Buy Jumpgrid today, loathe shapes for the rest of your life
Hopping mad
Right. Let's skip the quips, and leap directly into why you should buy Jumpgrid.
It's a hyper-alluring shape-dodger vaguely in the vain of Super Hexagon, where death comes fast and respawns come faster. Each level is a three by three grid that somehow still leaves room for varied approaches, drawing on reflex and strategy both. It's out right now, and only costs £4.
Developer Ian MacLarty calls it a "cosmic obstacle course", which sounds about right. Observe.
When I wrote about Jumpgrid two weeks ago, I tentatively claimed that it might be as good as Super Hexagon. I've played more since then, and I'm ready to throw that 'tentatively' into the bin where it belongs. Jumpgrid magics me into the same kind of trance, suspending earthly concerns, ushering me into a plane where reaching that central squiggle is the only thing that matters.
The levels, geometric as they are, have personality. Some feel like you're being attacked, speared from different angles by entities that express more malice than shapes should rightly posses. Others are indifferent, like you're a dimension-hopping fly wriggling between the cogs of the universe.
That's an image that conjures helplessness, but Jumpgrid isn't about that. Every grid sees initial panic bootstrap into mastery, alarm succumbing to control. The way out is a dance, and part of you already knows the steps.
I am only on the second world, mind. Who knows what horrors await, especially when MacLarty has a track record of messing with our heads. He's known for plunging us into the Catacombs Of Solaris, and taking us on kaleidoscopic strolls through Forests Are For Trees - as well as many other things.
You can and should grab Jumpgrid from Itch and Steam for £3.99/€3.99/$4.99.