Indie Pogo (Review)

Indie pogo is a charming 1-4 player platform brawler (not to be related to a smash clone) and is the first game to be developed and published by Lowe Bros. Studios.

The pixel art is the first thing that got my attention, it's charming and does a good job of representing and respecting the characters original designs. Everything is bright and colorful, especially the more bombastic arenas like the bouncy castle and Runbow stages. The soundtrack is also very good. It's composed mostly of songs from the fighters original games, with a few unique tracks written by the Lowe bros. That being said, the music is pretty darn catchy and will most likely get stuck in your head for a while after hearing it.

What makes Indie pogo stand out from the other games of its genre, apart from the obvious slew of cameos from popular and not so popular indie titles (such as Shovel knight and Lilac). Is the way the game plays. Everyone is constantly jumping as if they were on pogo sticks (hence the name Indie pogo) which makes for an interesting core gameplay mechanic. Every fight is very intense and competitive, since everyone is always moving you will have to rely heavily on reflexes and quick decision making to outsmart your opponents. There's definitely a moderately difficult learning curve, but once you figure it out you'll be jumping all over the competition.

The one downside to Indie Pogoes main mechanic, is that is limits what the developers can do with each characters move set. The move-sets are fairly small and lacking in variety, each fighter has only 4 attacks (not including super attacks) which might have you thinking that the combat wears down and gets repetitive pretty quickly. I do think this will turn off many hardcore platform fighter fans, as most people expect a much larger move set akin to other games like Super Smash Bros. But the way each character plays, feels unique enough that this wasn't the case (for me), which is quite an accomplishment.

For those who also like a bit of single player content, there's a decent amount of stuff for you to mess around with. there's plenty of challenges, unlockable trophies, an arcade mode, and more coming in future updates. Such as a target bash mode and additional challenges and trophies. I wouldn't recommend getting indie pogo for the single player content alone, as it's kind of unbalanced and sometimes ridiculously difficult. Every challenge has a normal and hard mode, normal is usually pretty fair and easy (Except for Penelope's challenge) But hard seems like a massive difficulty spike in comparison, and feels cheap more often than not.

With the core gameplay being so enjoyable and an abundance of content already available, with an additional six free characters in development (Including Octodad, Bullet kin, and Dust.) Indie Pogo is definitely worth picking up for casual fans of the genre and party game enthusiasts alike, but if you're more into the competitive side of platform fighters, this might not be for you. Indie Pogo is available for $14.99 on Pc/Steam.