Side Scape
Helper sez: You must solve the mayor’s murder.
You begin Side Scape as Captain Grisham, protagonist of a sidescrolling platformer, confronting the evil cyborg Allegair. When his foe unleashes a bizarre power, Grisham finds himself torn from his sci-fi sidescroller and dropped into the body of a top-down fantasy knight… Sir Knight. Now fused together as one being, they must find Allegair, defeat all evil, solve a murder mystery, and pull their mangled worlds apart.
The main gimmick of the game is that most of the screens are top-down Zelda style rooms, but which Grisham can technically navigate despite ‘gravity’ constantly pulling him ‘south.’ You start the adventure being locked to one character or the other, but the game really picks up when you gain the ability to freely swap between the two modes, with some restrictions. Sir Knight can move freely on any tiles that are ‘floored,’ but falls into open pits, while Grisham can walk and jump anywhere he can stand on some ‘wall’ tiles. They have their own attack methods too – Knight’s sword is the standard four-way stabber, and Grisham’s shots can only be fired horizontally, meaning he has to jump and shoot to hit anything that’s not at ground level… or ‘ground’ level, I guess.
It’s a cute trick, and while it couldn’t carry a particularly long game, Side Scape makes surprisingly good use of it over the course of its short run time. Dungeons frequently have you looping around with each character, certain obstacles genuinely take a little bit of thought to unravel, and different environments do feel fun to parse in parallel, both as Zelda rooms and as platformer screens.
Besides the purely perspective puzzles, you also get an assortment of usable items from dungeons that function more like standard Zelda progression. Each item is only used by one character, and you can equip three at a time on whichever buttons you want. Some have no combat function, some have no puzzle function and are pure weapons, but most are a combination, unlocking the end of the dungeon and some exploration in the overworld, but also coming in clutch in certain battles.
They’re also decently creative, at least by Zelda clone standards. Grisham gets a rocket launcher, of course, but also a flamethrower and a lightning beam, which primarily allows him to move around through the air without jumping if there are corresponding blocks for him to grapple onto. Sir Knight’s more adventurous arsenal includes a bottle that lets him send his spirit to possess puzzle blocks for tile sliding challenges, a crystal that phases certain walls and floors in and out of existence, and a fishing rod for… catching fish.
Quite a few weapons and upgrades are optional, sprinkled throughout the overworld and doled out for completing small side quests, and it helps make the game feel a little bit bigger than it really is. There’s apparently a few items I didn’t find, and maybe even a whole secret ending for very thorough completion, but it was obviously tough to find info on those.
In general, the game is pretty easy, except for the boss fights, which are, while not real walls, definite difficulty spikes. Even with a good number of health upgrades [you can also swap forms to spread the damage out] and what I assume is the expected level of weapon upgrades, none of them felt like the sort of thing you can just facetank your way through. They all have enough health to wear you down if you don’t put any effort into dodging or blocking their attacks, which is probably for the best, but I wouldn’t say any of them are particularly spectacular or fun fights, just not trivial.
The story is actually pretty good, and though the game has a pretty high ratio of dialogue to gameplay for a non-narrative adventure, I really liked the writing. There’s a lot of clever jokes throughout, some fourth-wall breaking, and even a few moments of deeper introspection. Scattered around the overworld are a handful of camp sites that you can rest at where the two merged characters have a little conversation, mostly revolving around their realization that they’re characters in a virtual universe, which, of course, they can’t do much about.
If I was going to fault Side Scape for anything in particular, I’d say that the physics of playing as Grisham is a little unsatisfying – his jumps are pretty abrupt and difficult to be precise with, and while you’re never really expected to do anything strenuous with him, I think it could be tightened up a bit, if only to make jumping to shoot enemies less tedious.
Side Scape is a short, tight game with a clever gimmick that doesn’t wear out its welcome, and is a pleasant experience from start to finish. I’m really looking forward to playing the apparently less gimmicky Captain Grisham-focused sequels from the dev now.
Side Scape can be purchased on Steam.
Good to see some gimmicry keeping a game afloat. Thanks for the heads-up!