[Games] Indie Flash Bin - Charge Kid [PC/Switch]

Release: 2020

Developer: Ayrton, Rafael Bordoni, Vincent

Genre: Puzzle/Platformer
Platform: Steam, Switch, Itch.io

Price: $1.99 (USD) - Steam & Itch.io / $2.49 (USD) - Switch

Charge Kid is a logic puzzler masquerading as a speed platformer. While its outfitted after hits such as Celeste and Super Meat Boy this is indeed a very different game. Instead of mastering control and zipping through multi-stage challenges with ease you'll be spending the bulk of your time on Charge Kid patiently (read: blind with blood-curdling rage) figuring out how to abuse the few mechanics you're handed to solve increasingly difficult platforming challenges. 

Empty and spacious industrial labyrinths lead the way as quiet ambience and a simple electronic score accompany the barren. Without the stress of timers or death counters looming above you and judging your every mistake, you're afforded the ability to be largely alone with your thoughts in this journey. And your thoughts will be your most valuable asset as you face spike pits, lasers, and incomprehensibly large platforming gaps which impede your progress. Your character possesses with them a small orb capable of opening doors, interacting with levels, and being launched ahead of you and held in place with the hold of a button; a simple move set later turned complicated with the introduction of charges. These charges, activated by colliding with red objects on the map, further your move set by granting you the ability to super jump or dash towards a suspended orb regardless of your position on the map. However it should be noted that these moves can only be performed once, requiring you to once again come into contact with a red object to access these moves. 

There is something oddly mechanical to Charge Kid's flow as a platformer. Just a few levels in and a pattern becomes immediately recognized. First you are planted in a somewhat closed-off environment, where peculiar level geometry and closed off doors block your path. Here you are expected to experiment with your movement and find the solution. Platforming challenges always top off a level and often take what you learned in prior environments and pushes them to the extreme. Here, you'll be stretching the game till' its bursting by the seams to pull off pixel-perfect leaps across platforms while thinking on the spot the combination of tricks you need to pull off to ensure you can clear a gap. The repetition in this game is expected for the scale in question, it is indeed a short and simple "hardcore platformer" after all. 

I appreciate how, with that scale in mind, the lengths the challenge takes you and the satisfaction that comes out of discovering the ways you can compound your abilities to perform new and unorthodox tricks. Even up to the end of the game I was learning that I could do some incredibly unusual things with abilities I was almost certain that I had fully understood at that point. That said, it does leave to some grievances. The fluctuation in difficulty between levels is a bit fickle, while each "puzzle" section is less egregious with the offbeat difficulty fluctuations I find it harder to forgive the curve in the platforming segments. It gets incredibly frustrating, as a puzzle title, when you've figured out the solution to what's laid out before you but progress is halted due not to your failure in execution - but because Charge Kid's pixel perfect timing asks quite a lot from you. 

Eventually, yes, you will get the timing down perfect and clear a level, but often it felt more like I was blessed by luck when I bridged a gap than it felt like I was overcoming the learning curve. I'm confident that if I were to revisit these levels, or attempt to rush through them in the game's speedrun mode, I would once again be facing this same issue even though I have long since figured out what there is to each and every one of these levels. I suppose its a minor grievance, but in a game where precision matters a lot, feeling like even a small amount of that movement is out of your control can be a deal breaker for some. Especially for a game of this short length and scale. Regardless, I will chalk this down to an issue that doesn't really ruin the game but will undoubtedly lead to more bouts of frustration than what would be necessary otherwise. 

Ultimately, Charge Kid is a very solid "hardcore platformer" that will repeatedly impress you with the mileage it pushes out of simple mechanics and sparse presentation. To me it is an absolute no-brainer for anyone who likes logic puzzles and difficult platforming as this game brushes up on both bases pretty well. And if you are looking for a game that fills the void left by the discontinuation of Flash, then this title should 100% be up your alley. 

Charge Kid is available for purchase on Steam, Itch.io, and the Nintendo eShop. Showing your support through purchasing the game or spreading around positive press goes miles in the long run, so be sure to show some love!