I think Flat Heroes has accomplished an incredible feat in that it’s both casual and hardcore, like a Schrödinger’s Cat of difficulty. The game’s presentation is slick as all hell, and it greets you with a smooth, minimalist aesthetic. You play as a square (the eponymous flat hero) who must move within a closed space and avoid a dizzying array of projectiles, lasers and other death traps. With its light color palette and geometrical shapes, the game is reminiscent of Thomas Was Alone, albeit with actual gameplay.

The ‘casual’ part is the game’s structure. The main singleplayer mode is ‘Waves’ in which you dodge the aforementioned obstacles in an enclosed space. It’s broken up into tiny bite-sized levels a la mobile game, so there’s the casual element. While your levels are simple, they constantly change in structure, meaning you could have a couple platforms or a maze of boxes. Sometimes the walls are lava and other times you can climb them. The hardcore element lies in the projectiles themselves. The game starts off with waves of bullets and then progresses to all kinds of other ways to kill you, and you find yourself dashing around madly trying to keep up.

Flat Heroes manages to keep you on your toes by constantly changing the types of the obstacles. Thus, each type will require its own techniques to avoid. When the game really wants to ratchet up the difficulty, it’ll combine them and really mess with your afternoon. The game can be broadly divided into levels where you work out a strategy and levels where you just zip around madly trying to stay alive. The latter type can be frustrating, as it feels like you’re overwhelmed trying to keep on your toes. However, the game has an addictive feel, and I found myself staying in for level after level.

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Speaking of climbing, Flat Heroes takes a lot more than simple jumping. While a square is arguably the worst shape for a platformer character, your geometric protagonist can cling to walls and dash around, so he (or she) is quite the nimble one. You’ll find yourself using all these skills and more. The game really turns things up when you hit the boss levels. Ultimately, I was reminded the most of bullet hell shooters. If that’s your jam, Flat Heroes has you covered.

Aside from the main mode, there are several local multiplayer modes you can unlock. Waves itself is available in local co-op, so the game is a great choice for groups of friends looking for a light platforming challenge. I didn’t have anyone around to help me try out the local multi, but you do get the option to add in AI opponents, and even with the less conniving AI I found the local multi modes to be fun.

Content-wise, it still ends up totaling a few hours for the main mode but with the local multi modes it ends up doubling as a nice little party game. On the whole, if you’ve got friends and some extra controllers lying around, it’s great fun.

Flat Heroes was reviewed using a PC downloadable code of the game provided by Parallel Circles. The PC version was tested by Mazen Abdallah on a PC running Windows 7 Pro, with a 4GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 970 fitted on a 4th Generation Intel i7 4790 3.6Ghz CPU and topped with 8GB of RAM. We don’t discuss review scores with publishers or developers prior to the review being published.