Badland is a wonderful example of a modern-day side scrolling adventure that combines beautiful artwork and surprisingly addictive gameplay into a package which delights the visual taste buds. The game was originally developed for tablets and phones by Frogmind Games and was released on those platforms back in April 2013. Badland was met with a high amount of acclaim and was awarded the 2013 iPad Game of the Year title. The game also arrived on Windows Phone in June 2014, and now it is has arrived on all major consoles.
The main mechanic behind Badland is to flap, roll, push, and survive your way through the stages as you go through each level. Obstructing your way are various obstacles, from falling rocks, to swinging ball of spikes and explosive mines. That’s not including the slowly moving screen which threatens to reset your character to the nearest checkpoint. The screen killed me more than any other trap. Whilst getting through the maze of obstacles in the one hundred single-player levels, you have a save the clones objective. Accomplishing this is harder than it sounds.
The game is easy to pick up and get into with the opening menu creating quick access to the action. As started earlier, the single-player is vast with a hundred levels split into four distinct groups. Day one and day two are broken down into forty levels each. Adding into that is the bonus content Doomsday and Daydream with ten levels each. Co-op is built upon a similar structure with another hundred levels available for you and three other friends. The game is filled with a lot of content.
Each Day is split down into Dawn, Noon, Dusk and Night with each having around ten levels. Every stage has its own art style with Dawn opening with yellows and oranges, going through to the greens of Noon and then down towards the deep blue of Night. The distinct art style subtly gives players an indicator of how far through the game they are. As progression continues throughout the game, the art changes to reflect the darker subplot to what is being played.
Now onto gameplay. It’s fun and reasonably challenging. The game requires you to be able to control your character and navigate the obstacles on your screen whilst keeping an eye on what is coming and where the back of the screen is. Trust me on this, you end up worrying where that is more than anything else. The controls are simple yet fluid, with either of your triggers causing your character to flap. The harder you push the trigger, the faster you go up. The left stick controls your direction of flight. In every level there are mechanics which require you to change your size, giving players enough variety to stop them from tiring. There are more power-ups than this however. Speed boosts and stick-mes (you turn spiky and stick to things) keep it interesting.
Level design is fantastic and forces you as a player to enjoy the challenges laid in front of you. The spikes, the gears, the rolling boulders…all the obstacles make brilliant work of each other and force you to have to think about how to tackle each obstruction. The entrance and exit of each level is my personal highlight though. When entering the level, you are deposited on a platform by a tube. The exit for the level is fabulous. When closing in on the end of a level, you and your clones are essentially sucked into a giant vacuum cleaner. It comes complete with a nozzle too. The attention to detail and subtle touches designed to delight the player elevate the entire experience.
Overall, Badland is enjoyable, but it doesn’t light my senses on fire. It is very familiar to The Helicopter Game of the early 2000s and most recently Flappy Bird featuring very similar mechanics. Both of these games I did not particularly enjoy. I found that I was not particularly enamored with how linear the game was as it transitioned. I love the art style and found it a refreshing way of telling a story, especially in the current market. The art style is a massive plus for me. Overall, it’s an enjoyable experience and a marvelous transformation from a mobile title to a proper console indie game. Kudos to the developers.
Positives:
• Fun
• Challenging
• Quick
• Easy to pick up
• Compelling art style
• Fantastic gameplay
• Addictive
Negatives:
• Many games like this already exist in droves
Ben was a regular ICXM contributor between 2014–2017, publishing 45 articles across game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.