Have you ever wanted to play golf on a tiny moon? Have you ever wanted to fly a tiny rocketship around a pencil-sketched solar system, dodging buzz saws and using gravity assists to smoothly navigate?
Perfect Universe is a weird game. The product as a whole is subdivided into 9 minigames, which all have two things in common: beautifully sketched artwork and using bizarre gravity to your advantage. The artwork is beautiful, and the music matches it nicely.
Many of the minigames follow the same theme – run around the map, jump/fly/stumble your way to collectibles. You’re going for completion and best time, but there’s no real external pressure on yourself to zip through the maps as quickly as possible. The first game will have you run, jump and climb as a human to collect items, while avoiding hazards like buzz saws and trying to wrap your brain around the confusing gravity tricks in the later levels.
What begins as a standard platformer quickly evolves into something different altogether. Your human will start gliding, leaping and orbiting to nearby objects with heavy gravitational pull. That’s where most of the satisfaction comes from in Perfect Universe – the quirky tricks you can pull off when gravity starts messing with you.
Other minigames are similar in nature, but your mode of transport will change up. You get to pilot a tiny spaceship and rocket around, or those looking for a real challenge can take control of “Mr. Legs,” an alien who has controls not seen since the days of QWOP. There’s even a golf minigame, and something like dodgeball. For the price tag, you get a nice bundle of cool gravity-based games.
The one major downside for PC users? You’re going to need a gamepad to be very good at this game. Keyboard controls are fine in the beginning, but some tricky jumps may be a little too much for the average user without the precision of a gamepad. Even for a casual player, you’ll have a much better time if you can hitch up a gamepad to your PC.
Perfect Universe is available on Steam for PC and PS4 for $9.99.
3/5
