I don’t think that Cloudbuilt is really the right game for me. Which is disheartening, because it’s built from a lot of pieces that I like independent of one another. It’s cool, fast, and action-packed. It’s got a beautiful graphical style. The levels are like something out of a really intense version of Super Mario Galaxy. And yet, I find the gameplay to be overly difficult and frustrating. I can see my younger self falling head over heels in love with Cloudbuilt 15 years ago, but Crotchety Old Ryan just can’t handle these lumps.
The game opens with you playing as a hologram/ghost girl navigating through some sort of ruins. Things already get troubled here: the girl moves about twice as fast as my reflexes can handle. I thought that maybe I could get used to it, and by the end of this tutorial level, I did feel like I mostly had a handle on it. Enough that I could move forward confidently, anyway.
Then the first level happened, and things got way more complicated and way faster. You get put into a real body, and that body has jet boosters and guns, in addition to the jumping and wall-running that you’re taught in the tutorial. The jet boosters are basically my death knell, as they move the game from very fast to Way Past Sonic fast. You need to use the boost very often, and I found myself blasting off into space over and over and over again. And this is on the first stage. With a difficulty rating of One. When I beat the stage, I went ahead and tried the hardest stage that unlocked (rated Three), and lost all my lives before I could even make it past the “intro” part of the stage.
So that’s a bummer. I kept at it, tenacious as ever, and cleared a few more stages. But I had to put it down after less than an hour because the mouse/keyboard control configuration was cramping my left hand like crazy.
But I think I’ve gotten a little ahead of myself here. What even is Cloudbuilt? It’s a sci-fi parkour game, like Mirror’s Edge (or at least that’s what I think Mirror’s Edge is), except with a third-person viewpoint. Oh, and you don’t run around a realistically-modelled city. Every stage is a series of floating platforms, towers, and traps, which is why I made Super Mario Galaxy comparison. But in thinking about it a little longer, it’s maybe closer to the challenge stages in Super Mario Sunshine, what with the brutal difficulty and all.
The basis of the game is to get from one end of the collection of free-floating bits to the opposite end. The really cool thing about it is that you can go any way you like. There may be an intended path though these stages, but you’re free to clamber your way around the debris in any fashion you like. As long as you can find a place to stop and recharge your booster energy once in a while, that is. It’s a very interesting way to open up the game, and I definitely love it in theory.
The trouble comes in actually executing all the fancy stunts required to keep your feet on the ground. As I find it difficult to land high-speed jumps and swing the camera around to aim wall-jumps properly, my technique for getting to the end is to look for the closest flat surface and hop from safe zone to safe zone. There isn’t always a safe alternative, though. Sometimes you have to make a choice between a difficult series of jumps or an easier platforming section that is littered with mines. And really, the fact that there are mines and turrets and electrical barriers to deal with really seems to me like a step too far. The platforming is tricky enough and could easily support the length of the game without having to throw in actively hostile elements.
The key to this game, I believe, is simply to keep practicing. Practice, practice, practice, until I no longer have to think about what buttons need to be pressed. Until boosting up a wall, double-jumping across a chasm, and then wall-running through a field of mines is second nature. The question is, do I really have enough patience for that? Do I have enough time, even? Cloudbuilt is the type of game you learn, get really good at, and then continue to play forever, ever improving your stage clear times. That’s not really what I’m looking for right now, but I think I’ll really enjoy watching speedruns on YouTube.
So yeah, after an hour of play, in the easiest stages of the game, I already feel defeated. That’s not a good sign. But I do hope to power through to the end, because I’m kind of curious to see if there are any really cool twists, or if they just move the platforms farther and farther apart in the later levels. This is not the kind of game where I would even consider trying for all the bonus things or achievements. At this point, earing a single B rank seems out of reach, nevermind S-ranking every stage.