Jump Challenge!

Genre: Platformer / Arcade

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Jump Challenge! is an Arcade-style Platformer that released in 2022 on PC and PlayStation 5 and ported to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2023. In this game, players must guide their jumping character up platforms in a well while outpacing rising lava.

The presentation here is simple and not very impressive, combining simple 3D and blurry 2D elements backed by whimsical music. It mostly works, though the visuals used for platforms make it unclear when you’ve cleared a platform, which is pretty bad when the main thing you’re doing in this game is jumping on platforms.

Wouldn’t it be just awful if the jumping mechanics didn’t work well either? I ask this because the jumping mechanics don’t work well either. Your jumping height is directly tied to “momentum”, though this momentum is less about getting a running start in a jump and more about always keeping your character moving, because it counts your mid-air movement as momentum, and it isn’t especially picky about which way you have to be moving. This makes for the odd situation where you have to wiggle in the air above a platform you’re directly over to ensure your next jump isn’t short.

Even if you do this, you’ll occasionally find yourself faced with jumps that are too high to reach, perhaps separated by a platform you’d normally need to jump on between one and the next but that is completely taken up by a lethal hazard.

Needless to say, a jumping game where all you do is jump but where jumping isn’t fun and your jumps are inconsistent and even at their best might not be enough to clear the jumps you need to make… yeah, that’s a pretty terrible game. And that terrible game is exactly what you’ll find in Jump Challenge!, so jump pas this game to play one of countless other jumping games on Nintendo Switch that will actually make you jump for joy rather than making you want to climb someplace high and jump.

tl;dr – Jump Challenge! is an Arcade-style Platformer where players try to jump up a series of platforms in a well, outpacing rising lava. Unfortunately, in a game that’s all about jumping, the jumping in this game is absolutely terrible in multiple ways. Given how many great games on Nintendo Switch are also all about jumping, I can’t think of any reason you would want to play a bad jumping game on the platform.

Grade: F

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