Spoiler Game Review – Gumgem

A Beautiful Indie Gem

Update Pending: A development log promising an update to the game was released on the day I wrote this review.

Gumgem is a free hidden gummy gem on itch.io featuring a gummy heroine saving her gummy prince from the wrath of a gummy bear villain. It’s quirky, it’s fun, it’s procedurally generated! An overall impressive game, without even considering the short amount of time it took to create for submission to A Game By Its Cover 2018.

Aesthetics	Gameplay	Story	Quirk	Tilt	Final
3/4	3/4	2/4	4/4	4/4*	3/4

Aesthetics: 3/4

Plenty of callbacks to classics, style is a tad inconsistent

Setting the Stage

The art style of this game is cute and minimal, keeping well within a pixel art style and a limited colour palette. The castle, in particular, reminded me of early Mario games, which it no doubt pays some homage to in the opening scene as well. The added dust trail is a nice touch of detail and the 8-bit soundtrack was a nice call back to that game era. 

The loading screen is simple; with our heroine, running across the bottom of the screen. The speed of the character isn’t staggered or inconsistent, and the level was always loaded by the time the character reached the other end of the screen which was always satisfying.

Inside the castle, the hues of the game changes to darker colours, and the nature of the procedural generation is clear in ‘patchy’ tilesets which are not unpleasant. I had no issue with the colour scheme except for the gummy bears, which seemed to match the exterior of the castle in happier tones, which felt out of place, but that’s my only issue. 

The transitions between levels also rings a very distant bell is anyone’s memory who’s owned a now vintage Nintendo console. Read on for more clues.

Gameplay: 3/4

A little room for improvement, although I acknowledge that may not be possible

Strain your brain

It’s not hard to see where the developer got his inspiration from when it came to the actions performed by the main character. Everything from the wall jumping to the dash animation used to harm enemies, hearkening once again to the classics of Nintendo, Mega man is the inspiration when it comes to character movement. My one complaint would be that the triple flip performed by character upon a successful hit not move the character so much, as this has caused many a frustrated misstep. 

After running, sliding, dashing, and flipping your way through a number of levels, you start to realise that there are two types of dungeons laid before you:

1. Puzzle Dungeons like the one seen in the image above. These are dungeons without mobs that require more finesse to traverse. You need a fetch an often hard to reach key in order to move forward in the game. 
2. Combat Dungeons like seen in the image below. In addition to spikes, there are other things that can hurt you here. In order to move on to the next dungeon, you must be the sole survivor.

Beat ’em up

The enemies encountered here are simple but elegant. Ducking and weaving between their attacks can be a challenge enough without proceeding to impale yourself, costing you one of a balanced five hearts.

However, sometimes there is no way forward. The cons of procedural generation are that it can’t be checked for playability and I found I constantly hit a wall, metaphorically speaking, where suicide was the only way out; Other times I couldn’t move forward because mobs I needed to clear to continue, were also simply out of reach. Being greeted by a game over screen despite my best efforts can be quite discouraging after a certain amount of time. Never mind the lack of a difficulty increase as dungeons continued.

That being said, for those who do persist in the face of adversity; you start to learn from your mistakes and start to focus on creating creative solutions to recurring problems. The beauty of a procedurally generated game is that no level will truly be the same, and even if on the off occasion most of the level remains unused, it’s no great loss. The thirst for discovery does not fade quickly in the attempt to rescue the gum prince’s castle. 

Story Score: 2/4

There wasn’t much there

The female protagonist was a fun play on gaming tropes, but nothing with which to connect emotionally

Quirk Score: 4/4

Someone had fun making this game. The developer was inspired and showed incredible love into make this game unique.

One of favourite mechanics in this game has got to be the inconspicuous traps laid out by the programming. You’ll have to sharpen your skill to reach those hearts safely. 

Another mechanic I found to quite special is that the player collides with the spikes instead of just pricking themselves on them (which I dearly hope isn’t a bug), making these very finicky dungeons navigable. 

The animations discovered during gameplay are playful, to say the least. Bouncing on gummy bears and swinging on top of spiders leaves a lot to be explored as you start to experiment with the mentality of ‘it’s so crazy, it might just work!’

Tilt Score: 4/4* – I could not finish this game

*Score inverted in the overall calculation

I admit my hand-eye coordination is poor and response time is too slow for this game

Final Score: 3/4 – Not everyone’s game, but everyone should try it

Guys, if you enjoyed this review, please play the game and share this review

Noteable Mob Spoilers

The gummy bears are simplest of these dastardly creatures, bobbing along until they hit something and then turn around, repeating the cycle. They make for good trampolines if you’re careful.

The bats peruse the skies until they track their target. It hangs in the air a moment before darting at the player.

The spiders are the trickiest of the mobs seen in this game. They swing from a silk strand above the player, spitting venom at the player and their only vulnerability can be hard, if occasionally impossible to reach.