Developer: Physmo
Steam Release: Sep 2015
Hours Played: 4.2
Similar To: Dyna Bomb / League of Evil / Mute Crimson+
Rating: 2/5 Parsnips
This old-school style platformer, with emphasis on speedruns, is not going to let you relax. Taking control of a two-legged beetle you zip around this side-scrolling world while jumping and dodging your way to the awaiting red pillar-box. Zombies, bees, snakes, scorpions and piranhas et al are out to thwart you. These all follow a pattern so it's about anticipating your path and executing it correctly. Aside from jump (no double-jumps here) you only get the wall-jump ability. Totem-poles are liberally sprinkled throughout and act as checkpoints but can only be used once. Die again without activating the next one and it's back to the start with you. As your time is not reset when taken back to a checkpoint though it kind of makes them useless for speedrun attempts.
This game is for the patient and dedicated. The primary goal is to beat the par-time for each level (to get the time award) but the margin for error here is ridiculously brutal meaning your run has to be practically at optimum pace! You have just one hit-point - any sort of death from touching an enemy or a trap will send you back. The game is totally unforgiving in this respect and yes, you'll rage-quit a few times. Do not despair though, although the game encourages speedruns, with the inclusion of ghost-runs, there are other awaiting rewards: collecting all coins or finding the golden skull gets you the corresponding gold badge at your level-select screen and simply getting to the pillar-box will get you a gold star badge.
There are some odd design choices, not least one of the most counter-intuitive wall-jump abilities I've had the misfortune to encounter. You'll need to shunt the left-stick in the opposite way (yes - the opposite way) to the direction you want to go as you leap. Only the guys at Physmo must know why it was implemented like this! You also have a strange and challenging way of maneuvering through water. What it does get right though is the inclusion of small red arrows to indicate there is a trap or danger lurking directly below you. (Something developers of Bard's Gold need to learn from.) Its euro-pop style synth tunes are also a fine collection of catchy tunes that go well with the character of the game.
Thankfully, progress doesn't entirely depend on recording near-perfect speedruns. The game comes packaged with 5 stages or areas containing six levels each represented by a set of six boxes. Within each box, four greyed-out badges turn gold when their conditions are met. A star shows the level has been done, the coins show all coins have been collected, the clock shows the par-time has been hit and the skull indicates it has been found. As warned before, the time award requires repeated practice and runs while the skull is also very well hidden and hard to find. Personally, I managed to hit the first two par-times and find four skulls from stage 1 with no more success on those. For the average player, from the beginning of Stage 2, it's just about completing levels - which is fine.
As a side-scrolling equivalent to a Super Meat Boy type experience, Mos Speedrun 2 will deliver to the hardcore crowd. Your beetle leaps and jumps responsively, your ghost from your best run clearly operates well as a marker and par-times are as challenging as it gets. But for the mere mortal or the average gamer among us, these par-times will be out of reach almost from square one. Although it may mean annoyingly greyed out badges that will never turn gold (and you still need a set number of badges to unlock later areas) treating the game as an exercise in simply completing levels can still be a rewarding if not a fully-rounded way to experience the game.
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