Super Cloudbuilt

Tl;DR is the final verdict.
Is this game worth buying over the original cloudbuilt? I suppose this may be the question you are asking yourself as you see both games on steam. My answer to that is it mostly likely depends on how much you value steam workshop over everything else. This review will assume you have already read about/played the original.
The changes to this game are definitely improvements from the original. The game has been divided into 3 modes, Story, Ranked, and Rush. Story mode, instead of being centered around time attack like the original, can now be taken at a much slower pace. You can find hidden items, go down non-linear paths and get to the exit at your own terms. Ranked mode is the traditional cloudbuilt with time attacks and other challenges, though you have to play through story mode first to unlock those for levels. Rush mode is a sort of do a certain amount of levels in a row and collectively add the time.
The levels are much better in this game, and when I say that I mean it. There are new levels added even noticeably early on as well as changes to previous levels. The most noticeable changes are:
1. You have a bomb with your pistol, so clearly hordes of enemies or objects is much easier than before.
2. There are these new zones that either take away fuel or give you limited fuel, making for little mini challenges in the middle of a level.
3. Controls are a huge improvement. Everything feels smoother and less tight like the original.
4. Music has been remastered, and just sounds nicer to listen to in general.
5. DLC maps are just part of this game. Don't have to buy them seperately.
What do I miss about the original? I actually prefered the old world map over this new one. The old one had you in the sky where you would cycle and pick levels, while this new one is just all inside a building. Its not that the building looks ugly, in fact, its a nice area to see expand itself as you complete more levels. Its just that the old one had...charm to it. This version is also, again, is lacking the steam workshop, which can be a huge appeal to replayability.
So, the final verdict. should you buy this game over the original? My answer to that is most definitely a yes. While the steam workshop is missing, everything else is too much of an improvement that it feels like you will be missing out on more than you would think. The improvements on controls, the much better story mode, and the amount of extra challenges outside of story mode should allow for a much more enjoyable experience.

Probably about time I threw a review up for this game as I've now knocked up about 350 hours between the original and this, the remake.
So I'm going to throw in a note for those who already own the original and might be wondering if this version is worth getting alongside it at the end of the review.
What is it?
Super Cloudbuilt is a 3d parkour jetpack platformer. It uses a cell shaded art style with a few choices though I think most players stick to the default. The basic mechanics are a jump and a dash. These can be combined in various ways to get some ridiculously cool movements, the steam trailers are decent demonstrations of casual moves. If you stick around for a bit longer, those movements will seem very basic and inefficient. The amount you can use the jetpack is dependant on your energy. There is an energy bar that decreases on use and refills while grounded or when you pick up energy packs.
Story Mode
The "story" mode which is the only mode available when you originally open the game, tells the story of Demi, an injured soldier. I won't go into many details here but I will say that while the story is interesting, it is rarely focused on and is more of a nice little extra in the scheme of things. The story is primarily told through voice over "journals", which play at the completion of a level and can be replayed or read through the menu. These are well written for the most part but not expansive enough to make the story a selling point imo. One point that I did think was really excellent was the voice acting on these parts. The trailer didn't strike me but the voice acting on Demi within the story mode is truly excellent.
Gameplay within the story mode consists primarily of navigating the levels to completion. There are also other game modes available through "challenges". I will elaborate on this challenge system further down in the cons section.
These other game modes are:
Time Trial - Beat the level as fast as possible
Pacifist - Beat the level with no weapon
Pathfinder - Beat the level with the minimum energy use possible,
Beacons - Hit a series of "Beacons" (checkpoints) in any order then reach the goal.
Supercharge - Energy bar instantly refills on contact with any surface.
Fragile - Beat the level without taking damage.
Pros and Cons
Pros:

Tight controls, no unfair deaths due to control issues.
Interesting mechanics. I mean it's a jetpack parkour with tight controls.....how could it not be interesting XD
Great Level design - Considers both casual players and speedrunners. Levels look beautiful. Very rarely unfair.
Good soundtrack - Has to be mentioned, personal favourite is monolith but the whole thing is excellent
S ranks are an achievement - This can swing either way but I love that S-ranks actually felt like an achievement even after 50 hours of game play.
This may not seem like a long list but tight controls, interesting mechanics and great level design are the core of any platformer and it's that part that I personally focus on.
Cons:

Difficulty - This game is hard and the curve while relatively level in this iteration, is still steep. There's a lot of intricacies to the mechanics that can be frustrating to slowly learn. The intro level is also far too long. This level is the longest level in the game until you reach the infamous defiance levels which were designed as a dlc to challenge the speedrunners with over 100 hours in the original games. It's not difficult, but simply a ridiculous length for a tutorial level.
Not controller friendly - This game has been completed and even speedrun by some people on controller, It's certainly not impossible. The devs have done their best to implement control setups. but it's a game that lends itself much more to a keyboard + mouse setup.
The challenge systems - Story mode is the only mode available at the start of the game. As you complete a level in the game, its ranked counterpart becomes available in ranked mode and certain "rush mode packs" become available. This is fair. However, to unlock the different game modes on those levels, you either have to beat the challenge with the associated game mode on that challenge in story mode, or complete the full game including the defiance levels. You cannnot choose which challenges you attempt in story mode meaning it will be a long time before you have access to all the levels and game modes.
Extended air dash buffering - This is a toggleable option in the menu. The fact that I mention something with those characteristics is exceptional but this option is literally game ruining from my experience and there's no hint given that something like this exists, nevermind, that its on by default. The two other people I convinced to buy the game said they felt immense improvements when they turned off the setting and I lose all sense of control with it on. I don't know how the devs came to the conclusion that this helped players but I mark this as a con.
I've been somewhat expansive on the cons I see, hopefully the fact that I adore this game still shines through, it does all the simple things right.
Conclusion
BUY IT!!! XD
Comparison versus original
The version is better in every sense than the original imo, (except the lack of a level editor) and so for me, the simple answer is that if you really enjoyed the original you should go for it, Yes there are common elements but many of the levels are massively redeisgned, the combat side has been improved immensely, the mechanics are smoother and there's improved possibilities. The story is slightly better told but still takes the backfoot largely and is only a nice little bit on the side.

I love this game.
Gorgeous graphic style, insane speed and fast paced action, incredible level design, wonderful ost.
Almost perfection, there's only few problems with the gameplay mechanics but overall it's an absolute must have if you like fast paced games.
A true underated gem.
Rating 9/10
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It’s hard for any game to cover all the bases, especially an indie game. You often see titles focused heavily on combat, or exploration, or story, because mixing them all up is both expensive and hard to do without muddling any of them. That’s why I give Super Cloudbuilt so much credit, because it goes the extra mile to make all of these elements shine in what’s ostensibly a speedrunning game. It’s not going to match titles built around these features but it doesn’t need to, considering how ridiculously fun it is to scramble all over the broken worlds here.
I won’t spoil the plot of the game but the thrust will become apparent almost immediately. It’s a trope I don’t really care for but I’ll admit it’s a decent one to build the game around, giving justification to the open flow of level progression. From a hub area you’ll access several wings of levels, each following a theme like exploration or combat. Beating one level grants access to the next level in that wing, and eventually you’ll be presented with different conclusions to the overarching story depending on which wing you finish. There’s even a few diversions and secrets to check out here, giving the interstitial area some welcome depth.
Most of your time will be spent navigating the game’s levels, and it’s here that you’re presented with the freedom that makes Super Cloudbuilt so enthralling. All you need to do is reach the door at the end of the level, and that’s a simple matter of hopping across broken clusters of walls and floors and moving through great floating assemblies of chambers and traps. A lot of these walls and gaps are too large to tackle on your own, which is why you come equipped with a frightfully powerful booster for jetting across floors and up walls, or just firing off an extra mid-air jump. You’ll also have an upgradeable gun for warding off homicidal robots, but once you see just what you can do with your booster, you might not want to stop long enough to fight.
A lot of platformers get in trouble for being too slow or stiff to really enjoy. Super Cloudbuilt feels like it was designed specifically to rub those failings in, because you can get yourself up to absurd speeds here. Your base movement speed is already fleet enough that you might find yourself dashing off of ledges, but once you get the booster involved you can tear around levels in an instant. Parkour features heavily here, with your heroine able to wallrun and zip straight up surfaces, and clever use of your booster will help you do this safely and swiftly. Many sections of levels are just walls hanging in space, challenging you to wallrun and jump between floating edifices to reach safety.
You can absolutely speedrun every level, weaving past enemies and obstacles like Mercury himself, but for the more contemplative gamers there’s plenty to find as well. At the end of each level are a number of lockers bearing goodies and gear that you access by completing certain challenges. Two of them are for finding cards hidden around the place, five in all. The others are for revisiting levels after beating them and accepting special challenges, like beating the level without getting hit, or without using your boosters. And even beyond that, there’s an entire wing of levels for peaceful exploration, ascending towers in the sky and traversing floating islands mainly for the scenery.
The crosshatched art style of the game serves it well, drawing stark contrasts between platforms and foes and giving you bright colors to augur towards. The music also deserves very special attention as a collection of intense, atmospheric beats to commit your high-speed maneuvers to. It really helps seal the deal on just how liberating and energetic this game is, forming a total package that gives you loads of challenges and loads more ways to overcome them. It might take you a little bit to get used to the controls and rules of momentum, but the first time you jet past a cluster of deadly traps in seconds and take in what you’ve just accomplished, you’ll surely see how worthwhile it all was.
Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at

DIsclaimer: I was a QA tester for SCB and am friends with the developers. Also, I loved the original to death and all of this colors my opinion.
Super Cloudbuilt is wonderful, it is everything Cloudbuilt wanted to be polished to perfection. I put over 900 hours into the original Cloudbuilt, and while the core mechanics were phenomenal and I obviously love it it did have some obvious flaws. The story was a notable weak point and the whole game lacked a sense of polish, on top of that several of the game modes were prone to crashing and a couple of bugs with the movement simplified the game to much at the highest level. I'm happy to say that all of that has been addressed in Super Cloudbuilt
The core of what made Cloudbuilt great is still here, that freedom of choice and the feeling of exploration is made all the more viceral by the redesigned levels and expansive design incorperated into every piece of the game. The movement is more refined, allowing new players to pick up the game more quickly and feel greater control over their motions. Demi feels as if she has actual weight and momentum now and the strange way Demi liked to get stuck on things in the original is gone.
The story and level select have been overhauled from the ground up. The hospital hub world is compact yet full of detail and the fact that Demi's monologues can be listened to inside loading screens or as you begin a new level keeps them from breaking the flow as they did in the original. The voice acting is also much improved, as well as the writing.
Finally, the polish. Everything about Super Cloudbuilt screams polish. The menus are sleek and modern, the inventory system is simple and effective, and everything is where you would expect it to be. All of this combined with a new global leaderboard system and the many gamemodes Cloudbulit has always had gives hours of content for those people who want to go fast while still providing rewards for those who want to play more casually.
For me Super Cloudbuilt is a 10/10, everything about this game is an improvement upon the original and it has earned it's spot as one of my favorite games of all time.

It's ... okay, I suppose. As with its predecessor, the 'story' just feels like something that's tacked on, and heavy with way, way too much protagonist-exposition that's emminently skippable. As with its predecessor, I feel like the game would actually be improved by not having the story in it.
The gameplay is fun, though ... mostly. I think it's at its best when you're focused solely on the parkour aspects of it, and once you get used to the jumping and flying around and start to master that aspect of it, it's a joy to play.
The later levels suffer from a bit of developer-sadism, though, with large chunks of terrain that you can't get a breather on, filled to the brim with mines and turrets and all manner of nonsense. After draining 48 lives on a single section of an end-game level, I just exited in disgust.
There isn't much here that wasn't in the predecessor, though (Cloudbuilt) Mostly the same mechanics, though for completing certain challenges in the game you're awarded with one-use powerups that really don't seem to make much of a difference. To illustrate, the aforementioned 48-life-draining level had a section where I fly up on a giant launch pad and am immediately targeted by a sniper turret that hits so hard it launches me off the track of the level to my demise. Oh, I says to myself, don't I have something called a 'shield gun' that gives me a force field or something? I did, and I thought it would help.
It didn't. It only soaked the damage, and the bullet of the turret still hit me with enough force to launch me from the level. Worthless. And I'm not getting that item back, because they're one-use, and tied to challenges you can't complete more than once. Whoopee. - Correction from the dev: there is a system in the game for getting items back; and there are infinite challenges to clear
Aside from that, new levels, new(-ish) music, some new enemy types that are even more obnoxious than the old ones.
In summation, it's pretty fun and I'd give it a mild recommendation. The parkour and (most) level design is spot on - what it does well, it does really well. The rest ... well, the game would be improved without it, IMO.

Holy crap! If you've played the first Cloudbuilt, this is nothing but improvements and additions! The UI looks a bit cleaner, the map is easier to access, and the speed is just as breakneck as usual! Ah how I've missed these amazing 3d platforming mechanics! I love this series <3
For any newcomers looking to buy this, it is a 3D platformer with an emphasis on managing your boost gauge to overcome obstacles until you reach the end of a level. Each level plays like an obstacle course with breaks between sections (although these breaks become fewer and further between as the levels get harder). Each level is a bit like a Sonic level from the 2D era, with branching paths and many ways to progress through the level. Some sections are more streamlined with only one path, but higher difficulty (a gauntlet if you will) while other sections are more like big open spaces that you can traverse any way you want.
This all boils down to become a 3D platformer with an emphasis on speedrunning, where the better you get at using tricky maneuvers (like aiming a grenade at your feet and using it to jump higher) the better your time.
The first game (Cloudbuilt) felt like a bunch of separate levels that you tried to have a good time in, but for this game they really made it feel like the goal of your play is to start a New Game and clear all levels without dying/running out of lives, very arcadelike.
If any of what I've written sparks your interest, then buy this game! Its an amazing arcade-inspired 3D platformer and you'll be engrossed from start to finish! And if you ever get to a section you just cant complete, keep trying! Thats what the game is all about - repetition towards mastery :)