Awesome Pea

If you're anything like me, then you've probably seen a lot of different types of 2D heroes in your life. Looking beyond the obvious plumber and hedgehog, there were cats, possums, lizards, turtles, seals, eggs, slabs of meat and whatever Ardy Lightfoot was supposed to be. I think that's probably why I wasn't all that surprised to see the veggie hero at the center of Awesome Pea, the console debut from Pigeon Dev. It's a delightful new throwback platformer that may not be very original, but delivers solid gameplay at an affordable price.

This is the story of a greedy pea who rolls and jumps his way through thirty different stages in an effort to collect all the coins and gems. There's not much of a story outside of that simple premise, so don't expect a lot of twists and turns. This is a simple and straight-forward 2D platformer where the goal is to get to the exit without getting hit by enemies or spikes. It's a challenging throwback that reminds me of a cross between Super Mario Land and Super Meat Boy.

While Awesome Pea is definitely a side-scrolling platformer, there's more variety to the stages than you might expect. On top of the levels where you just run from left to right, there are stages where you're trying to navigate your way down a massive pit while fireballs are being flung towards our veggie hero. There are also stages where you're jumping on clouds in an effort to climb to the top of a castle. And don't forget about the stages set inside the castles, which force the little pea to double jump through a gauntlet of moving saw blades. And then there's my favorite, the levels where you're avoiding enemies on top of a moving train.

These stages are just different enough to keep this game from being too repetitious. That may not sound like a big deal, but you might be surprised by the amount of budget-priced platformers that do the tried and true left-to-right thing and call it a day. There are different skills required to complete each type of level, and some of them are genuinely challenging. The titular pea will die after any hit, no matter what, so a lot of the game comes down to carefully making your way past the spike pits, fireballs and saw blades. That's easier said than done, because some of these stages are surprisingly long. This can be a challenging game, and not just because the pea's only ability is a double jump.

Although occasionally tough, I never found the game to be frustrating. Awesome Pea largely works because of the tight and responsive controls. Between being able to move around in the air and perfectly predict each jump, this is one of the better playing 2D platformers in recent memory. When I died, it always felt like something I did wrong and not the cause of floaty gameplay or cheap level designs. If nothing else, Pigeon Dev knows how to make a good playing platformer.

The problem is that I'm not sure they knew how to bring all these elements together into one cohesive package. The different levels feel like they were pieced together almost at random, with no care at all for ramping up the difficulty. The stages at the beginning are substantially harder than anything at the end, to the point where I started to wonder if I was playing through the game backwards. Awesome Pea's final five stages are so easy that they are barely fun.

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It also doesn't help that they just keep repeating the same few stages in a loop. Yes, I appreciate the variety, but there's a point where the predictable rotation starts to feel repetitive. They don't really do anything new with those different types of stages outside of rearranging the obstacles.

And why are there twelve stages in world 1? That's more than both worlds 2 and 3 combined. It's not like the type of stage connects with what you're standing on, so why even bother with the world map?

It's probably worth mentioning that this is being published by Sometimes You, a company known for their questionable quality control. If you've paid attention to my reviews, then you've already heard me complain about their bad and often broken games. Simply put, Awesome Pea is the best game they've published yet, and it's not even close. This is more than just a quality platformer from Sometimes You, but a legitimately good game. It has tight controls and a nice variety of stages, which is a lot more than I can say about something like Sigi: A Fart for Melusina. Awesome Pea may not be the must-own game of the year, but it's certainly the first Sometimes You game I can recommend without adding a bunch of caveats.

While I wouldn't call it a monochromatic masterpiece, Awesome Pea is an enjoyable game at an attractive price. The thirty stages are mostly challenging, the gameplay is tight and there's enough variety in the level designs to keep things fresh, at least for a while. I also like the simple throwback graphics and the soundtrack. What I don't like it how repetitive the game gets and how all of the levels feel like they were sewn together at random. But aside from a few growing pains, Awesome Pea proves that Pigeon Dev knows how to make a good little platformer.