Ynglet

Step into a stylish world where every step you take creates a beautiful platforming symphony in Ynglet. This beautiful indie game is what it would look like if a Jackson Pollock life came to life – and if that painting was a fluid platformer with an excellent balance of difficulty and style.

Platformers usually have a reputation for being hard: games where your reflexes are put to the test in every jump you make. Ynglet, however, doesn’t believe in that approach, delivering a relaxing experience that can be approached by any type of player.

Seize the Momentum

Imagine you’re fish out of the water and are just now adapting to moving on land, jumping from place to place until you finally get a feel for how gravity works. That’s how playing Ynglet feels like: equal parts platformer and puzzle game, much of the time you spend playing the game you’ll be experimenting with how its unique world works.

The minimalist approach to both gameplay and visuals makes Ynglet stand out from its indie platformer peers. While certainly unique, the game bears a certain resemblance to other platformers with an emphasis on physics-based gameplay, like Sound Shapes. However, the main goal of the game seems to be to simply have a good time, with tons of accessibility options and a heavily customizable difficulty.

Explore the Doodle World

You control a strange creature that traverses a world made of doodles. Every element of the game’s scenery is hand-drawn and animated, with small details like other creatures and vegetation decorating the environment. It all feels very surreal, like a more complete version of Electroplankton (remember Electroplankton? The DS could be weird sometimes.)

We’ve been calling Ynglet a “platformer” all this time, but there’s a catch: there are no platforms in this platforming game. Sure, there’s gravity, and there’s momentum like in most platforming games, but you move in an open space where there are very few consequences for falling.

This isn’t a game about jumping through levels to reach an arbitrary point: this is a game about exploring and interacting with a unique world. It’s a relaxing experience that, sadly, can certainly bore some players that are more used to games with clear objectives and more traditional mechanics.

Musical Madness

One of the most creative aspects of Ynglet is how it uses its platforming as a means to compose a soundtrack on the fly. As you jump, swim, and dash through the doodle world, you’ll notice that every action you make creates a musical note. As Nifflas, the game’s developer, says, this is all just part of Ynglet’s complicated music software.

Each time you play the game, you’ll get to listen to a whole new composition made by you, which not only is great for replayability, but is also one of the game’s most impressive technical feats.

Combine a catchy, custom-made soundtrack with the game’s hand-drawn visuals, and you get yourself the perfect recipe for an unforgettable game. As long as you don’t mind a vague approach at tutorials.

Pros:

• Incredible hand-drawn visuals
• Amazing music software creates a soundtrack on the fly
• Excellent mechanics and satisfying platforming
• Adaptable difficulty

Cons:

• Some mechanics are not well explained
• The game’s pace might be too slow for some players