Rise & Shine

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.

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.

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.

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

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.