By David Walker
Video games have the ability to make a player feel many emotions: Happiness, anger, sadness and sometimes even fear, but it takes a special kind of game to make the feeling of nostalgia wash over you. It could happen in many different ways: using retro inspired 8-bit or 16-bit graphics, serenading the player with chiptune beats all throughout, or having that classic unforgiving difficulty that is so sadistically admired by gamers of all ages; But what about using a gameplay mechanic that seems to be reminiscent of a game that, surely, every child has played at one time or another: The Floor is Lava (or in this case, toxic alien goo)
Let’s Go Nuts, a platformer created by the team over at BeardedBrother.Games, opens in a lush green forest inhabited by adorable squirrels who are just living their best lives doing squirrel things (eating acorns and climbing trees presumably), when all of a sudden an alien spaceship descends from the skies above and proceeds to pollute the pristine eco-friendly world with toxic goo that seemingly disintegrates anything it touches. As a squirrel, it is now your civic duty to hop across crates and blocks of varying materials whilst not touching the fur dissolving liquid to collect acorns across multiple worlds while looking stylish doing it, and stomp on a few alien scum along the way.
Single player in Let’s Go Nuts features four worlds that will have players hopping across over 40 different levels. Each level has a three-star ranking that can be attained by collecting a certain amount of acorns, grabbing all the golden acorns that are cleverly placed throughout, and simultaneously getting to the goal point within a certain time limit, so there is a decent amount of replay value in going back and trying to get those perfect scores across every stage.
As mentioned before, touching the ground leads to death, so the only way that you can get around is by knocking over towering stacks of blocks that are laid around the levels and using them as stepping stones to safely cross over the sea of corrosive liquid. In earlier stages the game does a good job of teaching the player to not get too reckless in knocking over any and every stack of crates and blocks they see because those could very well be used to access a platform that the squirrel can’t reach otherwise; so there is a good strategy of planning your routes of crate traversal. Also there is some quality jump-tech involved in obtaining some of those golden acorns. Some of them are placed in some pretty precarious spots, and the only way to reach them seem to be walking off a platform and then using your reserved mid-air jump to get back onto land.
Also, the acorns collected in each stage can be used to purchase different outfits for your squirrel to wear to give them a little flare and personality; like a hoodie, firefighters outfit, ninja gear, or a karate master uniform. There are also special customizations you can buy for your squirrel with the golden acorns you collect, like a pirate peg-leg and hook hand. Buying these customizations might seem optional while playing primarily single player, but going into the game’s multiplayer mode, you might want to buy a couple articles of clothing to differentiate all the squirrels on screen.
Split Screen multiplayer is supported in this game, which is perfect for Nintendo Switch owners, because that means by default you could have some box hopping fun with two players at seemingly anytime with the joycon detached. There are two different modes with two styles: Versus and Co-Op, which can be played either on an endless styled map or on normal levels from single player. Versus mode has players competing to see who can get the highest score and co-op of course has the players working together to achieve victory. In addition, the endless maps involve everyone running and jumping away from a huge wave of the toxic sludge while at the same time trying to collect as many acorns as possible to attain the highest score, and the normal maps are just a mixed bag of courses provided from the single player campaign. Split screen multiplayer is always a fun time and the run and jump insanity of Let’s Go Nuts gameplay is a solid formula for versus play.
However, there are a few objections to be had with this squirrel based adventure; First off the customization options are pretty shallow. In total there are about 25 different hat types and about 40 shirts, each spanning only the four styles mentioned prior, so there really isn’t too much variety to be seen outside of palette swaps of each outfit. Also the “special suit” types that you can unlock with the golden acorns aren’t really that enticing to go through the trouble of collecting enough to unlock them.
Also the checkpoint system seems a little weird. In every stage there’s at least one checkpoint so if you die you don’t have to start all the way over, but when you reset back to the checkpoint only time is what gets recovered from that point. If you hit any boxes or grabbed any acorns, those are still the way they were when you died, so it’s not completely resetting your progress from the checkpoint which is a little bizarre. Also the levels aren’t really that long to begin with (the usual time frame for beating one was around a least a minute to a minute-thirty) so why even bother having checkpoints? Just have the player start all the way over?
Oh, also the music on world two is...atrocious. Its hilarious the first few minutes because of how unreal it sounds, like, you can’t believe something of this quality was allowed to be in the game, but then another five minutes goes by and then you have no choice but to turn the music off. Other than those three points, the game isn’t that bad.
Verdict:
It’s a solid platformer that, as stated in the beginning, really does appeal to that nostalgic feeling of not touching the ground and using your resources and skills to traverse levels otherwise. More advanced platforming gamers might be able to get through the main game in a few hours, but there is a good amount of challenge here to go for that one hundred percent. Because of that, we’d have to recommend that you wait on this one to go on sale if anything. Available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and Windows.
Well, what did you think of this review? The writer behind this one was David Walker, a content creator on the Youtube Channel, ConMenRDW. He streams on Twitch under the same channel name, and you can also follow him on instagram also by ConMenRDW, but if you’d like to keep up with him on Twitter he’s under @MarioPrtyAnimal.