Booting up Lovely Planet for the first time, I was greeted with beautiful Katamari Damacy style graphics, lots of floating platforms and odd shaped colorful enemies that can kill you in a single shot, forcing you to restart from scratch. I was immediately intrigued. Come read our Lovely Planet review to see if the game is for you!

 

After the first level, I discovered I was playing a speedrunning game, and I’m probably the planet’s worst speedrunner! Lovely Planet is a FPS speedrunner and, unlike what you’d expect, this is particularly release is stress-free! The colorful palette of pastel colors is very easy to the eye, and the gameplay is perfect.

You traverse the levels holding a weapon that looks like a stick that fires purple square bullets at anything you point it at. The purple square bullets are not like normal bullets that travel at the speed of light, and are actually ultra slow. This helps you find the correct trajectory as there is no aiming function, so use these slow bullets as a guide. Another good thing is the ammo supply is unlimited, so there is no danger of running out.

The enemies are interesting. Some shoot at you while stationary and others don’t do a single thing, just sitting there, waiting for you to put an end to their existence. If you are hit by an enemy, death is instantaneous. Fall off a platform or miss a jump and it’s bye bye. But it’s not game over! You’ll just have to restart the level from scratch. There are many many ways to die – despite the game’s cutesy appeal, it is not quite as easy as you may think!

The levels never change, so it is easy to learn your way around and learn from your mistakes. Enemies don’t change positions either so you are free to try a new tactic with every run until you find what works best. The levels can be completed extremely fast if you are good at speedrunning.

The controls are very simple. R1 is used for shooting, X restarts the level and Square is used for jumping. The goal of the game is to kill all enemies on a level and reach the purple pole to finish your run. After this you’ll be shown how fast you completed a level and be awarded stars – and yes, the faster you are, the more stars you’ll get!

The game has roughly around a hundred levels, and the minimalistic level design and focus on speedrunning will definitely appeal to many of you. Memorizing the perfect strategy for a faster run is very addictive, and if it made a believer out of me (remember, I suck at speedrunning!) then it will surely make a believer out of you!

[review
pros=”Gorgeous level design.
Simple controls.
Easy to memorize everything.” cons=”Music is awful.” score=81]

Disclaimer
This review is based on a PS4 copy of Lovely Planet provided by tinyBuild.