Flat Heroes

Sometimes what you see is what you get, and that's definitely the case when it comes to Flat Heroes, a new minimalist platformer from first-time developer Parallel Circles. This is a simple yet fun throwback filled with hundreds of bite-sized stages where the only goal is to survive the punishing onslaught of enemies and obstacles. It's an exciting little platformer that will always keep you on your toes, though chances are good you've seen a lot of these ideas many times before.

Flat Heroes is part of a growing trend of 2D platformers that use a very stripped down and minimalist approach to the action. We don't get a story, main villain or even a named hero, but rather simple shapes dodging other simple shapes. In this case the shape is a box, which kind of flops back and forth in an effort to get away from the dots, circles, arrows and lines that are all looking to slice the square in half.

The core campaign is split up into ten different color palettes, each with fifteen short stages and a boss battle. A lot of these stages will take well under a minute to complete, with most being able to be beaten in just a few seconds. But that's not to mean the game is short, because a lot of these platforming puzzles are purposely tricky, forcing you to jump around and constantly dodge the increasingly difficult enemies until you get the coveted checkmark. You're going to need to stay alert and be fast at moving that box around if you hope to get through all of these stages.

If you've played one of this variety of punishing platformer before then you'll already know what to expect. Flat Heroes eases you into the action by introducing one type of enemy at a time and then finding fun ways to add to the chaos. They typically do this by combining a bunch of types of enemies all at once, so you'll find yourself trying to avoid homing missiles, destructive bullets and fast-moving lasers all at the same time. This turns into a real mess in the later levels, but the game does a good job of easing you into those trickier puzzles.

When it comes to moves, this little box doesn't have very many. It can move left and right, as well as double jump in a number of different directions. There's also an offensive attack that you can use to destroy nearby enemies, though these blasts take a second or two to charge up, preventing the player from jumping around and killing everything in sight. I'm fine with the limit moves, but wish the gameplay was a little better. I don't like the way the box flops around and found it difficult to double jump in the right direction on a consistent basis. This becomes a real problem in the late-game boss fights, where I found myself angry that the gameplay wasn't more precise.

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It's also worth noting that the challenging levels are mostly confined to the final few worlds. I found much of the campaign to be entirely too easy, to the point where I would only need to replay a puzzle only once or twice, at most. It takes until around the seventh or eighth world until the game really comes to life, and that's where the real fun is hidden. The same can be said about the more challenging stages you unlock after beating the core campaign. This game takes too long building up to the good stuff.

I think a lot of this problem is caused by the push to make Flat Heroes a multiplayer game. While you can go through the whole thing as a solo player, I got the feeling that this was designed with the intention of four people sitting around the Switch and testing everybody's platforming skills. That's an interesting idea that you don't see in a lot of games like this, though I wish they would have done more with the concept. The good news is that there are other modes and difficulties, like survivor, that will push you and your friend's to the limit.

Flat Heroes is a good platformer that never felt especially fresh or original. I like the focus on local multiplayer and the wide variety of enemies, but found myself fighting the gameplay and wanting the bite-sized stages to be a little deeper. While the action eventually picks up towards the end, it came after far too many stages with almost identical obstacles. If you're looking for a four-player platformer with simple graphics, then maybe you'll like Flat Heroes more than I did.