The Definition Of A Mind-Wipe Game: You Will Forget You Ever Played It
Stop us if you’ve heard this before. You play a rotund panda, trained in the mystical arts by a bearded bear-thing. You have to navigate a snowy mountain, defeating animals on the way, so that you can bring light back to the valley.
Panda: Shards of Aurora may be copying Kung Fu Panda’s homework – it’s one Jack Black away from a lawsuit – but it’s an archetype that people will understand and, hey, who doesn’t like bottom-bouncing on enemies as a giant panda? It gets buttocks on seats for a spot of 2D platforming.
A Game That You Will Dash Through
In the budget platformer category, there are games that want to keep it simple, and games that tinker with gimmicks and unusual structures. Panda: Shards of Aurora is definitely in that former category. It is perfectly fine with checking boxes and keeping mechanics to a minimum. You have a jump, which can also be used as a bottom-bounce, and you have a dash, learned within the first few levels. The dash is directional, so you aren’t limited to dashing horizontally. You can dash upwards, downwards and diagonally, and it comes off cooldown as soon as you land back on the ground.
These are the only tools you get to play with in Panda: Shards of Aurora. I must admit that I wondered if more would turn up, mostly because the dash was an unlock on level three or thereabouts. But no, Panda: Shards of Aurora is streamlined.
Levels are familiar, with checkpoints in the form of igloos, and a giant floating crystal representing the end of the level. In between, there are several hovering green crystals and a rarer red crystal, with only one to be found per level. They don’t actually represent anything – there are no unlocks or star ratings here – but they give you an extra goal if you feel like it.
A Simple Stroll Up A Mountain
The level designs aren’t overly complex either. There are 30 levels in Panda: Shards of Aurora, with the background changing every 10 levels, but the actual contents of the level only shift up occasionally. Spikes come in first, then trampolines, and finally some spinning blades. At some point falling platforms appeared, adding some tension for those ambling through the level, rather than speedrunning. But none of these are surprising. They’re the bread and butter of an indie platforming game.
Panda: Shards of Aurora’s enemies don’t have much to offer either. There are two of them: a penguin with a cute viking helmet, sometimes stationary and other times not; and there’s a seal, who I curse with every sinew of my being. It waits until you’re close before luzzing some snowballs at you, and its definition of ‘you’re close’ is “as soon as you try to bottom-bounce on its head”. It can often feel like a seal is an automatic health-pip of damage, so you soon learn to just ignore them.
As a spread of tasty treats, it’s a little skimpy. I don’t have any qualms about the controls – in fact, they’re really good, and I found that the panda was more responsive than Jack Black would have been. It’s the actual game content, from the levels to the enemies to the mechanics to the collectibles to, well, everything, that feels exceptionally lean. I kept entering a level, wondering if something new would shuffle onto the screen, and it happened far too infrequently. You can go through five or six levels without seeing anything that you haven’t seen before.
More Vanilla Than A Mr Whippy
As a finger-workout it’s fine. I sometimes get the urge to play friction-free platformers, and Panda: Shards of Aurora ticks that box. I rushed through it in just over half an hour, and felt like I was getting a NES-era platformer, minus the difficulty. But as a transaction I was hoping for more: Panda: Shards of Aurora may be a budget game, but I want something remarkable to happen to me, even just once.
A note on the level of challenge, too. Panda: Shards of Aurora is easy. There was an odd moment around the level 25 mark where the difficulty dropped again. The levels that came before were very clearly more difficult than the ones I was playing. There was even one ‘filler’ level where I just chatted to my guru. All-round, the difficulty-graduation was odd.
I am going to completely forget that I ever played Panda: Shards of Aurora. I’m going to see it on my Owned Games list and think ‘yeah, I’ll play that’, only to find that I already have 2000G in it. It’s that kind of platformer. It’s cute, it plays well, but it didn’t do a single thing that made me raise an eyebrow or form a bead of sweat on my brow. It’s just kind of… there.
Important Links
Panda: Shards Of Aurora Challenges You To Survive An Endless Winter – https://www.thexboxhub.com/panda-shards-of-aurora-challenges-you-to-survive-an-endless-winter/
Buy from the Xbox Store, optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/panda-shards-of-aurora/9p73lx34tq5b
Buy for Xbox One – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/panda-shards-of-aurora-xbox-one/9mt154khm3t4
Buy for Windows PC – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/panda-shards-of-aurora-windows/9n1wszl6jt3s
