LogFAQs > #977417668

Game #19 Complete! Zipper

Throw This Quote On The Back Of The Box: Not Nearly As Annoying As Bennet Foddy's Other Games!

Final Thoughts:
So I beat this one three different times now, but I'm not really getting any closer to the leaderboard. I did some checking on the Discord and I think those top times are a result of glitches, which makes chasing them sort of pointless. I think right around 250 is possible depending on layout and luck, but I don't feel like playing through again and again hoping to get a favorable set up so I'm just calling this one beat even if I usually like to try and get on a leaderboard first.

Zipper goes to near the top of the leaderboard in terms of favorites for me at least, knocking off the only catalogue game I had in the top ten out of my top ten. I am starting to get worried about the catalogue the more I explore it. The Season 1 releases have been mostly decent at least, including three games I would consider genuinely good, no qualifications or crank gimmick blindness required. But all of the catalogue games I've played have been various flavors of not good. Like, just looking at Zipper you know its going to be better than anything I've played on the catalogue so far. The visuals here aren't fantastic or anything, but it looks good for the Playdate and you can tell what things are. It looks like it was made by someone who knew what they were doing and it isn't just amorphous blobs dotting the screen.

I had fun with this, but I do wish they had built up the concepts here a bit more. Like you have those demon puzzle rooms at the end and its almost a fun enough idea to base its own game around. But you just have three and then the game moves on. Final real room introduces a completely new mechanic but you just have that one room of it and oops its over. The core mechanic here is pretty fun and I like that this game isn't afraid to punish you if you don't know what you're doing. I just wish they had told you some stuff so I wasn't bumbling around the game the first hour or so. I get they want us to discover some stuff ourselves, which is fine, but you at least have to tell me how the crank works. THAT'S THE WHOLE BASIS OF THE GAME. I found it out by accident when I was getting ready to quit and move on to something else.

But still. this is solid. This and Crankin are definitely the two most challenging games I've played so far, and I love a game that isn't afraid to be brutally hard. I did check around the Discord some and the general consensus I was getting was this is too hard (people wanted checkpoints) and too inaccessible (people wanted more of an explanation). I agree with the second point, but totally disagree with the first. Checkpoints would've ruined this game and I liked that sense of "oh no oh fuck uh I hope this move is right" when you can't quite figure how to line up a difficult group of enemies. There are some rooms I still haven't figured out, and there's one room where you can get four polearm enemies spread out super far that I just take the long way around because I got sick of dying in it.

Nice to finally play something good again. Guess this is a good time to dive back into the catalogue while I'm on a high note.

Should You Play It? Definitely. One of the better games on the system and its free.

Final Score: 7. Sort of a low seven but still a seven. Good game that's hurt a bit by not exploring the mechanics as much as I would've liked and refusing to tell you how to play it out of spite. Still, this one ranks high. Just a little below Pick Pack Pup but finally beating out Casual Birder for that bronze medal spot for now.

Games Completed: 19/128

Game Rankings:
19) Boogie Loops
18) Hidey Spot
17) The Lushes Land
16) A Joke That's Worth 0.99 Cents
15) Whitewater Wipeout
14) Snak
13) DYG
12) Lost Your Marbles
11) Grand Tour Legends
10) Demon Quest '85
9) Flipper Lifter
8) Questy Chess
7) Echoic Memory
6) Omaze
5) Sasquatchers
4) Casual Birder
3) Zipper
2) Pick Pack Pup
1) Crankin's Time Travel Adventure