Knowing when best to use a regular cloud-hop when moving between lanterns, or when to use a cloud-hop in conjunction with gliding. It’s here where players are tested more so with what they’ve learned and picked up on their travels through the base game. Safe areas and platforms in lesser supply, new enemies sprinkling proceedings with a bit more of that involuntary frustration that comes in simply wanting to get to the top. A consequence of the continuing arch up the difficulty curve gets going into Picnic Panic, it’s no surprise that players are required to beat the game (again a second time, if you’ve already gone through the motions of seeing the credits screen previous) in order to gain access to this additional tale, as Picnic Panic‘s ascent is no easy feat.
But credit once again to Sabotage in nailing that classic approach to level design in platformers while the explorative aspects are absent, the level of challenge - and the cunning ways the game builds on, to potentially trip players up - is undeniable.
PARTY PANIC REVIEW SERIES
There are, sadly, no additional key items/upgrades to acquire and for its brief two-to-three hour run-time, Picnic Panic plays out more like the base game’s first half - the revelatory Metroidvania leanings in the latter half, absent here in favor of a strict, linear, A-to-B series of environments to trek through.
PARTY PANIC REVIEW FULL
Granted, the short-burst of additional content here doesn’t go the full way in replicating the full joys of the experience found in the base game. Be it a mid-way boss that genuinely pushes players to the edge of their capabilities or some of the dimension-hopping puzzles that result in the path being opened, Picnic Panic is by no means some extra fluff to add to the base game’s elegance in design. Strange as it may sound to profess, much how early thoughts played out going into the base game, Sabotage likely could have gotten away with less than what is offered here, and yet Picnic Panic - though keeping to the template - does manage to squeeze in a few surprises here and there. Thus, it’s the returning presence of such characters - the Shopkeeper makes a return, his tales and moral-lessons of such still as odd, still as deliberately long-winded, as they were from before - that really does make Picnic Panic feel in parts like a victory lap of sorts, but not in a way that seems forgetful or otherwise indulgent in its own accomplishments.īecause Picnic Panic, while could be treated as simply an accompaniment - a side-quest set in a parallel world, if the bafflingly-deeper implications the game’s lore eventually revealed - doesn’t simply rely on artificially stretching out the experience. It was arguably the one attribute that really lingered on the mind given how unexpectedly Sabotage had nailed the writing in this regard.
And so enjoyable to see unfold outside of its challenging, ninja-acrobatic antics not that it was anything other than a pleasant - though sizeable - secondary to the gameplay, but Sabotage clearly had a knack for comedic writing in the narrative, but also with the eclectic bunch of characters the player-character met on their travels. Picnic Panic, Sabotage’s additional slice of DLC content for The Messenger, does very much serve as both a continuation from that aforementioned curve of challenge, but it’s also a well-suited vertical slice in what made the base game so wonderful to play through in the first place. And it was thanks to this dedication with its setting and its world, where the prospect of a hopeful/likely sequel, was one fans would be eager to see somewhere in the pipeline - however long that may have taken. Indeed, The Messenger more than deserved its coveted place amid the highest tiers (if not the outright top) of platformers in recent years, bested only by one of the very first releases of last year.
Add to this the surprising revelation of the game presenting an intriguing backstory and lore, complete with a cast of quirky and entertaining characters in the end what you had was a game that took the philosophy on platforming and added to it with visual and gameplay twists alike that never seemed out-of-place nor forcibly shunted. An easy-to-grasp/hard-to-master gameplay mechanic via its cloud-hopping the pleasant variety in its visuals and environment design, the excellently-carved out difficulty curve. A game that underscored a great amount that’s quintessentially long-lasting about one of video games’ oldest fields. Sabotage Studio’s The Messenger was a triumph for the platforming genre.
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