A Metroidvania-lite That Is A Dash Short Of Greatness
Sound the alarms: Dimensional Animals is one of the good ones. It’s an indie, 2D platformer that reminds me why I review the smaller games that come out: because, sometimes, they are a Dimensional Animals.
I certainly didn’t expect it to be that way. I remember Marcus Game Dev’s other Xbox title, Rift Racoon, and how I spent more time teleporting into walls than out of them. I didn’t love it, and the dash mechanic is definitely back in Dimensional Animals. I was prepped for the worst. There are also so many budget 2D platformers coming out on the Xbox Store in a given week. I had no reason to think that Dimensional Animals would be anything other than an easy 2000G.
Well, my assumptions made an ass of you and me. After the first few platforming screens, it was clear Dimensional Animals was a sprawling Metroidvania-lite. Dimensional Animals doesn’t do discrete ‘get-to-the-exit’ levels: each game screen leads to another, as you pick a direction and head towards your choice of boss, save-point, portal, or hidden secret. Sometimes you are blocked by an ability you don’t have quite yet, while others will let you progress.
And Bingo Was His Name-o
The second thing that hit me was the depth. There’s so much stuff to find in Dimensional Animals. Your dog, Bingo, can teleport-dash, and that means that thin walls are fair game. It’s always worth sidling up to the edges of a game-screen and seeing if you can teleport through it to the screen on the other side. The worst that can happen is the loss of a health pip, while Dimensional Animals loves to reward you with secret rooms if you are adventurous. There are also cracks in some walls, tempting you to teleport in and see what happens.
Health crystals can add up to unlock increased health pips, which you will absolutely need. Crystals can be collected to earn outfits for your characters. If you leave one behind, a helpful icon gets scratched onto the game map, so that you know to come back and get it later. There are hundreds of these to find in the game, and I got thoroughly side-tracked trying to grab them all.
While playing Dimensional Animals, there is something of a pattern. One direction will be more available to you than others, and you will chain through game screens, reaching save points so that you can die without frustration. Eventually, you will gather some keys that float on your person (and therefore become destroyed if you die). These can be socketed into a door which leads to a boss. Defeat the boss by nibbling away at its health bar, and a new animal form is unlocked.
Shapeshifting On The Press Of A Button
Dimensional Animals deals with these new animal unlocks so well. Each animal has their own specialism that overcomes part of the Metroidvania world. Switching animals could have been so awkward, as you press a face-button and wait. But they’re not: the shapeshifting happens automatically whenever you try to perform their action. Bingo will switch into Scott, a cat who can climb walls, as soon as you grind against a wall. Fidget, a floaty goose, will appear whenever you try to double-jump. For all intents and purposes, you are one character who can shapeshift into others without having to press a button, and that’s perfect. Anything else would have introduced too much friction.
These animals are how you move through the blocked ceilings and far-off platforms that obstructed you earlier. And now you are finding new portals to pass through, taking you to distant parts of the game map. Dimensional Animals has the neat tendency to work inwards from the outer reaches of the map, connecting up areas that you have been to before. It’s not the usual hub-and-spoke pattern, and feels refreshing as a result.
The controls aren’t perfect. I wish they were, because I could have been glowing about Dimensional Animals, recommending that everyone spend a farcically low £4.19. Instead, I have to apply something of an asterisk. Some of the moves don’t quite feel right. Fidget, the double-jumping goose, has an odd delay to his jump and a floaty drift that means it can be hard to predict where he lands. Some transitions from one animal to another are a pain: if you jump from a wall-climb as Scott, for example, you will often drop directly downwards when you want to be making a more lateral jump. A few of these transitions don’t quite land.
Replaying Sections Can Ruffle The Fur
And while we’re in grumbling mode, there’s an odd imbalance in how the different areas are handled. Some of the regions of the map have plenty of save-points, making it easy to progress. Others are skimpy, and force you to complete a multitude of game screens without making any mistakes (some deaths, after all, are instant and don’t care about the number of health pips you have accumulated). The game map is also unfriendly with how it deals with fast travel. If you grow tired of an area, or exhaust it of collectibles, it can take an age to get to a different region. A better fast-travel system would have worked wonders.
The controls and level-issues are so annoyingly significant. I wish they weren’t, because Dimensional Animals deserves four stars. When it’s good, it’s so very good.
And it had no right to be this good. I wasn’t expecting an in-depth Metroidvania that was bursting with secrets, nor was I expecting this level of inventiveness. Dimensional Animals hasn’t got the personality or charm of an Animal Well, say, but come now: Dimensional Animals is £4.19. You’re getting Animal Does-Surprisingly-Well for that price.
While Dimensional Animals ‘only’ gets a 3.5, largely down to its controls, I think there will be a lot of players who look past those foibles and see it as a 4. For £4.19, Dimensional Animals is a risk worth taking.
Important Links
Dimensional Animals Is A Cute Retro Platformer – https://www.thexboxhub.com/dimensional-animals-is-a-cute-retro-platformer/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/dimensional-animals/9mvd3q241grl
