Rise & Shine

It’s full of blood, violence, puzzles, humour, all set in such a beautifully designed world. Definitely one of the most fun platformers of recent years.

Rise & Shine is a unique video game with powerful mechanics and a gorgeous visuals. The game has some problems, but is the first must-have indie game of the year.

It’s a special little game that will challenge and impress players with its charming presentation and unforgiving gameplay. It is, however, not a perfect game, although that’s easier to overlook given that this is a studio’s debut effort, and a very good one at that.

Rise & Shine is a very engaging, fun and well-designed game, beautifully crafted and challenging. A title you're going to enjoy a lot if you've been playing games for a few years now.

If you like a good challenge and value quality gameplay over length, which you should, Rise & Shine is a great little title and a great start to the gaming year.

This is a neat take on retro action as served by Contra or Turrican so long ago. Plus: all the easter eggs and references on video games are a blast. Unfortunately it crosses the border between challenging (but doable) and relentless trial & error on too many occasions.

Fun but short action game that also has a great amount of puzzles. Its control is not perfect when played with a controller, but that's almost the only flaw.

Rise & Shine feels like a game that tries too hard to be too much, ultimately coming together in a fun package that could have been great. The action is tight and rewarding, the gameplay is varied, and the difficulty is satisfying, if a bit frustrating in some parts. Fans of old-school arcade shooters will find plenty to love here, even if the jokes don’t always hit home.

Rise & Shine offers a great visual look with lots of cameos and references to the video gaming world, all coupled with a good and challenging action-platform gameplay. The good action phases get hampered by more repetitive and long puzzle moments or by some frustrating trial and error sequences, though. But when it manages to really shine, it can be a great action game.

A gorgeous, often savage bullet hell that has the power to charm, thrill and fluster all at once. [March 2017, p.80]

Rise and Shine is a fun experience, but its difficulty and short run time detract from the overall package.

Rise & Shine isn’t the deepest action-platformer you’ll ever play, but the tongue-in-cheek nods to the gaming industry at large, along with its stunning art style, will push you to the finish line even when the gameplay starts to let you down.

Rise and Shine is a game that fans of the genre and those looking for a quick experience will enjoy.

Despite its brevity ultimately doing some notable harm to it, Rise & Shine is still ultimately a solid platformer for the most part, one that has a lot of cute callbacks to classic video games while still having its own unique charm, along with some impressive graphics and nifty ideas sprinkled throughout. The action gets nice and intense, and save for the end, puts up a meaty yet fair challenge. So while it isn’t exactly the greatest at skewering gaming culture while also honoring it, it’s still an overall good game.

Rise & Rise is a lovely game. But a very punitive one, too. A lot of players will respond to its attractive visuals and soundtrack . But some of them will probably be a bit frustrated by the whole - not very long though - challenge, with a lot of deaths for sure, they'll be facing. Still a great way to start 2017.

It's a shame that the battles can so often be frustrating in the game, because everything else about it is enjoyable. The hand-drawn artwork is fantastic, the video game references enjoyable, and the story a lot of fun. However, unless you have a high tolerance for frustration it's doubtful that the game's positives will be enough to drive you to play it all the way through.

All in all, Rise & Shine isn’t a bad experience. It’s just one that has a lot of wasted potential.

Rise & Shine may be an infuriating endeavor but it's also a memorable one full of humour and a fun mix of gameplay elements. That being said, it only appeals to those looking for a hardcore 2D action game that'll thoroughly test their patience.

A hodgepodge of half-baked ideas, this is a pretty little ditty but it neither rises, nor shines. [March 2017, p.77]

I really wanted to like Rise & Shine. It’s one of the prettiest indie games I’ve played because of its beautiful and vibrant hand-drawn backgrounds, enemies and player characters. It’s also rife with fun, tongue-in-cheek references to the video games of yore. But that love quickly fades after spending hours and hours on a game that feels way harder than it needs to be. The demands and rigors of combat are unnecessarily stacked against the player, taking the form of frequent and cheap deaths. Love turns to fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to pain, and pain leads to rage quitting and never wanting to play Rise & Shine ever again.

It's hard to find too much fault in a game that's so in love with its inspirations, but Rise & Shine is at its best when it's being itself. [March 2017, p.104]

Rise & Shine reminds me of the original Battletoads from Rare, a game that would've been excellent had it not been so punishing. All of the work that went into creating such beautiful art, packing in so many gaming references, and creating the interesting bullet abilities, is undermined by the excessive challenge. Players who like tough games will love Rise & Shine, but it will never truly shine unless the developers rebalance the difficulty.

Rise & Shine looked like an early sleeper for 2017, but its design holds it back more often than not. I wanted to love it, but after banging my head against it for the short duration it lasts, it wasn’t worth the tedium.

I had a great time playing through Rise & Shine, but sadly, I know I'll never go back to it. I wanted to complete it; I very much so enjoyed the final twist of the story and the end "solution" even more. Enjoying the end, however, doesn't change the fact that the glitches, bad button layout and overly annoying self-awareness, really make it hard to enjoy at times.

It feels clever and promising at first, but doesn’t change its approach when the formula wears thin.

A fine-looking but hard-wearing shooter that has a lot of ideas but ultimately fails to rise to the occasion.