Anyone who grew up jumping through 16-bit platformers will feel at home with Splasher. Released on Steam on February 7, 2017, Romain Claude’s first independent game came to PS4 and Xbox One on September 26, 2017, after a good reception on PC.
The creator’s résumé helps explain the polish. Romain Claude worked for years at Ubisoft as a game designer and level designer on Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends, two of the most praised platformers of the previous generation. For Splasher, he set up the small French studio Splashteam, with art direction by Richard Vatinel and music and sound effects by Aymeric Schwartz, who also worked on Rayman Origins and Valiant Hearts. Publishing went to Dear Villagers and Plug In Digital.
The story is one of those simple ones that are good to tell at the video rental counter: you are an employee of Inkorp, a paint factory, and discover that the boss, the evil Docteur, is experimenting on your coworkers, the Splashers. It is up to you to cross the factory’s 22 levels and rescue everyone. The weapon is a paint cannon, and each color gives a superpower: one paint makes you stick to walls, another makes you bounce, and the jet also works to knock down enemies. Along the way, you can collect Golden Ink, the game’s currency.
The gameplay demands agility, speed and quick reflexes, and not by chance: the game was developed together with well-known speedrunners. There are three speedrun modes, one without collectibles, one with collectibles and a 100% one, plus time-attack challenges with online leaderboards. One critic summed it up well: “the shadow of Super Meat Boy can be felt in almost every aspect of this game.”
What came next
On the date of this news, the Nintendo Switch version did not have a date yet, but it came soon: Splasher reached Nintendo’s console in October 2017. Critics liked it a lot, with Metacritic scores of 79 on PC, 82 on PS4 and 83 on Switch.
Source: Splashteam, Dear Villagers.
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