Mega Coin Squad

 
Developer: Big Pixel Studios
Steam Release: Aug 2014
Hours Played: 4.8
Similar To: Dyna Bomb / JumpJet Rex / Mos Speedrun 2
Rating: 4/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
Any game that brings the joy and satisfaction of popping corn or bubble wrap to mind can never be that bad... and so it is with this arcade-like platformer that goes by the name of Mega Coin Squad. For leaping through a sea of golden coins and listening to the jingle-jangle of points racking up as you do so is the order of the day here. Leap, dash, explode, kill and collect - bing bang bong! You first stand in the middle of the screen with an inviting stash of coins arranged neatly and oh so tantalising within your grasp on various platforms and ledges. You're shown how many coins you need to collect and the time you need to do it in. This is usually hundreds of coins in a matter of minutes. At the signal, you then leap into action by darting about in a mad scramble to collect said coins. 

BALANCE & PACE
You'll then need to return them to that huge pink piggy bank that you can't miss, to lock them up and to end the mad and frenetic level. Of course it's a little more complicated than that because as ever, meanies stand in the way of your goal by walking and flying in the places where you need to go. Well, that's ok, because as well as being armed with a default fireball attack more powerful weapons will randomly drop to assist you. Furthermore, that left/right and up/down dash attack can always be called upon to crash violently into the pesky varmints. And there's more... after completing new levels you'll be taken to a bonus room with your character and invited to headbutt a huge square above your head to unlock upgrades to all those abilities and weapons. There's also other upgrades such as magnets, extra time bonuses and coin drops and the like. 
 

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
Mega Coin Squad is retro and presented in graphics from the last decade or two. You get to choose one of five characters from the start at the character-select screen who each have the level that they've reached stamped underneath their portraits. Here, longevity of the game is further ensured as each has particular strengths over others such as Stef's speed, Chunk's weight and power or Mouth's acceleration. With each playing slightly differently, you can swap runs between characters and the 16-level campaign won't seem that short after all. On the negative side the soundtrack is totally bland and nondescript, while moving around on the campaign map is awkward and counter-intuitive with the controller.  

PROGRESS SYSTEM
Each of the five characters get their own campaign map which features four areas containing four levels making it 16 in total. You move around on a hard-to-naviagate path using your character's head to select a level. Each one has three gaps for three crystals to be filled: you get one for completing the round in the par-time; one for completing it with the loss of no lives and one for collecting and depositing the entire quota of coins in one go. This system definitely pitches the challenge at the right standard and pace but the downside is that one false move leads to an instant collision which means a large percentage of your coins getting dropped and scattered everywhere. This means an immediate restart for those after the crystals which can mean a session having too much of the ol' stop/start to it. 

CONCLUSION

The bubble wrap comparison is certainly the feeling you get when you make that satisfying dash through a double line of gold coins. Couple this with the explosion created while smashing your way through one of the bomb turrets and you get an audio-visual feast fit for a king. With the game fading out sets of coins and then re-spawning them in other areas, and with precious seconds counting down, the game does a fine job in making it a tantalizingly tense race against time. My only gripe is that when a collision occurs a large percentage of your coins inexplicably vanish with the scattered ones amounting to significantly less than what you were carrying. For me, this is too punishing and demoralizing leading me to wonder why you couldn't just drop the same amount and incur a time penalty in the collecting up process. A 5-star game nevertheless.