OkunoKA Madness

Genre: Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

OkunoKA is a challenging Platformer released on Nintendo Switch in 2018, then re-released with bonus levels as OkunoKA Madness in 2020 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. This game has you playing as a little creature trying to make it through the game’s levels to the end to munch on another critter that has been corrupted so you can poop them out uncorrupted… I guess.

So… since this is essentially a re-release of the same game I already reviewed, just with more content… get ready for me to copy-paste that review here.

This game doesn’t take itself too seriously, but beyond the silly characters, the presentation here is mostly good, making use of some absolutely beautiful hand-painted backgrounds backed by some nice instrumental themes. The only thing that detracts from this presentation is the sound effects, which sound like the generic sort of effects you’d hear in a mobile game.

The gameplay in OkunoKA plays a great deal like Super Meat Boy, with players jumping, climbing, and wall-jumping their way through hazardous levels to try to reach the end. There are a few additional elements here too, such as some levels that require you to press a button to trigger a change in the environment. However, mostly this gameplay should feel very familiar to anyone who played Super Meat Boy.

The only problem? The countrols here are terrible and unresponsive. In particular, the way your character sticks to walls sometimes even as you try to jump away can be maddening. Also, your character moves around wildly with far too much momentum to reliably control. In Super Meat Boy, I kept wanting to keep playing despite dying countless times because I felt like each death was due to my own mistakes. Here, far too often I felt like I died because the game refused to react properly when I did something on the controller.

Given that precision platforming is such a key part of OkunoKA, that it is done so poorly makes it difficult to recommend this game. It’s a shame, because this could have provided a colorful alternative to one of the greats of this subgenre of Platformers. However, with this issue, I’d say you’re better off just going back and replaying Super Meat Boy again.

tl;dr – OkunoKA Madness is a re-release of OkunoKA with more levels. Like OkunoKA, this is a challenging Platformer in a colorful world. The gameplay here has a lot of similarities to Super Meat Boy, but unfortunately the controls are maddeningly bad, resulting in a game that feels like it could be fun, if it would just do what you actually tell it to when you try to control your character.

Grade: C-

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