NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits review

NyxQuest is a platformer set in a post-apocalyptic ancient Greece. You control Nyx, a winged girl from the gods' realm in the sky, looking for her companion Icarus (hence the original name) on the scorched sandy Earth. Minimalistic design keeps the active environment simple, the sandy ground a constant threat to your life meter, and stone pillars and ruins forming your route from left to right. The background detail features huge statues and other impressive architecture, and the whole game has a hazy cartoony style to it that suits the mood perfectly. It's not as intricately detailed as something like Lost Winds, but it's nonetheless quite pretty. The music was composed specifically for the game and is not overbearing, but adds just the right flavour.Despite its looks, this is a very old-school type of platformer. Obstacles like spikes, fireballs and crushing pillars adorn the levels, and enemies have simplistic movement patterns, flying back and forth, mostly leaving you alone unless you get too close. With her wings, Nyx is able to jump up to five times and retain her height by gliding for a limited time, so a lot of the game is spent either in the air, or navigating high structures and crossing over large gaps. It's simple to get to grips with but then makes you master it rather quickly. NyxQuest isn't exactly easy. Gamestyle had its platforming skills pushed and tested quite a few times during the course of the game, getting through precisely timed traps and navigating multiple hazards simultaneously. It has generally been a welcome challenge, though; you don't see a great deal of these types of games these days. Granted, it's not Megaman-levels of hard, but it's satisfying.In addition to the standard running, jumping and gliding aspects of NyxQuest, there's the somewhat idiosyncratic modern features, namely the physics engine and the use of the pointer. To clarify, shortly after starting the game, you gain the ability to 'click-and-drag' any glowing object; this includes stone pillars, blocks and even fireballs. They move and fall around with a real sense of weight to them, even crushing you if you're not careful. Moving these things out of the way and using them as bridges to aid you forms an essential part of the game... and it's one of the reasons it's so hard.Imagine it: you have a jump-meter, which shows you how many more boosts you can use before you touch the ground again; you have a glide-meter, which depletes while gliding until you land or jump again; you have a grab-meter, which depletes while moving things around with the pointer; and all the while you're trying to avoid enemies and other hazards from depleting your life-meter. There are sections towards the end that test your abilities to multi-task to the extreme, particularly once you get the wind power ability and have to draw paths for the wind to follow, whilst still in midair. Oh, there's also a small amount of 'waggle' involved, but it's minimal. Actually, the controls are very well implemented. If they weren't, much of the game would be frustrating as hell. We'd perhaps argue the run and glide actions shouldn't be on the same button, but that's minor.While you mostly move from left to right in NyxQuest, one level sees you backtracking to the entrance after retrieving a key, while another one takes the form of a stealth level with a giant eye watching you. Otherwise, the game is pretty consistent and the 'scorched earth' theme remains throughout. The occasional boss fight crops up here and there, and is, predictably enough, very hard, and there's a steady stream of new powers as you progress. Although the game is fairly short on the whole (under four hours), some of the levels are quite long and your progress can't be saved until you finish it. This was especially annoying at the end of one level where our Wii crashed and we had to start again.Nevertheless, the ending is reached before it outstays its welcome. The game could be tightened up in a few places and we'd rather not have the stealth level at all, but if you're after a game that successfully marries old-school platforming with contemporary physics and interface, you could do a lot worse than NyxQuest. Not bad work for four guys in an office in Madrid. We wish them luck on their next project.