Skylar & Plux: Adventure On Clover Island would have been alright if the game had more than two hours worth of content.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWCJGigJYCk

The game took me roughly an hour and a half to complete the story mode with the only other gameplay being finding more caged villagers sprinkled around the small map. For the price of $15 I don't feel this game contains a worthwhile amount of content, it feels more like a demo than a full product.

Gameplay revolves around collecting gems, platforming and occassionally fighting enemies, all utilizing a variety of tools and gadgets to do so.

The combat is very basic and doesn't happen very often. There are a total of three enemies in the game and none of them are all that interesting to fight, especially the small minions as they blindly jump at you and will hurl themselves into death like lemmings. When these enemies do hit you it often feels cheap as they randomly swarm you.

Fighting them off is an endeavour, especially early in the game when you have no access to any sort of ranged fighting. You have a basic three hit combo attack and a jumping slam attack. It's basically the same setup as Ratchet & Clank. The downside is it's like only having the wrench instead of an arsenal of weapons.

Speaking of Ratchet & Clank, Skylar & Plux desperately wants to evoke emotions from that series. Everything from having the same attacks, currency systems, overall level design and movement system. They even went as far as to add a jetpack that functions in the exact same way that Clank's helicopter upgrade does. The only difference being that this version doesn't work as well with the maps.

The extra jetpack options like high jumping or boost jumping don't even work with the game as there are few to zero areas that even require their use. In fact the times I attempted to actually cross areas with them I just died because the game would rather you just double jump and glide across everything.

Adding onto this, there is no ledge hang feature so your character will often either bounce off or glide up ledges if you don't quite make them.

There are gadgets in the game and this is where the game shows the most promise. There is a swingshot lookalike and a dynamo but the other two gadgets are rather interesting. One has the ability to slow time and the other is a magnet can pick up objects to be thrown whether it be enemies or certain objects.

The magnet is your only ranged weapon in the game.

The thing is once you have the slow time gadget, you use it during every fight because it can just slow everything down so you never get hit. It makes the combat even easier and feels like cheating.

There are so many glitches in the game. There were points where I was able to bypass level areas left and right, along with moments where my character became stuck.

The worst one I encountered is that the game doesn't respawn the world if you die, unless you lose all of your lives. This means that in sections that have fall-away platforms you will respawn on the first ledge but there will be no platform there to jump on anymore so you are screwed. On top fo that there was a portion of the game where you outrun lava but if you die, the lava doesn't reset so you just spawn in it or underneath it. When you spawn underneath then it just doesn't hurt you and you can bypass the entire section.

I also had two cutscenes not initialize so I had to skip them entirely.

I was actually okay with that because the characters are some of the most annoying I have ever dealt with in a video game.

Plux (the bird) is the worst character I could imagine. He is the pinnacle of a "hello fellow kids" style character. Everything from his voice acting to the dialogue is done in the cringiest, late 90's way possible. Even if it were done on purpose it was still ear-drilling the entire game. The other characters are also kind of annoying, but nowhere close to the awfulness of Plux.

Skylar is fine, I don't really like her design but she doesn't talk so she can remain out of my hate book.

The storyline is extremely predictable and offers nothing engaging, especially being so short. I keep saying that but seriously this game is three hours at the most if you want to 100% everything in it. It's like playing the opening two worlds of Jak & Daxter.

Graphically the game looks alright, but there is a problem with the lighting that makes shaded areas look extremely dark and difficult to see. That needs to be fixed.

The music in the game is lovely as well as the presentation. To their credit I did feel like I was playing a game from the golden era of adventure platformers.

I get that this game was made by a first time team and former students, but the amount of content and quality of said content is not anywhere near what I consider acceptable for a consumer.

If you enjoy platformers, this one is mostly harmless, but incredibly short and easy. As a finished product though, it's nowhere close to what it needs to be.

A bland, painfully unfunny platformer that does nothing new and is very short.
I wanted to like this game, but it never surprised me. Combat was dull and basic, and the platforming, while ok, failed to get exciting or inventive. The puzzles are mindlessly basic and never evolve to take advantage of the mechanics they use. The main characters are dull and lifeless, Skylar being entirely silent and emotionless, while Plux is painfully unfunny, referencing dated memes that make no sense in-universe. CRT is a terrible stereotype of a villain, also painfully unfunny, trying to be glados so bad it hurts.
Play Poi or A Hat in Time if you want a good 3D Platformer on Steam. Not this.
The art style isn't bad though.

I did down vote this game just beacause the game to value level. it cost £11.99. for 2 hours of play.. not very good if you ask me. BUT

pros

: The game is very pretty
: The music is awesome
: It reminds you of classic games from your child hood
: Mybe get it if it goes on sale for less than £5

Cons

: cost £11.99 for 2 HOURS of play including cut sceans
: combat was a little to easy
: ONE boss fight in the game was a bit to easy to kill

To be fair, it's not an awful game. The voice acting and script are cringy, the camera is a bit temperamental and the frame rate is pretty poor, but it's still fun. But at just 3 hours long it's ridiculously overpriced, even in a sale. At full price it'd be downright insulting.

A lot of potential, but somewhat wasted with the inexperience of the people making it.
I enjoyed playing this, but in the end, it's problems were still problems.

Pros:
-Good music design.
-Nice graphics and settings
-Solid controls

Cons:
-Very bad voice acting in some parts.
-Cheesy and overall annoying dialogue and story
-An easyness not even old 3d platformers tended to have
-Annoying character designs. (Blue puff ball creatures that are hideous, and Plux serving absolutely no purpose in the game other than to be edgy and relate to the 'kids')
-Extremely short. A few hours at best.


Overall, this game feels good in some ways, but feels.. Bad, in others. Honestly I can see a sequel of this being much better, filling out all the gaps that came with the first game.

But considering the hype I had for it, it isn't the 3D platformer revival I had hoped it'd be.

Very generic and short. Tries to be Jak and Ratchet but fails to imitate. Some lines are borderline cringe worthy. If you are curious, buy it on a steep sale.
The platforming mechanics felt nice. Though the platforming challenges wasnt there to utilize them that much.

Skylar and Plux is a 2000 style 3D action platformer, very similar in style to Ratchet and Clank or Jak and Daxter. While it draws inspiration from these games it struggles to understand what it is that makes them great.

First of all, the game is short. It's priced at £12, it's not trying to hide the fact that it's short, but it is, so you should know that before you go in. I finished the game in under two hours and I imagine 100% would be between 4-5 hours. I think that the price is right for a game of its length, and when i read other reviews i was expecting it to be a fairly short game, but when i started playing I realised it would be over quicker than I had expected.

The level design is nice but way too big. In PS2 era games the levels were much tighter, puzzles had more purpose being an obstruction, when the levels open up too wide you lose the linear design, there's less challenge in getting to your objective when you can take slightly different routes, not a single path that's been designed for you.

The Combat is tricky to place. All three enemies take single hits, but the fighting seems slow and inaccurate. Your Move set is more similar to Jak and Daxter than Ratchet and Clank, but it isn't as fine tuned as you would expect. Attacks have a hidden recharge time that you can't properly guage when they are ready again because the animation has finished but you still have to wait before you spin again. And this is where the combat becomes tricky. One enemy is difficult to attack beacuse it fires too fast, so you can't easily dodge its rockets. The smaller enemy is hard to hit because of its size and erratic jumping, the only real challenge comes when you fight 20 at once. The Third enemy isn't difficult at all, as the game gives you a slow time gadget so you can then easily dodge it's stream of bullets.

The gadgets you unlock in each of the three areas of the game are easily the best part of the game. The first is a jetpack which gives you a passive glide ability and also a charge roll that propells you forward. The downside of this is the game finishes faster. Its other ability is ultimately pointless; a rocket jump ability that is only used twice in the game isn't useful at all. The slow time ability is fantastic for puzzles, it feels great using it to get around fast moving platforms, its downside though is that it makes combat laughably easy. The third is a magnet and again this makes the platforming great fun, but again the combat becomes tediously easy when you get in certain situations.

The Story of Ratchet and Clank was 'we should stop the bad guy, because thats what good people do'. The story in Skylar and Plux is a confusing mix of amnesia, heroism and daddy issues. First you're told that you, Skylar, have lost your memories and the only way to get them back is to get the three orbs on Clover Island and then you'll get your memory back. That alone is fine, but then you meet Plux who wants to help free all of the villagers other than it's a good thing to do, all the while he's talking about how his dad left him on Clover Island and will come back to get him. And in the short space of two hours Plux goes from 'my Dad will come back for me' to 'I know my dad won't come back for me and I'm OK with that'. We never learn about his dad, and we never see his dad, what was set up as a mystery is now just a coping tool for single parent kids. Oddly there is no mention of Plux's mother, she must be kept for the sequel.

And now that I have mentioned Plux I should warn you that he is the most annoying character you will meet. From his wierd frequent anal fixation to his annoying references (Miley Cyrus' wrecking ball being the worst) he is one of the worst parts of the game. He's actually not even needed for anything. While Ratchet needed Clank to use him as a jetpack, Plux isnt used for anything, he just follows around Skylar and keeps talking about his absent Dad. Skylar even has another companion already, a talking fist, who i didn't find that bad, and would have actually like to hear from more instead of a needless bird. Character design is also odd as there is no need for any of them to be animals. Clank was a robot so he could turn into a jetpack and do other stuff, Plux is a bird who you don't need to fly, so as a companion doesnt make much sense being a bird. Skylar confuses me as to why she is a giant cat, although apparently she was a thief so maybe she's a cat burglar, I don't even know anymore.

The Story and Voices are both very odd. For what strikes me as a young Kids game it's very odd hearing Plux telling the bad guy that he should go stick stuff up his butt (probably an actual line from the game I dont care or remember now). It's also odd hear him almost swear alot "what the funk" etc. It didn't offend me, it just left me feeling really odd knowing that it had been written for kids. The characters will also spoon feed you out of place references like an badly dull Tinder joke for example, not the kind of stuff you would expect a kid to get. None of the writing is good, it just makes you cringe just a little bit more with every butt or bad song lyric trown at you. The Voice acting isn't very good either. Most of the characters speak quite slowly, and it isn't really an issue but its just very odd and noticable, and a little annoying.

When I started writing this review i thought I would give it a mixed to positive rating, but now it's just negative. There are too many things wrong with this game when i think back on it that I can't recommend it. And that annoys me really because I had followed the developers of this game and i was really hopeful that i would get a PS2 style game from my childhood, but instead it regularly fails to hit any of my expectations, opting to go for a 3D platformer theme, but not really understanding what made those types of game great.

An obvious, cheap Ratchet & Clank clone, a mediocre game at its best. Yet I would love this game, only because I like platformer and desperately wait for a new R&C game.
Why the negative review then? Since its release in May, this game suffers from an audio issue and the developers fail to fix it. The only workaround for the sudden sound distortions is to turn off V-Sync. Naturally, your game will crash then.
The producer's reply provides different excuses and statements, such as:
"From a developers point of view, if the problem is just a hiccup that happens in a very small part in the game, it might not even be "worth it" to put more resources into making the problem go away since the costs of fixing would be too expensive."
This might have been acceptable, if this game hadn't such an audacious price tag for a 2-4 hours experience.

This game was one of my personal most-hyped-for titles this year. It looked like a fun mix of Ratchet & Clank and Jak & Daxter with maybe just a dash of Banjo-Kazooie and a faint hint of Metroid. And it had a cat in it, which for a self-proclaimed crazy cat lady like myself is a bonus! I wanted to love this game. Which makes writing this review so hard for me.

First off, the camera. The camera was too freakin' sensitive, always darting around if I barely touched my mouse (and sometimes when I wasn't touching my mouse AT ALL). So many of my deaths could be contributed solely to the glitchy camera. Oh, and the look sensitivity settings do nothing. Trust me, I tried. I can only assume this is because I was playing with a mouse instead of a controller. Every other 3D platformer I have played on the PC I've been able to completely with a mouse/keyboard setup. This is literally the only one that has fought me for not using a controller. It's just a huge frustration that makes this casual game into a nightmarish heck to play through.

But let's say all of the camera issues magically disappeared. Surely this game would become the grandest of all, right? Ehhhhh....no.

First off, the titular duo. Skylar and Plux. Skylar's ok, if a bit of a flat character. Then again, she does have amnesia, so she's not really GOING to have a major backstory. Her design is very Samus-meets-Looney Tunes, which shouldn't work and to some people it won't but I thought it was fun. She makes absolutely no sound, which is kinda weird. But all in all, she's ok. Plux, though...hoo boy, that Plux. His design's cute, I'll give the devs that. But his character is annoying. He tries to be a funny sidekick, kind of like Kazooie or Clank. But he falls so short with his weird references and butt jokes and constant Navi-style navigation. And he never does anything but fly next to you. Sure, within the context of the story its fine, because he's leading you around the island. But gameplay-wise, he's just taking up visual space. He never aids Skylar in combat or helps her fly over obstacles or anything. He just flies around and makes jokes. Oh, he also tries to tug at your heartstrings with his stories about his missing dad, but they feel more awkward than heartwarming. This is coming from someone who usually feels bad for characters with missing dads, however flimsy their characterization may be; so if you couldn't make ME feel sympathy for your character then something went wrong.

Collectables. You got your crystals and your floaty cloud people called the L'oa. Both reset after you die. The crystals resetting isn't so bad, but the L'oa resetting after you spent several minutes trying to get the camera to work with you while you jumped your way to them can be ragequit-inducing. Of course, if you're unlike me and don't have camera issues, then this probably won't be a problem. Still, worth mentioning.

Settings and soundtrack. The settings felt like they were really big, but not with a lot of stuff occupying it. Just felt very vanilla, which is a weird way to describe a 3D platformer's level design but I stand by it. The soundtrack had some nice tropical/celtic vibes to it, but a lot of times it was just kind of ... there. And they both blended into each other until I didn't really notice or pay attention to either.

Okay then, so that's all the negatives and neutrals I had with it. Anything positive to say about it? Well, besides Skylar's design, I really liked CRT. His voice actor was the best in the whole game, and had just amazing delivery to his lines. He got some genuine giggles out of me a couple of times. Kudos to that guy. I'm okay with it being short and casual (or at least, I'm sure it'd be casual if the camera worked right for me...I bring up that camera a lot, and I don't apologize), because sometimes being able to just pick something up and beat it in an hour or two is great. And...ummm....well, its only $15. In today's economy, that's a steal.

TL;DR: without the camera issues, I'd give this game a solid "meh" out of "wow." Unfortunately, WITH those camera issues, I have to give it a "nope" out of "wow." I am more than willing to edit this review and eat my words if they fix the camera, but until then...eh, just go play The Last Tinker or Yooka-Laylee or Poi or, heck, even Macbat 64. Or just break out your old PS2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmQqZ9KPS8c

Quick overview for those who prefer to read:

Let me first start by saying that I feel this game is intended for a younger audience.

I really wanted to love this game. I have been following it for about a month and a half now and finally decided to give it a shot.

Unfortunately, this game is really not worth the $15 it's asking. I completed the entirety of this game in 2 hours. To boot, the content is incredibly easy to overcome and poses no real challenge.

The objective of the game is to collect 3 orbs from 3 levels, you heard me right.. 3 levels. Mind you the levels are diverse and decently sized. Still, with such a small amount of zones available, it adds to the feeling that this game feels rushed.

The abilities are fun enough to use, however, there's only 3 of them you'll end up at the end of the game. They're nothing new and far from creative mechanics.

Overall the story and plot play out such as a bad cartoon. The dialog is aimed towards a younger audience and quite frequently rams memes and puns down your ears. I found that I needed to the voices off after about halfway through the game.

Ultimately, this game is trying to play on the nostalgia of oldschool platformers... but, it's aimed at I'd say 10-15 year olds. Therefore I don't know what exactly the target demographic the devs are really shooting for here.

I'd give this one a skip until a sale pops up.