Vigour

Genre: Puzzle-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in 2D Indie Bundle, along with Airship Defender, Boxerpunk Stories, Chip and Charge, Enduring Mountain, Fightro, Frogice, Frogy World, Hopping Bunny, Invasion Waves, Kattish, Lost Chiko, Mechapunk, Melonizard, Pandaty, Pipe Dream, Rattyvity Lab, Sector 98, Sentry Paragon, Skeljump, Tempoknight, Tiny Whaley, Turret Lab, Wampir Dungeon, Webgeon Speedrun Edition, and Yello Adventures.)

Vigour (Not to be confused with Vigor, a completely different and unrelated game) is a Puzzle-Platformer released on Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in 2024. In this game, players play as a blue pig who can’t jump, but can propel himself vertically and horizontally from boxes that light up and darken each time you interact with them, with your goal being to light up all blue boxes in each level (and later, darken all orange boxes).

The presentation here is simple but sufficient, with the game using 2D pixel art visuals that look nice but not especially noteworthy, backed by a similarly nice but repetitive synthesized soundtrack. The one most noteworthy thing about this game is likely the odd electric bleating noise you make whenever you beat a level.

It takes a little getting used to the rules of how this game works, but once you do, you’ll be moving through the puzzles pretty swiftly, with the game throwing in a few new occasional elements as you go through things. The puzzle design is relatively unique, but not terribly difficult.

There are two major flaws I can point to here. First, while you must move your pig on platforms with the analog stick, you must shift yourself between boxes using the D-pad. This seems like a bizarre and inexplicable choice, and it makes things unnecessarily awkward, especially when you want to shoot out from a platform and then aim yourself in mid-air, requiring you to quickly shift from one control scheme to the other.

The other major flaw here is the length – with only 30 levels, this is a game you can easily complete in about 20 minutes or so. Even with this game’s low $4 price tag, that’s still shockingly quick, and I can’t help but feel like they could have done much more with this game’s concept.

As-is, Vigor is a decent but extremely brief distraction, but one you should only pick up if you catch it on a good sale. At $2, this Puzzle-Platformer’s control flaws and short length are forgivable, but at $4, they are less so. And in any case, there’s little here you’re likely to find memorable after you complete this game, which can easily be done in the span of a coffee break.

tl;dr – Vigour is a Puzzle-Platformer where players move a blue pig to different boxes to light and darken them. The puzzle design here is good, but the controls have issues, and the 20-minute game length means even the low $4 price tag seems a bit much.

Grade: C-

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