Shiny (PS4)

The planet Aurora is on a crash course with its own sun, the human population scrambling to build and power an escape craft in time to avoid their absolute destruction. Thanks to the help of their automated robots though, humankind is able to leave the planet with time to spare, completely avoiding this awful fate. However, Shiny is not their story. After helping assist with the evacuation of the human populace, the robots responsible for much of the work were left behind, slowly powering down as their reserves run low and they’re left to hurtle into the sun along with Aurora. One robot doesn’t aim to go quietly into that good night though, Kramer 227 able to activate a back-up generator in time to start a second evacuation effort to help save all the robots as well.

Shiny is a side-scrolling platformer with an unfortunately slippery start, in that your jumps are your primary means of getting around but also not quite as precise as you’d like them to be. After a landing, Kramer will often keep moving a little bit, meaning sometimes you need to adjust for this slippery traction. When the platforms you’re jumping to are small enough, the micromanaging of your movement can lead to you throwing yourself off to your doom due to a jump that should have been rather mundane to complete. This is an unfortunate specter hanging over the whole experience since level traversal is the entire challenge of Shiny, there being no enemies or bosses to deal with and the objective is always to get past any level hazards to reach a level’s end. In general though the game is rather roughly constructed, Kramer sometimes jittering in place if you come to a stop on a slightly uneven piece of ground and the camera can lodge itself in walls and objects if you stand near them. Your right control stick can be used to peer around the immediate area to ensure not too many jumps are blind, the game liking to hide goodies in areas that might look like jumps to your doom unless you use this method. It does mean oftentimes you’ll do a jump then jerk the camera around to see if there’s something nearby, slowing down the pace of a game that only really gets fast-paced during a segment where the area collapses behind you, and with jumps already requiring some fiddling, having the need to look around in such a way feels like it makes an already pokey adventure start to drag.

It is a shame that the environment causes so many little problems with the technical side of things because a lot of attention was given into realizing them visually, some areas having interesting background storytelling like robots sweeping up the husks of many other machines left behind or simply providing lovely sights like some well done watery areas to break up the sometimes plain caves or common urban and factory backdrops. At other times though the visuals are just as much of a problem, either because they look strange with ladders that hang down over abysses or moments like shipping crates sometimes being solid or not based on the exact way they are positioned. Perhaps the only area where it feels outright damaging or not easy to read would be moments like a chunk of ground that existed between two platforms that Kramer would just fall right through if you tried to jump to it, the game having no real justification for why that patch wasn’t firm flooring.

What is meant to be Shiny’s unique gameplay angle is a power system Kramer 227 uses for most every action besides running. Serving both as a life bar and a resource, Kramer will become completely inoperable if it is entirely drained, but luckily simple actions like jumping have such a little drain on its fairly large reserves that it only would really have an impact on how you play if you were carelessly hopping around or took a heavy hit that all but killed you. Shiny does lean on instant deaths more than hazards that take a chunk out of your energy meter though, the player more likely to die to crushers or falling into a pit than something like the spinning fans that occupy quite a few of the game’s levels regardless of theme. Refilling your energy can be done with batteries that are scattered around the level and serve as an important collectible, the game’s ending changing based on how many batteries you managed to collect and if you found robot friends in the levels and reactivated them by giving them some of your energy.

Energy management isn’t too deep of a system though, primarily because of rather generous checkpoint placement. Checkpoints take the form of generators that will revive you or recharge you a set amount of times that varies between the game’s difficulty levels, but they are still fairly common no matter how you play and you can even go back and reactivate old ones if you’re worried you’ll get a game over by running out of charges at the current one. What’s more, the opening of the level is almost a soft checkpoint in itself that provides infinite revives so long as you don’t grab a true checkpoint, the player able to run through the level and collect batteries and restore their friends to life and keeping that progress if they die and return to the level start. Some levels are incredibly short and barely aim to challenge the player in any way so you can even make due without activating any checkpoints, the game actually featuring only 21 levels total with some of them almost more like a danger-free corridor than a true stage. A game over only asks you to repeat your current stage so the game seems to mostly be a rather quick and easy playthrough peppered with deaths caused mostly by bad controls, but those little mistakes are also softened in their impact because of the forgiving design so you can even throw yourself to your doom to go back and grab a battery you missed without too much worry.

Shiny does try to break away from pure platforming challenges eventually to varying levels of success. Kramer will eventually find a few powers you can use to overcome some specific dangers although the game does an odd thing and leaves a few important details out of its tutorial messages. After you get your first power and finish the level it is in, the next level seemingly starts you off without that power, but it has actually set you back to a default powerless state and you need to press a button to cycle through any powers you have. Similarly the game also fails to explain a segment where you ride on a moving platform and for the only time in the game pressing up or down has a purpose as you can apparently move this platform vertically to avoid barriers ahead. Your first power though is a decent one, Kramer able to form a shield of energy that can protect from falling rocks that can range from pesky dangers meant to make you time your movement properly to almost a waterfall of boulders that you’d die to without your shield. The fire protection power that comes next is an absolute bore though, fire not really much of a threat partly because the game always makes sure there’s a spot afterwards you can come to a stop and use your power to cool down. Cooling down is just a matter of mashing the shoulder buttons until the meter dissipates and the slow pace of the game means you can always take the time to drain all of your heat, the only time fire poses a danger really being when you think you have the cooling power set but the game switched it off when you died to something else. The time needed to drain the meter is rather long as well if you don’t mash the shoulder buttons quickly enough, adding another little annoyance to a mostly pointless addition. The late game arrival of the jetpack does add some much needed energy and variety to the last levels, exploration now more a factor as you can fly rather far and high with it in some stages without too much worry about your power use. Perhaps one reason the jetpack is more enjoyable than regular play is it practically removes the concerns of the bad jump physics since now flight can ensure you always land well or can save yourself if you slip.

A bit more of a special ability than a power is the appropriately named S.P.E.C.I.A.L. that gives you an additional incentive to save your robot friends beyond earning the better ending. A saved robot gives you half of the energy needed to activate this power, its main purpose being a surge of infinite energy that can help you charge through a dangerous space without any fear of what hits you or providing something like a period of jetpack flight where you can fly around without needing to find a generator to top yourself off. Again, most deaths are going to be instant so activating it is more likely to be the player deciding to remove the resource concerns for a bit or skip doing something like activating the protection shield in favor of just charging in while functionally invincible. Most levels have four robots to find so you can get this power more than you’ll probably use it, although one level does erroneously say it has four robots while you’re in the level when it only has two in another unfortunate case of the game not really holding together too well.

THE VERDICT: Shiny is a very short platforming adventure that has very few ideas on show while also not really knowing how to handle such concepts. The basics are already bad with fiddly jumping that leads to deaths not from interesting level design but control issues, the fire cooling mechanic just wastes time, and ideas like managing your energy rarely matter or are easily ignored since the oddly placed checkpoints are too generous. It’s not too painful to play because of the low difficulty and the fact some stages barely put up a fight at all and stages that utilize the jetpack at least get to avoid the troubles with basic movement and the constant need to peer around with the right stick, but Shiny is still a slow and dull adventure that is heavily lacking in the polish it needs to really shine.

And so, I give Shiny for PlayStation 4…

A BAD rating. While I had very little nice to say about it save in regards to things like the looks of some of its backgrounds, Shiny’s flaws are very present but not so dramatic that it can really puncture the overall easy and breezy play through. Tumbling off a platforming because Kramer kept drifting after you landed just leads to a small reset back to the last of the abundant generators, but it’s not like failing that jump was the result of flubbing a challenge so much as the game showing its rough nature. Few ideas seem really thought out, be it the basics like Kramer’s movement, unique mechanics like the energy usage idea that doesn’t really justify breaking away from a regular split between health bar and power meter, or special hazards and powers like the danger of fire mitigated by standing in place and mashing buttons for a bit before moving on. Shiny isn’t really terrible because all of its issues can be powered through without much trouble.The game lacks the teeth to really make failures sting so things instead turn out rather boring as you aren’t being provided much of anything interesting to do.

At least Kramer 227 won’t have too much trouble saving all of the other robots since the game struggles to make the task truly difficult, although players not willing to tolerate the many technical flaws in its design might lead to Kramer failing as they seek out games that are more interesting and able to deliver on the ideas they implement. Very few of the concepts at play feel like they had proper consideration or testing involved in their implementation, even later hazards like steam not always dealing damage reliably or checkpoints will be placed right beside a level exit or even immediately after the start of the level when you still have the freebie restart active and no incentive to grab one so close. There would probably need to be a lot more done to the game than simply fixing the jumping controls or making heat into a true hazard to make Shiny actually entertaining, the game slipping by worse scrutiny in its current state because of its simplicity but that same simplicity ensuring that even if it was functional it would still be lacking the spark needed to make it stand out.