Frogun

Don't let Renata's cutie patootie sprite fool you: Frogun is a game balanced for that moment of simple platforming and collecting fun or challenging no damage runs and speedrunning. Having more than 30 levels, each with their own piece of lore, gems, time trials, and coins, they slowly get more difficult, enough to force you to develop a tiny bit of coordination and cunningness, so that you can save those four, five seconds and finally get that trophy, or simply reaching the end. Coins are needed to unlock artworks - both from Developers and fans from all over the world - and hats. Perseverance is key if you're aiming to 100% [150%*] this game: as stated before the game slowly builds a subtle learning curve and time and time again you'll have to repeat each level, either to finish it without dying, reaching the end to get the expert time trial trophy, or to farm coins to unlock more pictures in the gallery or hats. The game also allows you to choose different options to give itself a more "outdated" look, closer to PS1 or N64 era, and regardless of your choice, in every aspect it's a beauty to look at: tiles, water, logs, bosses, enemies, bogs, snow, trees, lava, sky, rainbows, background or just Renata's expressions and idle animations. While I wholly recommend Frogun, even at full price, I must point out some things that other reviews rightfully underlined: Soundtrack, albeit nice and fitting, is very repetitive. Can get a bit grindy if you're trying to go for all Achievements: you'll need plenty coins to get every single artwork and hat, and simply finishing the game won't be enough: it's up to you to find that level with the right coin - difficulty - length ratio. Can also get a bit frustrating, especially after the second half of the game: it can be difficult to finish the entire level with no deaths or under a certain time to get the expert time trial. this is where it's essential to understand how to "cut corners" in the level by trial and error. This gets worse if we take in consideration that aiming with your Frogun isn't idyllic, either because some surfaces simply won't "work", or you'll have to shoot your gun mid air while there's no freeze or slow time mechanic, or worst case scenario it simply won't work: you can shoot on a horizontal plane with somewhat wide varying degrees but you've got no way to properly understand if you're to high or too low until you've actually shot and see where the tongue hit. You can't even spam the shot because after two tries there's a "cooldown". Despite this last paragraph, I repeat myself: I recommend Frogun: it's nice, it's colourful, it's entertaining enough both for a casual moment of fun or to push yourself over your comfort zone. Also, there's more hats variety here than in TF2.