Platform: Switch

Playtime: ~10 hours





Design





Flat Heroes presents a simple design concept: players take the role of a colored square in single screen levels and are tasked with surviving a myriad of destructive elements using limited abilities. It sounds easy, and it starts off that way, but the levels quickly escalate to chaotic scrambles for survival. Mobility is your tiny square's main defense against the deluge of lasers, spikes, bombs, aggressive shapes, traps, and general nastiness thrown at you. Players can jump, stick to walls, and use a basic dash with a short cool down. There's also a light attack that can push away or destroy smaller threats before they can do their work. Death comes fast, but players are resurrected nearly instantly, creating an addictive "just one more try" feeling even when you're stuck on a particularly challenging screen. Fortunately, you can always call in your friends for help, as Flat Heroes features 2-4 player local co-op across it's three modes.





Content





Campaign is the most substantial of the game's modes, where players progress through worlds of escalating difficulty that cap off with a boss battle. Each world does a great job at introducing varied enemy concepts, then slowly building on them as the levels progress. If the challenge transitions into frustration, you can always skip levels to move on to the next. This isn't available for boss fights, which are a mixed bag. Some are fun, but others are slow and difficult with your limited abilities. Halfway through the campaign you'll unlock the 'Heroes Campaign'. This is essentially a hard mode: the same levels, but with increased complexity, more threats, and less reaction time. Some of these are extremely difficult and will test even the most skilled player to their limits.





The other two modes, Survival and Versus, are fun additions, if ultimately a bit shallow. Survival asks players to avoid death for as long as possible in a single level, then posts your time in a ranked leaderboard against global competitors. The leaderboards are unfairly weighted against solo players, as everyone is entered on the same leaderboard regardless of their player count. It is much easier to have great survival time when you have friends that can revive you. Unfortunately, there are also only a few different levels which are the same every time you play them. These quickly become repetitive once you've memorized the first two minutes but are forced to play through them every time to get to new challenges. There is a daily survival challenge which changes every day, but this is strangely time-gated seemingly at random. The Versus mode offers some fun competitive multiplayer across some basic game types. Your enjoyment of the Versus mode will scale with the number of people you have playing. You can play with bots, but it's certainly not as fun as competition with real people. There are no online features outside of the aforementioned leaderboards.





Presentation





Flat Heroes is purposely minimalist in it's presentation which is largely effective. The bright colors and simple shapes make it very easy to distinguish what is going on even as the screen fills up with threats you need to avoid. You'll unlock different color palettes as you play, which vary the look between play sessions. Animations are smooth, and everything is clean and stylized. I would've appreciated a little more variety in the soundtrack, as there are only a few tracks that are often set on repeat. None of the music is offensive, but none of it is particularly memorable either. Sound effects are appropriately punchy and distinctive.





The Quote: Flat Heroes is a great minimalist platformer with tight controls, a pleasing aesthetic, and plenty of challenge. It's solid campaign mode delivers a big variety of interesting levels, but the survival and versus modes quickly grow repetitive.





Score: 7.8/10