Let’s start first with the nitty-gritty. This is the stuff that any action game and any platform game has to get right or it’s already a non-starter.

How’s the response? I played with a keyboard. I think platformers are best done with a control pad, but if a game has good keyboard response, chances are it has got good response period. Eyas had good response. I’m comparing this to the rather fussy issues I had when playing Rogue Legacy. I did find the jumping to be a bit “floaty” feeling. As opposed to the “hard” jump of the classic NES Super Mario Bros—if anyone has even played that in the last decade. The sprinting and jumping had the typical response time challenges that I see common in many platformers though, regardless of who is playing them, so I’d say it’s as it’s supposed to be. The type of platforming you’ll do in this game necessitates the type of jump physics that are in the game. Prepare for multiple retries. Thankfully, longer levels have check points.

How’s the performance? I had no frame rate drops on my mid-tier gaming PC. That said, I didn’t get to test on any of the levels that had spinning saw blades, etc. But even so, I’ve seen FPS drops in games on my PC that were less action oriented. So I call this a success as well.

Now that we’ve got the non-starters cleared, how is the game itself? Well, you’ll not find anything revolutionary here. It’s an action puzzle platform game. That’s what you’re going to get. You’re also going to get really beautiful artwork. And that’s what drew me to this game. The boy in the cat suit (Eyas) is cleverly reminiscent of the boy in the white pajamas from Where the Wild Things Are. It’s a savvy decision on the part of the art director. I instantly gravitate to it. The rest of the artwork is crisp, ornate, evocative, and disarming—which is good when your game is a puzzle game and likely to provoke frustration (that’s the nature of the beast). Anything to keep me wanting to look at the game is unequivocally good. I’d almost like to say that artwork is the third rail of platform games these days. Without artwork, what is your platformer bringing to the table that the platformers before it have not already? That Land of Eyas is unapologetically beautiful.

This leads me to the next important aspect of the game: its gimmick. The gimmick is that the force of gravity reverses at the midline of each level. Later levels shake this up further, but this is the core conceit. It looks like a water line. You cross it. Suddenly you find yourself falling up instead of down. It’s not bad as far as gimmicks go, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Does it need to be? What is important is that it adds just enough flexibility to the game that it can present you with some unusual puzzles. So really, I shouldn’t call it a gimmick. That implies that it brings nothing to the table. But it does. It makes you have to look carefully at what’s on your screen to decipher the solution to each level. So really, it’s a game mechanic and it works in favor of the game. Hopefully enough that you find the puzzles in this game to be ones you haven’t seen before. For a casual gamer, I think it succeeds very well.

The story? Well, there’s not a lot of story to interest me initially. You’re a lost boy talking to a talking tree (yes, I meant to write it that way). You’re looking for “Mother” (Isaac anyone?). I won’t say that I was drawn in instantly or anything. Perhaps as you progress you’ll be more invested in the character(s). I wasn’t. But frankly, I don’t play games any more to read a story, certainly not platformers. Play this game for the puzzles. You won’t be disappointed.