The Mexican and South American themes are bright, attractive and expressive. The visuals, like most of this type, channel retro console games, through the visuals are more close to a SNES than the chunky, low color NES graphics that many other games use. Outside the sense of accomplishment, beating these challenges won’t have much of an effect, but it does add substantial replayability to a game that’s already fairly meaty for a mobile downloadable title. It also requires using a few tracks, like recognizing that bouncing off enemies or on water doesn’t count against the par. The par is always set extraordinarily low, and pretty much requires the sort of skill you’d need to accomplish a NES-style speed run. Finally, and this is by far the most difficult, is trying to beat the stage under the “par” number of bounces. There are also numerous gems scattered throughout, with your goal being to collect them all. In every stage there’s a pink little dinosaur called an Axolotolol, usually stuck in any out-of-the way or difficult to reach spot. It’s such a well designed level that more similar encounters would’ve definitely been welcome.Įach stage also has three bonus challenges to accomplish. There’s only one boss battle, right at the end, where you must chase Malmagoz through an entire stage of obstacles, using his projectiles as impromptu platformers.
The final stage can get pretty tough, but the checkpoints are generous, and lives are unlimited. By the third level or so, the difficulty begins ramping up, as you’re forced to deliberately time movements, navigate through tight, spike-lined corridors, and maneuver ever-so-slightly around enemies that are precariously designed to kill you.
Getting used to the bouncing rhythm takes a little while, but the opening stages are straightforward and generous. Similarly, there are bouncing platforms which propel you to different heights depending downward momentum – jump on them normally and they won’t have much of an effect, but fall down from a great height and you’ll bounce up much higher. Navigating through water can be tricky, since you naturally float up to the surface, but if you jump in from a higher position, you’ll also dive further into the water. There are rotating platforms and gigantic rolling balls, which you must bounce on at the right angle to get them to move correctly. As the game progresses, various gimmicks and challenges present themselves, usually in some way involving physics. Through five different worlds (and between eight and twelve levels in each world), you conquer the typical platforming obstacles, leaping between platforms and hopping on enemies heads, to get to the goal. Your character, Emilio, is perpetually bouncing because he’s been turned into a Mexican jumping bean, courtesy of the rather nasty wizard Malmagoz, who’s also kidnapped your lady friend. It takes a little while to get used to, but in the end it’s an incredibly solid platformer. Bean’s Quest, from Australian development team Kumobius, inverts this concept by giving you control over your movement but automating the jumping instead. The best types of games are the ones that pattern themselves after Canabalt, the “infinite running” subgenre, because it automates one of the primary control methods – the movement – and focuses entirely on the jumping. Platformers have typically been terrible fits for touch screen mobile platforms, due to the lack of a proper controller, though that hasn’t stopped people from trying.
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