Axolotl

Genre: Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Rafa’s World + Axolotl + .cat Milk bundle, along with .cat Milk and Rafa’s World. Additionally, it is included in Family Vacation Bundle / 20 Games, along with .cat Milk, American Man, Bruxa, CatCat, Cats Puzzle, Cooking Craze, Dinogotchi, Fire Race, Hidden Theft, Home Sweet Home, Kitten Island, Last Mage Survivors, Nincat, Rafa’s World, Rô, Scrap Bolts, Scribbled, Submarine Bubble, and The Great Battle of Shark Monkey Squirrel Dinossaur Bird Bee.)

Axolotl, sometimes referred to as Axolotl is Dry, is a challenging Platformer released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2022. The premise is fairly simple – players take the role of a pink elephant, who they must guide to a watering hole before their moisture meter runs out.

The presentation here is pretty good. This game uses colorful pixel art visuals, backed by a catchy dreamy tune. The only real issue with this presentation is how monotonous they are, with each level of the game set in a visually-identical desert.

The gameplay here is almost pretty good. There’s a lot of similarity here to the game Celeste, in that this is a challenging Platformer where players have a jump, a wall-jump, and a multidirectional air-dash that they can only use once before having to recharge it by setting their feet down on solid ground, though there are mid-air recharges that can allow you to use multiple dashes mid-jump.

Unlike Celeste, Axolotl never really moves beyond these simple gameplay mechanics, though that’s not really this game’s biggest problem. There are two other major issues here. First, this game’s difficulty level is all over the place, but mostly extremely hard, spiking early and often, with occasional cakewalk levels for no apparent reason. It definitely feels like this game’s designer was absent the day in class where they taught proper difficulty progression.

However, what really kills Axolotl is that the jump button here also acts as a dodge button, making it all too easy to accidentally dash in mid-air when you had no intention of doing so. As if this was bad enough, the jump button’s use as a dash is inconsistent, meaning you can’t even depend on this dual assignment. In a game where precision controls are going to be absolutely vital, this is disastrous.

I suppose if this were a budget-priced game, it might be easier to forgive these flaws, but this game’s $7 price tag just seems far too high for what’s on offer. Oddly, a Compilation including this game plus two others, Rafa’s World + Axolotl + .cat Milk, is available for only $0.75, a much more reasonable price, which is bizarre since that bundle also contains two other games. If you’re interested in Axolotl and think you can look past this game’s flaws, I highly recommend you get that bundle instead.

tl;dr – Axolotl is a challenging Platformer where players control a pink elephant, who must get to a watering hole before time runs out. This game plays much like the more popular challenging Platformer Celeste, but suffers due to poor difficulty progression and poorly-designed controls. However, probably this game’s biggest problem is that its $7 price tag is too high, especially when the Rafa’s World + Axolotl + .cat Milk bundle that includes this game is only $0.75. With this being the case, absolutely no one should buy this game here, and those who think they can tolerate its flaws are better getting the bundle.

Grade: D

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