Are you Out of Line? Well, get in line with this rather charming platformer from Portuguese indie game team Nerd Monkeys.
This launched in June 2021 and follows the adventures of San across a puzzle-based quest to escape a factory. The result? Much platforming!
Spearing-Wielding Fun on the Run in Out of Line
Straight up there, Out of Line just looks amazing. Its distinctive hand-drawn visual style reminds us a tad of Rain Games' Teslagrad 2 (2023) and Playdead's outstanding INSIDE (2016).
The structure is linear as you guide San (an unusual looking human thing wearing a hat) to the right to get around obstacles.
Inevitably, you come up against puzzles that block your progress. You need to solve them to keep going, which you have a spear to assist with all of that. It's a fun little item that helps you solve various issues before moving on.
Quite what's going on, and why you're doing any of this, remains unclear. The narrative is abstract and leaves a lot to the imagination.
As with the recent Planet of Lana (2023), this all works in fits and starts. Some gamers may find the continuous blockades an annoyance.
Out of Line certainly isn't the best example of this type of platformer.
But it does have a lot going for it. The art style is just fabulous and very atmospheric, which is back up by all the music.
Out of Line's eerie soundtrack is by composer and sound designer Pedro J. Costa. Track three, A Helping Hand, was a favourite of ours.
That's all great. The press reaction has been a bit mixed, though, certainly on the gameplay front. It's nothing revolutionary or particularly engaging, which does mean the game falls quite a bit short of classic status.
However, we can't complain too much with what it does offer.
With its looks and moody soundtrack, there's some great platforming fun to be had here. It's not an enormous challenge as the puzzles are simple, but it does through in some fun abstract developments along the way.
Good. Perhaps not great, which is a shame. A few tweaks here and there and this could have been almighty, but the end result is still satisfying anyway.
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