SomnaBuster

2025-05-18
Replaying Sonic Advance a year or two ago I had the thought that maybe 2D platformers just aren't my jam. But then I thought back to Ori and the Blind Forest, Super Meat Boy, or Celeste and I'm like "No, I liked those." I enjoy the challenge of fighting off carpal tunnel as my thrashing hands repeat the same challenging section of obstacles over and over, failure after failure, till I succeed. So then why did Sonic Advance, for all its charming visuals and bumping tunes, rub me the wrong way? It's the lives system. Infrequent checkpoints I can live with; Ori caps off several levels with an extended gauntlet, sometimes taking a minute or two, where if you make one mistake you have to restart and those rule. But a lives system where after trudging through 7-2 of Somnabuster for 10 or 15 minutes I lost my last life right at the end because of the wonky ass upside-down platforming and have to restart not just that section but the entire level over? Because why? Because I didn't go back and farm up lives on the first level? Because I didn't want to engage in tedium? And yet Somnabuster doesn't even have internal consistency because bosses themselves--which are a blast--are self-contained levels. Whether you die with 0 lives or die with 100 against a boss you'll be able to jump back into the fight right away. Why not take this same approach for the platforming levels themselves?

It's tragic especially because it's a mechanic so easily hewn from what is otherwise an incredibly weird and fun platformer. Somnabuster's trippy-cutesy art is sublime, it's music could have come from a Sega Genesis Sonic game, and its story and writing are zippy and entertaining the whole way through. And the platforming itself has its own unique flourishes with its spin move you can infinitely bounce off enemies and walls with or the (admittedly unintuitive) upside-down platforming. It means mechanically it feels like a game with a high skill ceiling. It's a game that asks for mastery and rewards you with fun sights and sounds. And it's also a game that undercuts the whole thing with its lives system. Hey, maybe the developer will update the game to remove/toggle it. But until then there's just too many other platformers worth your time for me to recommend this one.