While this psychedelic trip of a game is already available on a number of platforms, we had yet to check it out before the advent of PAX Online. The demo we were able to preview consisted of three levels from various points throughout the game, showcasing a few different environments, mechanics, and difficulty. Ah, yes. The difficulty. We’ll get to that later.
From the outset, Spinch is intriguing. Maybe a little frightening. The levels are so brightly colored it might make you want to vomit, and in fact, plenty of the characters (and background images, to be frank) are doing just that… vomiting rainbows. Everywhere. Everywhere.
The art style immediately evoked thoughts of the cartoon show Adventure Time—eerie, slightly disturbing, completely nonsensical. You play a colorless, white blob called a Spinch, whose task is to rescue its twelve children throughout the game so they won’t be eaten by color. If that sentence didn’t make a lot of sense to you, it’s okay. Color has become sentient and enjoys the taste of spinch-flesh, from what we can gather. We had to do a bit of reading for context, but honestly—that’s… about all you need to know.
The platforming itself isn’t revolutionary in terms of its mechanics. It’s one of those games where you might ask yourself “what’s the point?” if it wasn’t for the utterly bonkers surrounding that’s the kind of mildly horrifying scene you just can’t seem to look away from…
And honestly, it’s not an easy platformer, either. It might look at first like it’ll be a walk in the park, but even in the three levels we previewed, a measure of precision was required to make it to the end. There are checkpoints throughout, so it’s not entirely brutal when you inevitably fail, and the repeated attempts for success didn’t feel like a chore in the way that it can for many platformers. You know what we’re talking about. No need to go pointing fingers, but you have at least one game in mind, don’t you?
It’s hard to say much more without playing through the game, but suffice it to say we’re pleased that this game was created by a Canadian cartoonist, and what’s more, it’s got such visual appeal that we do recommend checking it out. If the demo is still up on Steam, you can access it there, but it is available on Switch right now.
PAX Online Listing Information:
- Available on macOS / Microsoft Windows / Nintendo Switch
- Genre Action & Adventure / Platform
- Release date Out now
Spinch is a visual 2D platformer created by award winning Canadian cartoonist Jesse Jacobs, developed by Queen Bee Games, with audio composition by famed Canadian artist Thesis Sahib (James Kirkpatrick). A Spinch is a hyper-agile organism consumed by the quest to rescue a litter of its missing offspring from an endless kaleidoscopic invasion of misshapen and malformed offbeats and oddities. Dash, dodge, jump, and even launch your own children as projectiles to take down six eccentric bosses in six vibrant worlds.
