For those of you old enough to remember, lives in games used to be costly. Not just in terms of making a game harder by reducing the chances you had to complete the game, but also financially. Every so often raking around your garments to see what change you available so you could dedicate more time into these unique machines. That feeling of lives being so costly has almost been eradicated from games, in recent years, as you can rely on save points and respawning in multiplayer titles. With Infinite Monkeys’ platformer Life Goes On, death is very much a part of the gameplay but not in the way you’d expect.

Life Goes On is a 2D platformer where you play as a knight whose ultimate goal is to reach a golden chalice at the end of each level. In order to do so, the knight is faced with various obstacles and puzzles the player must solve and often this means the ultimate sacrifice. In order to pass various puzzles, you will have to kill your character in such a way that it provides a benefit to the next descendant, who respawns immediately after the original character dies. This can be used in a number of ways including acting as a platform on spikes, holding down a button or being used as a counter-weight. How successful you are on each level is determined by how quickly the level can be completed and how few knights you can lose in the process.

 

 

One of the most important, if not most important, aspects of a 2D platform game is just how well the controls are and, at first, this hinders Life Goes On. While the various ways you have to first analyse an area to see what you have to do are intriguing and seem rewarding, the movement of the characters seem underwhelming. While the jumping is fine, the way the character reacts to certain objects can often result in an unnecessary death and is through no fault of the player. For instance, as I landed on a few of my ancestors in the middle of some spikes, it almost felt as though I was slipping off the edge and the character I was playing as felt so light on their feet, which was a stark contrast to the clunky armour they were wearing.

This seems to only be a difficult introduction as you soon become accustomed to the way the game handles. The controls and actions of the knights don’t develop from the ones you were introduced to in the opening level and this helps make the difficult puzzles easier, although there are a lot of difficult puzzles.

As you progress through the levels, Life Goes On doesn’t seem to have a sense of achievement in the way that other platforming games do. When you eventually reach the end of a level the main feeling you have is relief as you are thankful that the level is over and hope that the next one is something completely different. While the puzzles do become more interesting as you progress, they continue to feel unrewarding and this is not normally something you would associate with a puzzle game.

 

 

To enhance the knight-related theme, the soundtrack feels very reminiscent of any number of RPG games. Platform games often suffer from repeating the same music throughout the entire game, but in Life Goes On the soundtrack feels refreshing and is pleasant to listen to and it changes every new group of levels you unlock. The music often proves to be calming and a welcomed distraction from time-to-time as you find yourself frustrated at being unable to work out how to complete a puzzle.

Although Life Goes On is a relatively inexpensive game at £6.99, the graphics look great for what the game is trying to accomplish. You are normally only seeing the entire level for the duration of the puzzle and it looks pretty. A game like this isn’t obsessed with graphics in the way that many other games seem to be. It is pretty enough even though it normally takes place in various dark locations, it does feature colour-filled puzzles from time-to-time.

If there’s one thing that Life Goes On does brilliantly, it’s finding that even balance between platforming and solving puzzles. There isn’t too much of one compared to the other and this helps break up the feeling that you are playing what may seem like a difficult puzzle title. The best way to approach Life Goes On I found was to try and figure out what you should be doing in order to progress and, once you have solved this, restart the level and start it again to give you the best time and sacrifice as few of your knights as possible.

 

 

This then leads me onto the next aspect of Life Goes On that I found frustrating. Normally in games which have a target time, the specified time is often shown somewhere on the screen. With this game there is nothing on the screen to show you how many knights you have used or how much time you have left. You often find yourself pausing the game and seeing the information on the pause screen which, unfortunately, adds more time onto your experience of a level. It would have been so much easier to have all this information in-front of the player rather than hidden on the pause screen. Sometimes the best aspect of time-attack games is the panic you experience as you come closer to the allotted time and I believe Life Goes On could have benefited from this.

Life Goes On has some great puzzles that will push your brain to levels of overload, especially in the latter sections of the game. It often seems that you are trying to beat a specific time and not use too many knights for no reason in particular. With a frustrating introduction and puzzles that will have you often standing doing nothing as you work out what to do, I don’t think this game will be for everyone. Many may play the game and be put off after 30 minutes or so, but if you are a huge fan of puzzle games then Life Goes On could be exactly what you’re looking for.

Life Goes On is available now for PC, Mac and Linux for £6.99.

Do you want reveal the Review Score?