Shio

As I've gotten older, I find that I have rediscovered the simple joy of taking a nap. It's refreshing and helps to break up a long day. I think that's why I had an easy time connecting with the masked hero at the center of Shio, the brand new platformer from the China-based developer Coconut Island Games. The only real difference is that this character dreams about a nightmarish world where there's danger around every corner, while I dream about going on camping trips with Frasier Crane.

This is a purposely vague game. And not just for the player, but also the person behind the mask. A lack of quality sleep is making reality a bit fuzzy and there's a sense that time isn't running normally. This sets up an unusual but straight-forward 2D platformer where the idea is to avoid the spiked obstacles in order to figure out what it all means. Spoiler alert: The answers are also purposely vague.

Shio is a punishingly difficult side-scroller along the lines of Super Meat Boy. There aren't any enemies and you don't have a bunch of special moves, so the challenge comes from simply trying to navigate the platforming puzzles while avoiding the spiked obstacles. You do this by using the floating lanterns as a way to double jump through the tricky terrain. And the reality is that it's more than just a double jump, since you can bounce around these lanterns as many times as you need in order to get to the next checkpoint.

That's the one true constant in Shio -- you always want to get to the next checkpoint. It doesn't matter if you nail it on your first try or it takes you fifty attempts to get right, the only thing on your mind is getting to that next checkpoint. Thankfully, they are close together and the different challenges are all fairly bite-sized. Every so often you'll run into a section that is significantly longer than the rest, but most can be completed in well under a minute.

What makes this tricky is that our masked hero doesn't gain new abilities or have a large roster of moves. What you see is pretty much what you get, which can sometimes feel inadequate for the task at hand. Instead of changing the character, the game changes the obstacles. It starts out where we're simply avoiding fireballs and spikes, but then it introduces gusts of wind into the mix and gates you'll need to open.

You've probably seen most of this before, but it's handled well here. I felt that most of the challenges were difficult but fair, which is typically what I look for in a platformer. But there is such a thing as overstaying your welcome, and I found that Shio started to fall apart the longer it went on. It felt like the level designs switched from fair to just being a jerk. There's a brief bit where the game introduces invisible obstacles, forcing players to either trial and error their way to victory or simply be really lucky. I wasn't lucky, and the second half of the game only helped to highlight the problems I had with Shio.

Click For the Full Picture Archive

Apart from some occasionally unfair obstacles, I found the gameplay was a little too floaty for what they wanted you to do. This isn't a big issue early on, but I guarantee you'll wish the game had tighter controls when you're trying to land on tiny, rain-soaked platforms. And this is a problem that also affects jumping and triggering the lanterns. There is a general lack of precision to the gameplay that you normally see in this type of platformer, and it especially complicates the back-half of the game.

I also think I would have liked this more if the story had a better payoff. They dabble with the idea of deja vu and reality turning fuzzy, but they don't do enough with this concept. I mean this both visually and narratively. It would have been fun to see the world and backgrounds become more chaotic as our mental state unravels, but that never happens. Both the poorly translated story and the simplistic art design play it safe, and that's disappointing.

As far as naps go, Shio had me tossing and turning. I was initially intrigued by the ambiguous story and lantern jumping, but this game falls apart in the second half. The platforming puzzles go from fair to frustrating, and that's even after they've introduced invisible obstacles. It also suffers from floaty gameplay and some weird translation issues. There are some cool ideas hinted at in Shio, but this is probably a game you can sleep on