I check the app store for new games quite frequently. Almost daily. Vast swaths of time pass without my interest being piqued by a single game, but every so often I’ll stumble across something that shows promise. Something that cuts through the poor monetization schemes and clones that clutter the face of the app store. This month that game is Downwell.

Even at a glance you can tell that Downwell is not messing about. The icon is simple, black and white. The game has three buttons. Your character has gunboots. The graphics are so subdued that, for a few days after discovering it, I questioned whether the game was worth buying. There are plenty of games with just a couple buttons and retro graphics that aren’t compelling, but it went on sale for 99 cents so, curious as I was, I picked it up.

Downwell is not one of those games. The second time I’d pressed the jump button and used my gunboots I was hooked. The graphics are simple, punchy, and charming. Jumping and shooting happen instantaneously and the feeling of this responsiveness is amplified by the incredibly simple and fast animations. Despite my relatively small and unimposing character model I felt like a total badass jumping down from platform to platform, bouncing off a floating slime’s head resulting in its quick end, and then raining death from my feet on all monsters (and frogs) residing in the depths below. (Frogs are not monsters. Their negative effects on you are but an accident. Promise.)

This immediate feeling of power hooks you, and then it is somewhat swiftly taken away as you progress on your downward journey. You encounter new enemies that cannot simply be stomped to death, who instead harm you upon impact. The genius here lies in your sole action aside from moving left or right: the jump/shoot button.

Even a non gamer can play Downwell and feel as though they’ve made some progress. This is partially because your enemies are below you, stomp-able, and you also have a machine gun that you can use to fill them with holes. In the early stages of the game a series of random button presses is much more likely to result in you stomping and shooting your way to the next stage than not. The true brilliance lies in the fact that shooting simultaneously slows you down and causes you to hover.

Downwell is undoubtedly a fast paced game, and if you’ve played other fast paced games you’ve likely reached a point in them where it starts to feel less like you’re skillfully maneuvering the landscape and more like you’re downhill skiing through a minefield. In Downwell, thanks to the gunboot mechanic, you never reach this point.

Shooting not only deals damage to enemies below you but allows you to a slight window to analyze and decide where you’ll jump, shoot, and land. It slows down the pacing of gameplay just enough to render it enjoyably quick, allowing for moments that require strategy and a quick trigger toe.

It’s important to realize that while these mechanics are fantastic they don’t stand up on their own. Good mechanics require of foundation of sensible visuals to make a great game, and Downwell delivers on both fronts.

The use of simple, low resolution, high contrast graphics means that every object is distinct. This in combination with the fact that object of interest are accented with red (the only color aside from black and white) results in your eye immediately distinguishing gems and monsters from platforms and walls. Furthermore the use of color accents is [strategic]. Enemies which you can jump on and kill are white on top and colored on the bottom. If you hit the white part they die, the colored part, you’re injured. This intuitively informs you on what an all red enemy means, along with the fact that the first all red enemy you encounter is covered in spikes. You red on enemies means bad.

All of this visual information is conveyed using only three colors and pixelated graphics.

As if it weren’t enough that the game mechanics and visuals are masterful in their execution, you also unlock new color palettes and character types as you play, giving each jump into the well meaning. The character types, dubbed “styles,” have unique pros and cons. Boulder Style, for example, adds two points to your maximum health, normally four, but restricts your access to upgrades.

The deceptive simplicity of the Downwell is ultimately impressive. The gameplay has immense depth and replay-ability using simple graphics and a small number of mechanics, each stuffed with subtle nuances that make the game far, far greater than the sum of its parts.

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