Electronic Super Joy is the trippy, frustrating platformer from indie games dev Michael Todd. You are on a quest to get your butt back (yes you read that right) and defeat the Groove Wizard. Make your way through different themed worlds with loads of frustratingly annoying, but fun challenges and get your butt back to where it belongs. Also be prepared to die – a lot. Not for those with a lack of patience.
Each set of levels has a loose theme set to it, mainly shown by colour more than anything. The foreground of the levels are monotone and pixelated, while the background tends to be more colourful and trippy. There’s not really much to the art style because of the simplicity, but that is backed up with an amazing soundtrack.
If you’re a fan of EDM (Electronic Dance Music) you will love the soundtrack – I am listening to it now while writing this review because I like it that much. Ryan Roth has done an excellent job with the music and even if you’re not a fan of the game, you can still pick up the OST separately on Bandcamp if you’re interested. The music is extremely up-tempo and a really nice fit for the game. One thing I liked about the levels was the fact that the music loops, so when you die the track doesn’t restart every single time (since there’s a lot of falling to your death), so you can enjoy the music a bit more.
Upon your revival from your inevitable deaths you are greeted with a very suggestive “Oh yeah” snippet -sometimes female, sometimes male- that merges in well with the background music. I suppose you couldn’t really call it background music because it’s pretty in-your-face most of the time.Now, if you’re someone that gets frustrated if you die in a game, then I will warn you now that this game isn’t up your alley. There are levels in the game that you will only die a couple of times, yet there are others where you can die upwards of 40 times and that’s just from making little movements in the wrong direction or not jumping at the split second that you need to.
Combat in the game consists of avoidance and ground-pounding on the general meanies that you encounter throughout the levels. At one point you are unable to slam, so you have to make do with a double jump so you can manoeuvre your way around the levels dodging missiles and other deadly things that are set to add to your death toll. You can also fly in a spaceship so you can shoot the heck out of the Pope who stole your butt to bring some change to jumping around all the time.
At the end of every level series there is an enjoyable, funny yet frustrating boss fight. I think the longest time I spent on anything in game was (obviously) with the final boss , which was pretty damn fun. You get to fly around the screen while dodging missiles and shurike’sn that the boss throws out at you in a bullet-hell type of fight. There are also the dinosaurs, but I don’t want to spoil too much about the bosses here since they are enjoyable to do if you like putting yourself through games like these.
Should you complete the game and want more things to do you can go back through the levels and try and beat your death total, and there is also a Gold time for you to beat. Though as far as I am aware, beating all the Gold times will just award you a Steam achievement. There are obviously also more achievements for Steam that you can work on unlocking if you’re into that. The atmosphere throughout the game is fun and enjoyable. There is swearing on occasion and when you come across a character that does speak, they will be bobbing up and down to the music and come out with something either helpful or with a bit of humour to it.
I must say, I absolutely enjoyed this game and it makes me intrigued to see what Michael Todd will come up with next. I’d highly recommend it to any fan of platformers and fast-paced games. The price to fun ratio makes the game an absolute steal in my opinion, and worth picking up. The game is currently available on Steam for £5.49/€5.99/$7.99
