twirling your ears.

You can deal with enemies in 2 ways: You can jump on them. A few might have spikes on parts of their bodies so they’re immune to that. Then you have a spinning attack that acts just like the roll in DKC, so you can spin into most enemies unless they have, say, spikes or big teeth in certain directions. If there’s a lot of enemies in a row, you can get to move faster between them. There’s sadly not too many occasions of this but it’s cool when it happens. There’s a third way but it happens almost never in the game. You have these pots you can grab with Kaze’s ears and throw at enemies. Some of these will give you red crystals or KAZE letters. It’s very rare but it’s like barrels in DKC games.

A fun thing about the spin attack is something that was fun about the roll attack in DKC. There’s this concept I am now calling Coyote Time (heard it in a google video), where basically a lot of platformers have this thing where even if you fall off a platform you may get a couple frames (sometimes a lot of frames) where you’re still able to jump while falling. DKC took this to the next level by making Coyote Time a properly intended mechanic, where if you use the roll attack to roll off of a platform, while you’re in the roll animation, you can jump. It goes against all physics, but it’s so fun to do. DKC used it largely to get bonus things, this game actually uses it a bit for normal level progression. Love the mechanic a lot, and it’s great here. Let’s you get really long jumps.

Another thing this game does is the titular Wild Masks. There’s 4: a bird mask, a tiger mask, a shark mask and a… dragon mask? Wearing a masks gives you its powers. The bird mask allows you to fly and shoot arcing projectiles… continuing the DKC comparisons, the bird mask is almost exactly like squawks in DKC2, up to the projectile being much like squawks’ egg. The tiger mask gives you an air dash (becomes a long dash if there’s a line of enemies) and allows you to also cling to walls and wall jump. The shark mask gives you Dixie’s water moveset from Tropical Freeze so you get a speed increase if you hold one button while the attack button gives you a fast spinning dash attack. Without it you can’t swim underwater (minus a very short dive that brings you back to the surface right away). Finally, the dragon (maybe?) mask is this game’s version of minecart levels. Kaze runs at a set speed. You can jump, double jump and divebomb. So the dragon levels require to use those different moves correctly with good timing, some of these levels are actually pretty wild.

Each level has a few collectibles. There’s red crystals. You get a big red crystal if you get 100 in a level. Not sure what this does, but I did it for every level. There’s hidden bonus levels in each level, these are basically challenges where you need to kill all the enemies or get to the end or get all the green crystals. Each gives you half a green crystal. Getting both in every level in the world unlocks a bonus challenge level, which is usually a bit tougher than the regular levels. Then there’s the letters K, A, Z and E. Getting all the letters gives you a yellow crystal. Each one gives you an image  which I think is the backstory of the game’s final boss and also I think the spirits of the wild masks maybe? This game is not very detailed story-wise. Each level can be completed 100% in a single run, ish. After you beat a level once, levels get a clock pickup. This removes all pickups in a level (and I think the midpoint, I might be wrong) and it becomes a time attack. You get bronze, silver or gold medals for finishing these. No idea if getting all golds does anything, I don’t care to do it. But to do everything in the game, it does require to beat them at least twice.

My big problem with this game is how short it is. It’s just 4 worlds. That’s only 31 levels and 4 pretty okay boss battles. If there was some difficulty it would be fine, but this game does not want you to lose. No life system, nothing to do outside of levels and if you die in a level, it just brings you to the last checkpoint an infinite number of times, and even the toughest levels won’t kill you THAT much unless you die on purpose because you missed a collectible (this is probably most of my deaths in the game). Even those bonus challenges for green crystals, if you lose you don’t get brought back to the level (and sometimes not be allowed to try again without replaying the level like some DKC bonuses did), you just get a “do you want to try again?” selection as many times as you want. You really kinda can’t fail in this game. It’s great, but it’s also very easy. The toughest parts are probably the bosses… except the final boss, he’s a total fucking joke. All the others killed me at least twice, the final boss didn’t. The bosses do require you to fully restart them no matter how far you got, which is good.

Overall

This was a fun game. Really fun. So fun that I’m actually quite sad there’s only 4 worlds long. This game really could’ve done with more… stuff. When I was almost at the end of world 4, I thought I still had plenty more to do because I was missing 3 “boss” collectibles… turns out they weren’t boss collectibles, just things you get from seeing cutscenes. So I beat the final boss, and that was that. And since I went barely out of my way to 100% every level other than speedruns, there was not really any replay value unless I want to do speedruns of each levels… and that’s not really my thing. I did get 8th place in the first level without even trying so there’s that.

The gameplay itself works really well, and the DKC inspiration is obviously very strong and is used very well so everything feels good here. I do think this game is too easy overall because there’s basically no punishment for dying. The game could definitely do with, say, an extra world with extra difficult levels, at least. Or maybe some bonus minigames in-between levels or something, or some incentive to 100%.

Even though I think this game is great, I’d recommend it at a slight discount.