Review by Jon Donnis
Only Way is Down from Jilted Generation Productions starts with a fun idea but quickly turns into a frustrating experience. You play as a cat who accidentally falls asleep on some construction materials and wakes up atop a towering skyscraper. Your mission is to make your way down to safety, but the path is filled with dangerous platforms, swinging cranes, and narrow beams that require precise jumps and careful navigation.
The concept of guiding a cat through a construction site is interesting, and the game world looks great. You get to explore a vertical environment with a sprawling cityscape below. There are some fun customization options for your cat, like choosing its type, eye colour, and adding accessories such as hats and glasses. These elements help give the game some charm and personality.
But the main issue with Only Way is Down is its difficulty. The game is designed for players who love rage platformers, where one mistake can lead to instant death. The cat's movements feel stiff, and there's no room for error. A small fall, even just a meter, results in the cat dying instantly, which is pretty frustrating. In real life, cats are known for landing on their feet from much greater heights, but in this game, you're punished for every misstep.
The controls and camera angles make things even worse. The game hates the idea of the player using a controller, the controls feel unresponsive, making it hard to line up jumps and manoeuvre around obstacles. The camera angles need to be lined up perfectly before you do anything, which if not done perfectly makes it even more difficult to judge distances or spot the next platform. As a result, the game feels less like a challenge and more like an exercise in frustration. Imagine playing a game with a cat, where you literally have to move at a ridiculously slow pace just to not die.
Only Way is Down targets a specific audience of players who enjoy punishingly hard "rage quit" platformers. If you are into that genre, you might enjoy the challenge, but for anyone else, the game is more likely to leave you feeling frustrated. It has a lot of potential, but the combination of its high difficulty, poor controls, and lack of forgiveness means it's not going to be enjoyable for most players.
This game feels like it's trying too hard to be difficult, and unfortunately, that makes it hard to enjoy. While the concept is fun and the setting looks great, the game ultimately falls short for anyone looking for a more accessible experience. A simpler, easier to control, and more accurate game of this nature would be so much fun to play, but the developer has his mind made up, and clearly is not looking to make any money from this game, oh well, I am left giving a generous score of 3 out of 10. So much potential. Maybe in the future the developer might do an arcade mode for the game. Might even make some money then.
Unironically released on April 1st on Steam
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