Splasher

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Overall Rating - High Quality ★★★★☆
First Impressions
Splasher (SP) has a very unassuming title, and although I think it'd fit gameplay like the Splatoon series better, I understand where it's coming from. Initially, I wasn't that enthused by the looks of this platforming game, and seeing several achievements in the single digit range hardly soothed that concern. However, as I booted up this title, I wound up being pleasantly surprised.
Gameplay
Although the mechanics would fit in a puzzle platformer, the emphasis in SP is on speedrunning. When going through the levels normally, there's no time clock or other factor egging the player to make reckless choices so they beat the level faster. Instead, you're aiming to collect at least 700 points, in order to save all 7 coworkers. The difficulty in saving certain NPCs can escalate, but with reliable checkpoints scattered throughout, it's not that arduous to rescue everyone.
My main reason for thinking SP could have been a puzzle platformer is due to how the stages interact with three liquids; water, stickink, and bouncink. Water is able to kill many enemies, spins gears, and also washes away the other fluids. As the names implies, stickink allows you to cling to walls, as well as locking enemies in place. Bouncink is used to launch you around obstacles, as you gain a lot of momentum after landing on any surface covered by the stuff. Initially you have no means to directly control those fluids, but after progressing far enough, you get dispensers allowing you to make and use it as needed.
Controls
This style of platformer could have been a mess to control, either due to the button layout, or having ridiculous expectations for timing and trajectory. However, that wasn't a problem for this title. It's definitely the case that you routinely use the different liquids throughout stages, but not in such a manner that you're rapidly firing off alternating options in a confusing mess. Now, in order to clear the fastest times, I'm sure that becomes more of an issue, but for a normal playthrough, it's thankfully not much of a concern.
Story
Despite some visual storytelling as you occasionally come across a ticked-off guy in a lab coat, unless you looked at the store page, nothing in-game would summarize who the antagonist is, or his motivation. There's essentially no explanation for who you are, and what this company is all about either. Is there a reason developers don't want their story to be more clear?
Visuals
With much of the plot or context left unexplained, I can only guess that this factory is a lousy place to work, and is partially why the enemies look grotesque. Even then, there's a certain hand-drawn nature to the character design that I'm not in love with. However, am I really supposed to, with everything twisted by a morally questionable chemical factory? Since the game was built around speed, the screen scrolls and transitions are smooth, pretty much never throwing me off, or leading to a sour jump. One aspect that did mess with me slightly was when the focus would zoom out significantly because of how much needed to be shown on-screen at once. Thankfully, this doesn't come up very often, as it is harder to navigate tough jumps when it's zoomed out to such an extent.
Sound Design
The way I think the music works in SP is that as you advance through each level, different sections have their own portion of the song, so it'll progress through the tune as you go. If you keep dying before reaching the checkpoint, it'll repeat that section until you reach that next threshold. I'm not sure if each level got a completely unique song or not, but as I tried a handful of levels to check how the tunes sounded, they weren't replaying the same one. There's probably an influence from the setting, but the music does slightly make me think of an industrial area. Part of me wonders if the tempo works best if you're trying to quickly clear stages, instead of the more cautious pace I'd often take.
Pros
🌟 Each level seems to have its own core gimmick, as they weren't being trotted out repeatedly. For instance, starting on an enemy gauntlet, or navigating through train cars.
🌟 When dealing with lasers, the on-screen indicator showing its exact arc was such a nice touch. More games should do that.
🌟 There's a good balance between using all of the liquids throughout the game.
Cons
❌ You earn points in sporadic amounts, so there's no obvious way to tell if you're on track or not for the end of a level. Being short by around 10 points is frustrating.
❌ Navigating through the overworld is kind of annoying. Once you've beaten a level, you can access the level select menu.
Tips
🔍 You can crawl across the stickink you're placing without having to set a path in place beforehand. It also prevents you from running into an obstacle, if it's on a different wall surface than you are (the kind that resists any fluid).
🔍 No optional area spreads out that far. If you start going down what you think is the secret area, but the pathway doesn't dead-end soon, that's actually the right way to go.
🔍 Certain point generators won't respawn after death, meaning you don't have to keep getting them each attempt.
Final Thoughts
Despite most people not making it that far through the normal levels, if you enjoy platforming titles, I think SP makes for a worthwhile choice. For me, the question is whether you'd want to pursue the other game modes, trying to speedrun levels and earn the medals. That's not something I'm interested in messing around with, and only imagine a certain portion of players would find worth their time. With that in mind, based on your skill level, and interest in saving the NPCs, your time playing this game would take maybe five hours to clear, give or take. So it's overall a title I'd recommend, but one you'll beat a single time and likely leave fallow.
PC Specs
Performance
Ryzen 2700
RTX 2070
16GB RAM
ADATA SSD
1920x1080
The game ran without incident on default settings.
💖 - SP is healthy

Played this on election night (USA). I was more concerned with getting platinum medals in the time attack mode than about the actual election results, and I don’t think that mindset should be frowned upon.

An excellent 2d platformer with Portal 2 like paint mechanics!
Even at full price this game is well worth buying.
I also highly recommend Tinykin a 3d platformer by the same devs that is like a Pikmin game but it is really fun with smooth platforming fun.

The graphics are a bit simplistic, and the character is a bit tiny on the screen, but the gameplay is tight. There's a good variety of levels, with interesting new mechanics introduced every few levels. I played all the way through and enjoyed the whole thing. It didn't overstay its welcome.

I have previously played this game before on a different platform and I enjoyed it so much that I decided to add this game to my Steam library. I got this on sale (at a ridiculously low price) and it's worth every penny.
The ranges of difficulty of the levels is enough for the game to be both challenging and fun.
If you enjoy platformer games I highly recommend this game.

Graphics are cartoony and simplistic, game mechanics are great, level design is good, hours of content: 8-10 hours to beat the game. This game is pretty much tailored for speed runners especially if your achievement hunting. Overall, a well crafted action platformer.

I'm a casual mid-tier gamer. Love this game, it's not too hard, not too easy, with good graphics and mechanics. For the prize, for my expectations 10/10.