What do you think of when you hear the name Cloudberry Kingdom? Whimsical Victorian-era JRPG? Cutesy browser-based tower defense game? Well surprise! It’s actually an old-school 2D side-scrolling platformer that runs you through a merciless gauntlet of procedurally generated levels. Not only can its various blocks and hazards be arranged in potentially infinite combinations, the difficulty can be ramped up all the way to “Masochistic.” It’s a brave approach, if nothing else. When our only means of avoiding doom consists of running and jumping, the entire experience lives and dies by the level design.
The good news is, CBK’s built-in level generator works extremely well, at least in a broad sense. Levels were never broken or unbeatable, and in fact, I routinely encountered sections that felt so deliberately assembled I actually doubted a randomized algorithm could design something so perfectly cruel. When you reach the end of an extremely challenging level only to discover a last-second laser from space means you’ll have to rethink your entire run in order to get the timing right, it’s hard not to take it personally, you know? Still, aside from the occasional level that far exceeded the difficulty of the previous and subsequent levels, the challenge always increased at a steady, satisfying pace. And damn can it be satisfying!
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/07/30/cloudberry-kingdom-review
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