I’m going to throw Ember Island precisely one bone: it made me think of the time I played Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts (a browser version anyway) for the first time. I was in Uni, and a friend brought it up to me. He said he couldn’t beat the first level. I took that as a challenge and, with a not inconsiderate amount of rage, managed to beat the level. Died immediately on the next one, but I called it a win. So I was prepared for a controller-smashingly hard old-school platformer.
Ember Island is not that. Its blurb makes a big thing about a lack of ‘easy mode’ and that the only way through is true mastery. Except that’s not remotely true. There’s no great challenge here except for wonky mechanics. It highlights the difference between true difficulty, where skill is required, and fake difficulty, where everything is just barely holding together. It’s a little baffling. Ember Island wants to be seen as a true-blue hard game but the problem is: it really isn’t hard.
Ghouls ‘n’ Mosquitos
Ember Island has us pick from three characters, with the aim of playing through twelve stages and sending the final boss packing. First up is the Knight. He has a good bit of health, a big pointy sword and the ability to throw a fireball. Next is the Rogue, whose special ability is quitting to the menu and picking the Knight instead. Lastly is the Mage, who has a normal ranged attack and a big, heavy ranged attack. Her true special ability is completely breaking the entire difficulty.
See, Ember Island is apeing old school platformers where enemies hit hard and are numerous. For a melee character, this means picking the right moment to strike. But the majority of enemies are basic melee, so a ranged character completely trivialises them. Speaking of trivial, most enemies and bosses are completely helpless when repeatedly jump-struck by the Knight. Hell, some of the bosses have a little ledge you can sit on and cast spells where they can’t hit you. Or, as there’s no contact damage, you can just stand inside them and swing. On the other end of the scale is the Rogue, whose blows have a weird hitbox, meaning I kept sailing right through basic enemies. It’s absolutely bizarre.
Burnt To A Crisp
The best way to illustrate Ember Island‘s lack of challenge is this: my first victory came in sixty minutes of playing. The second was fifty minutes later. Most of my deaths in that time were due to being knocked down bottomless pits. Usually by enemies that would cluster at the edge of platforms, knowing that there’s a weird delay before the Mage can fire after landing. Ember Island tries to insert difficulty through its lives system – something that should have stayed in the past – but even that trivialises itself.
The idea is that when you run out of lives, you restart the level instead of spawning at a checkpoint. But the individual levels are extremely short, containing only one checkpoint apiece. So a Game Over isn’t devastating, just a mildly annoying setback. It also doesn’t help that the set levels never change, so there’s not much point replaying once you’re done. The blurb suggests going for a high score, but the game is too simplistic for that I feel. You might as well just enter a big number into the calculator on your phone. Even shuffling around enemy placements, or re-ordering levels for different characters, would give us a reason to go back to it.
Ember Island – Basic And Broken
Alright, alright. Let me calm down for a moment and think of some positives. Platforming feels okay, with jumps being relatively precise. Though it keeps putting in jumps that require you to be right at the very edge of the platform. Hm. The art’s cute. There are a fair few enemy variations, though the same ones are splattered over every level. Boss variation isn’t bad either. Though it starts re-using them towards the end, which is a bit weird. I wish I had a bit more context too, rather than a smattering of text right at the very end.
When I finished my second victory by effortlessly stunlocking the final boss with jump-strikes, I knew this wasn’t the game for me. It feels amateur and easily exploitable. I applaud an attempt to turn back the clock, but the old-school games that stood the test of time were very carefully designed. At the end of the day, £12.79 is a lot of quarters for a game that fell over after just an hour, and offered no real reason to suffer through it again.
