Hands-On: Mekazoo

There’s no shortage of quirky platformers out there, but we found one on the show floor that’s pretty unique. The first product to come out of new development studio The Good Mood Creators, Mekazoo channels old-school game design with a fun new twist: co-operative platforming based around animals with unique abilities. Bathed in a neon-tinted graphical style, Mekazoo seeks to find that magical balance between accessibility and difficulty, and it has a lot going on while it tries to find that balance.

It’s a wild world in Mekazoo. As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock up to five animals to play as, and each has their own unique ability. For example, the armadillo character can curl up and shoot off in a ball of speed, not unlike our favorite blue hedgehog. The wallaby character is always bouncing, and it can wall-jump at will. The frog character can use its massive tongue to swing on the environment and take down enemies. You’ll always have access to more than one character at a time, and switching between them is key to traversing the game; in order to solve a puzzle, for example, you may need to roll off a cliff at speed as an armadillo before quickly turning into a frog and latching onto a a series of enemies and levers.

It’s this mechanic that helps the game stand out and remain interesting. Learning how to master the multi-character system can take some getting used to, and the whole setup did seem intimidating at first. That said, once I settled into it, I found myself switching between animals easily and, at times, tearing through the levels almost at will. There’s a certain thrill in approaching an environmental puzzle and piecing it together using nothing your knowledge of the game’s mechanics. Admittedly, the level designs don’t always make your path forward perfectly clear, and there are some stop-and-go puzzle moments that will take some time to understand. Other times, though, it’s full-steam ahead, and those segments that let you make lots of progress quickly feel pretty great.

In a way, it actually called the classic Sonic games to mind in terms of its general sense of flow; though Mekazoo is much slower and more puzzle-oriented, you can really get into a groove and, when you do, the game shines. On a deeper level, it plays on that feeling of conquering a game’s mechanics and level design to produce a more satisfying experience. Remember the first time you mastered Ice Cap Zone after getting lost, taking damage, and struggling aimlessly? After a couple of runs through Mekazoo’s levels, you may find yourself feeling something vaguely similar; pulling off a series of complex maneuvers in quick succession looks and feels pretty great, no matter what game it happens in. In addition, I felt some serious Donkey Kong Country vibes in terms of how you engage enemies with certain characters and how the levels encourage you to explore and see as much as possible. There’s a lot at work here.

Now this is the part where I talk about all the pretty colors. Lots of Mekazoo‘s appeal comes from its bright, neon-tinged aesthetic gives the game an even stronger sense of identity, and it certainly helps make everything feel much more alive. Levels are awash with detail and ornamentation, and every asset adheres to that general sense of vibrance and energy. Admittedly, sometimes there can be too much going on, and it can become difficult to keep track of your character, especially during boss fights when the camera tends to zoom out often and aggressively. On a related note, I found the boss fight I played through in this demo to be disproportionately difficult relative to the level that preceded it; there’s another parallel to Donkey Kong Country in that regard: boss fights are tough. One of the Good Mood Creators employees mentioned that the boss fight was pulled from later in the game, so I’d imagine that the final game will have a more reasonable difficulty curve, but we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

As it stands, though, Mekazoo looks like a bright and unique platformer with a lot to offer. If you appreciate this genre and want something new to explore, this might be one to keep your eyes on. Mekazoo will launch late this summer on PS4, Xbox One, Windows, Mac, and Linux with a Wii U release to come in the future.