Also on: Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One
Publisher: Ratalaika Games
Developer: Analgesic Productions
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: E10+
Sephonie is one of those games thatโs absolutely bursting with ideas. Its Steam page called the game a โTony-Hawk-esque 3D platformerโ, itโs got lengthy dialogue sequences that are basically just philosophical musings, and one of the core parts of the game is cataloguing all the flora and fauna of an underground cave network โ which you do via minigames that look like Tetris reimagined as a match-3 puzzle.
Unfortunately, it also doesnโt have any notion of how to turn those ideas into a particularly interesting game.
The platforming and exploration form the biggest part of the game, so theyโre as good a place as any to start when explaining why Sephonie doesnโt work that well. Youโre mapping a massive underground cave network, except thereโs no real urgency to any of it โ you just wander around, falling off ledges and starting over from your last checkpoint with no direction or hint about where youโre supposed to be going. You have a map, but itโs barely usable โ think of the most unhelpful Metroidvania map youโve ever seen, and then multiply that by a few orders of magnitude, and thatโs what you have here.
Worst of all, though, the platforming is a massive pain. You have to turn running on and off, and while Iโve seen games that toggle running before, I donโt recall ever seeing it done in a way thatโs as frustrating as it is here โ Iโd often run to my death because the game was inconsistent in deciding whether you were still running after youโd double-jumped. Likewise, you can wall-runโฆsometimes, sort of, and when you pull it off it feels more like youโve stumbled across a glitch than done something well.
Building on that point, jumping is a massive pain. You can sort of double-jump, and you can sort of push off walls to boost yourself higher, except it always feels inconsistent. Plenty of times Iโd reach a ledge and have no idea why it worked that time after failing the previous half-dozen times. Sephonieโs physics are inconsistent, and in a platformer, thatโs one of the worst crimes a game can commit.
As for the Tetris-influenced match-3 puzzles, the less said about them, the better. Theyโre not challenging in any way, shape, or form, and all they donโt add anything of value to the game. It feels like Sephonieโs developers felt like they had to extend the running time of their game, and threw in some mindless puzzles just so they could say the game is a puzzle-platformer.
Needless to say, nothing in Sephonie clicked with me. It doesnโt matter if a game brings a whole bunch of ideas to the table if itโs not able to pull any of them off, and judging by the evidence on offer here, thatโs definitely the case for Sephonie.
Ratalaika Games provided us with a Sephonie PS4/PS5 code for review purposes.