Spirit Roots in an indie side scrolling platformer that has a similar presentation to Rayman Legends which could be enough to entice fans into playing it. This is a small indie developed title though, released by Drageus Games, and carries a tiny price tag with a good amount of content.
It is just a shame that the whimsical visuals to do translate into its gameplay ultimately resulting in a mediocre and sometime frustrating experience. With dozens of bite-sized stages available, there is plenty to chew if you don’t mind playing the repeating environments, stage design, and enemies.
The visuals are the best part as everything shines and is animated with cartoon fluidity. The player is tasked with collecting a ton of wisps that often yield no reward other than witnessing its sincere chime noise that sounds like a fairy tale. It is just too bad the stage design holds back the experience. Blind jumps and auto-ledge pulling will result in many deaths, all of which are no fault of the player’s. The player is given three chances to make it to the next checkpoint without dying but this is something much more difficult than it should be simply because there is no option to duck or pan the tightly zoomed camera. Waiting for those spikes to move or getting hit by that enemy because the player moves forward during a melee attack is frustrating at best. There are also a ton of these wisp things to collect but they do not unlock anything; it would have been cool if you could spend them to unlock items or even cosmetics, something!
Enemies can be defeated with either a melee or ranged attack but combat is not this game’s strongest element. Many times the enemies you want to kill with your ranged weapon can only be defeated through melee means so the player is restricted by design. This is fine but when defeated enemies are there to just get in the way and not offer any reward or satisfaction, it would be better to just jump over them to continue.
Spirit Roots is one of those games that is middle of the road. You won’t hate it but you surely will not love it. It is a simple platformer that is approachable but it doesn’t do any one thing extraordinary well.
Not As Good As: Jet Kave Adventure
Don’t Forget About: Ayo The Clown
Reminds Me Of: Stitchy in Tooki Trouble
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
Twitter: @ZackGaz
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