A Budget Platformer That Looks to the Buttocks for Inspiration
The ‘Shock’ in Beetle Shock is of the aftershock, earthquake variety. Our main character, the stag beetle of Beetle Shock, can ground-pound in such a way that Thwomps would become jealous. The beetle’s bottom-bounce can crash through blocks, obliterate enemies, and handily bounce on mushrooms to reach higher platforms.
As a platforming gimmick goes, it’s not the most inventive – we’ve been ground-pounding in games for several decades now – but it works nonetheless. There’s a simple satisfaction in blasting through row after row of rocks with a ground-pound (Donkey Kong Bananza tapped into a similar vein). Afil Games leans into the enjoyment by slowing down the animation frames for a millisecond or two as you hit the blocks, shaking the screen and slapping on some SFX. Breaking stuff just feels good in Beetle Shock.
Hold Onto Your Butts
The designers build levels around this love of ground-pounding. They introduce flower-cannons that fire your beetle around the level, cannon-to-cannon, but sneakily add blocks halfway between. What this means is that you have to ground-pound halfway through a blast, timing it perfectly so you don’t go sailing through the bottom of the screen.
Beetle Shock is pretty good at turning every ground-pound into a potential hazard. Mushrooms can trampoline you to higher platforms, but what if they’re positioned under spikes? Or what if the mushrooms sidle from side-to-side on moving platforms? There’s a neat tendency of applying asterisks to every use-case for the ground-pound. Sure, you can blast through rocks, but what if we put spikes below them?
Aside from the ground-slamming, everything else is reasonably by-the-numbers. Your aim in the level is to reach a circular, hobbit-like door. But the door can’t be opened unless you’ve found and collected a yellow fruit, which means you’re pulled in two directions within the level. Along the way are some smaller yellow fruits, which are tracked on the level select screen. If you’re feeling committed, you can try to catch all of them. Oh, and there are sunflowers as checkpoints.
Fighting With a Non-Combat Platformer
There aren’t really any enemies, not in the traditional sense. You have spinning blades and moving platforms, spikes and holes. The most common death is from ground-pounding off a platform, as you misjudge where your bottom might land. In short, you are your own worst enemy.
There are moments where Beetle Shock achieves a degree of flow. There’s a fluidity to the controls and the animation frames, and the ground-pound lends itself to doing multiple things at once (blast through a floor AND bounce on a mushroom at the end of it). The best levels have you finishing in a barrelling momentum, slamming through obstacles like a juggernaut.
What the levels lack, though, is variety. Beetle Shock can’t quite keep the interest over all 30 levels, mostly because it’s a budget title, and there are only so many ways that you can rearrange blades, blocks and cannons. The same tricks are attempted multiple times: what if there’s a run of platforms with spikes on the roof, so you have to lightly press the A button to progress? That idea is put into action multiple times, and the same is true of other combinations. The designers are good at their jobs, but they needed a few more toys to play with.
It Needed Slightly More Shock, Slightly Less Boredom
I never resented Beetle Shock for the repetition, but it stopped the game short of being a recommendation. After about fifteen levels, my brain went into a flow state, but an unthinking one. I was never really pushed, never forced to rethink a strategy. Beetle Shock has moments of challenge, and large swathes of not being challenging.
I couldn’t help thinking that Beetle Shock deserved a little more. It’s an attractive platformer, at least in the indie, budget bracket, and the controls are great. In terms of how responsive and quick it is, Beetle Shock is very much in the top half of indie platformers. While I was getting a little bored of the challenges it put in front of me, I never felt frustrated, never felt like the game was undermining me. Like the hardy stag beetle, it’s a robust little platformer.
I have no regrets. Beetle Shock is less than a fiver, smooth as a ladybug, and carrying 2000G for gluttonous Gamerscore hounds. It looks good and plays well. What it doesn’t do is go above and beyond: there’s nothing new or challenging on offer, and while the focus on ground-pounding leads to a few neat ideas, they get tired after fifteen minutes.
Beetle Shock is a cheap platforming workout that’s unlikely to disappoint. We appreciate its commitment to ground-pounding as a singular game mechanic, even if it doesn’t keep the attention for a full game. You might want an icepack for the buttocks.
Important Links
Ground Pound Your Way Through Beetle Shock – https://www.thexboxhub.com/ground-pound-your-way-through-beetle-shock/
Buy from the Xbox Store, Optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/beetle-shock-xbox-series/9NBSD4FWD1MJ/0010
Buy an Xbox One version – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/beetle-shock-xbox-one/9N9H0WBDV24Z/0010
There’s a Windows PC drop too – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/beetle-shock-windows/9NBTFLJV3KFW/0010
