It makes sense that a game with so many ideas would miss with a few of them, but you would hope that they would end up on the cutting room floor, rather than the game.Įmblematic is a level that is covered in fog, but having reached the end, we couldn’t tell you why. A gravity-shoes sequence locks you to platforms if you’re close to them, but the rules of what ‘close to them’ means are hazy at best, and we found ourselves flinged into the stratosphere more than once. The tank and plane vehicles never feel completely satisfying to control, making them clumsy sequences that left us happy that they ended. We couldn’t shake the feeling that some of the ideas felt a bit much. There’s certainly plenty of longevity here if you have the appetite for it.īut, to mangle something Ian Malcolm once said, “ they were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should”. Gathering them unlocks benefits for Ayo, but – more importantly – they make the levels dense with secrets, and there’s barely a sequence of platforms that doesn’t have a secret wall or a far-flung ledge that seems impossible to reach. It’s attention-deficit on the part of the designers, and it makes Ayo the Clown a constant surprise.Īdding to the quirkiness is the collectibles, which come in common gem varieties, but also lollipops, bears and extra lives. We found ourselves switching between tanks, planes and rafts, often with rising lava, crushing boulders and gravity-shifts changing things up. Most would save them for one per level, thinking that was more than enough. It’s not unusual for a level to have three or four new ideas rattling around inside it, which is far beyond what other non-Nintendo, non-Rayman platformers would attempt. Because the levels in Ayo the Clown are punching well above the belt.

It’s something you can learn to overcome – we just wished we didn’t have to.

But too much is stacked onto the direction buttons, when you are using them frequently just to move about. A press of a face button, an X or a Y, would have worked wonders. Mapped to a press ‘up’, they often trigger late or end early, and we found ourselves cursing the decision to put them on the direction pad. The floating balloons, used early and repeatedly through Ayo the Clown, are also a tad inconsistent. Ayo the Clown can’t discern between some of the controls, and it can lead to unwanted deaths. The problem comes from that layering: too often, we wanted to climb down a rope but found ourselves bottom-pounding, or floating in a balloon when we wanted to be climbing up a ladder. Soon, he is able to slide under doors, bottom-slam switches and float with balloons to higher platforms. But it comes undone as more and more abilities are layered onto Ayo. Basic platforming feels great in Ayo the Clown.

Ayo the Clown is initially an easy character to get to grips with his jump is easy to manage, and there’s no latency to any of the inputs. It hits some hurdles in terms of controls. Some of the characters are a little bland, but generally this feels like being fired out of a circus cannon through world after world of colours, invention and giant gingerbread men. Graphically it’s got a high-quality if slightly plasticky sheen, making it feel more towards the AAA end than budget end. It’s all been done before, but it’s familiar, satisfying and stuffed to the brim.Īs the first game from developer Cloud M1, you wouldn’t know it was a debut. The game is split up into worlds, from candy levels to factories, with four levels in each and a boss, dominating the width of the screen and requiring you to memorise various phases of attacks. Levels are chosen from the traditional 2D, top-down map, with some minigames and towns to spice things up beyond just picking a level.

Ayo the clown review