Caltrops - Steam





	[quote name="Rafiki"]Picked this up for $11. It's basically a platformer with vaguely predictable moving platforms and obstacles that compel you to move faster than you're comfortable with. It's all about split-second decision making, reflexes, and some luck. The difficulty is wildly inconsistent instead of there being a reasonable curve upwards. Levels are randomly difficult and randomly really easy. This is most pronounced in the last world, Hell, where the name is an excuse to insert a few random luck total bullshit levels in between other levels that are comparatively easy. There's unlockable abilities of varying utility to give you some leeway in landing jumps, the majority of which you'll have to unlock by replaying completed levels (protip: mad cash in world 7). There's also leaderboards and ghost opponents to incentivize replaying levels to get the best time, but the leaderboards are naturally dominated by exploiters so the top 5 of every level is completed in 0.236 seconds. I'm on the last level and Steam says I have about 3 hours played. I'd probably be there in two if I were playing with a proper controller instead of a shitty laptop keyboard. It's a game that's easy to pick up and play and get in and out of without a big time commitment to get immersed. It's also one of those OCD games where you decide you're done after this try, wait the next try, ok I'll quit after th- wait shit, ok this is the last try and then I'm done FUCK I almost had it ok I'll do one more and then I'm done. Ok, I beat it but I'm only 2 levels from the end of the world, so I'll just play through and quit then. 20 minutes later, shit I should have gone to sleep half an hour ago. There's also some kind of Twitch.tv integration where people watching your stream can vote to spawn various effects in the game, like random lasers, low gravity, or bouncy trucks. I saw the RLM guys playing it with that enabled, and it seemed like a neat idea if you have that kind of audience. Except for the part where everyone votes to spawn lasers every time just to fuck with you. I'd say pick it up if you're interested in a tense die-and-restart platformer and you don't mind the short length and lack of narrative and rich lore. [/quote]