Mass Appixel - Small Games with Big Ideas: "Freedom Planet"

Written by Mike Cervantes

A good amount of indie games on the market can all be placed under a single classification: Retro. Some of the most well-known indie games fit this mold. Braid is a Mario-style platformer that also dabbles with time rewind features. Fez is a Mario-style platformer that experiments with three-dimensional shifts in the landscape. There are times when the entirety of the indie game industry seems like a re-capturing of the 8 and 16-bit glory days, only innovating with a minor feature that may well have blown our minds would it have happened in its inspired area. Seriously, just imagine if Mario rewound time or hopped dimensions on the original NES…

So what if an indie game chose NOT to give us that kind-of hook? What if a game simply chose to be retro, a veritable love letter to the games that inspired it? Would it still be enjoyable? Would it be able to stand out? Where and how would it take advantage of the current gen hardware it stands on? Well, there is one game in the indie market that fails to innovate, yet absolutely shines. A game that exists only to give the fans of the retro titles inspired by it virtual goosebumps, and that game is Freedom Planet.

Released on October 2015 for the PC via Steam and the Wii U, Freedom Planet began its life as a Sonic the Hedgehog Fan game. The creator, Stephen DiDuro ultimately saw so much promise in the overall project that he chose not to risk the potential Cease and Desist letter from SEGA and re-vamped the entire game with original characters, an original setting and storyline to make the game available for retail. 

It’s difficult to remove this game from its Sonic the Hedgehog roots, even after lead artist Ziyo Ling‘s aesthetic revamp. The game takes place on the planet Shuigang, an oriental-styled kingdom populated by anthropomorphic animals. The gist of it is that the king was murdered by a merciless alien warlord named Brevon, and it’s up to three former mercenaries, Lilac (anthropomorphic dragon), Carol (anthropomorphic wildcat), and Millia (anthropomorphic dog), to uncover the hidden treachery of the villain and restore the natural balance to their world. 

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The story is told in a series of lengthy cutscenes. While the cutscenes are very detailed, the voice acting spot-on, and the whole presentation unfolding with the vividness of a Newgrounds-esque pixel animation, they are so long that when you start a new game file you have the option of skipping them entirely. This game does merit multiple replays, so you may consider leaving them intact for your first run, and turning them off as part of a different save file when you want to focus on the gameplay.

From the beginning of the game you get the choice of two paths, one that belongs exclusively to Lilac, and another that is split between Carol and Millia. Lilac, the game’s analogue to Sonic, can run at very fast speeds, perform spinning kicks and “cyclone” pirouettes, and also dart forward using a forward attack that’s basically this game’s version of a spin dash. Carol can swipe with her claws, roll into a ball, and on occasion summon a red motorcycle that boosts her speed and attack power. Millia, the “Tails” of this gang, can swim, fly short distances, and create blocks out of green energy to throw at enemies.

The comparisons to Sonic the Hedgehog further from there when you consider the level design, while you won’t see landscapes lifted overtly from the series, you won’t pass a level without crossing a very Sonic style loop-de-loop or vertical ramp. The most patently obvious comparison happened in the third stage, where you ram into vertical swinging ramps exactly like the ones you’d find in Sonic 3’s Ice Cap zone. An improvement on the standard Sonic formula is that characters never fall off ramps or loops, even when they slow down and stop. It certainly prevents you from losing control of your character when your speed is interrupted by a stray obstacle or enemy, but it creates the equal and opposite frustration of your character being unable to speed up when climbing halfway up the ramp with an enemy closing in.
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Despite all the obvious comparisons, it would be unfair to label the entire game as a Sonic clone. This is, after all, an indie game, and a labor of love that has taken its creator and lead designer more than a year to complete. Also, while playing through the entirety of the campaign, I noticed that there are some sections of the game that suggest affection for another staple of the SEGA Genesis generation: Treasure. 

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Treasure was a company founded in 1992 by some former employees of Konami. They were responsible for several of the Genesis’ most popular titles, particularly Gunstar Heroes. Their games were extremely fast-paced, action oriented titles that took advantage of the Genesis hardware, particularly its ability to rapidly rotate sprites, to create massive and complex action sequences and boss battles. That very specific, platform-centered style of graphic rendering is all over Freedom Planet. You’ll know when you first encounter a boss, that they’ll be a rapidly-shifting creature composed mostly of connected spheres, which will pass across the screen in a blur, taking your character with it if you’re not careful.
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It’s this specific nature of obstacle creation/boss battle that helps the game ramp up in difficulty during later levels. Many of the early levels will permit you to get by simply by moving forward and tackling the occasional obstacle, similar to Sonic. But in later levels you can expect the traps and gadgets to get more complex, requiring you to focus and understand exactly how your character needs to move and attack. It may sound like a vague description, but there are simply too many new and original ideas here to list them all in a single review and besides that, I wouldn’t want to spoil what you’ll actually see. I guarantee that the challenge of the game, coupled with the dazzle of the game’s colorful graphics will leave you in absolute awe.
 
A single campaign will run you between eight and ten hours in normal mode. There’s also a “Time Attack” challenge mode and obstacle course. Sadly you won’t find a Sonic sub-quest or alternate ending: most levels will challenge you to find bonus cards which will unlock tracks in the game’s sound test.

Freedom Planet is available on PC via Steam and the Wii U shop channel.

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