Life Goes On – Review (PC)

Life Goes On – Review (PC)

Life Goes On could be considered the Dark Souls of Puzzle Platformers…

Life Goes On is a side scrolling indie platformer brought to you by Infinite Monkeys Entertainment. It has you controlling an order of knights who are hunting the Holy Grail. Unlike the majority of puzzle games it actively encourages you to kill your characters to proceed through each individual level. Macabre as this may be, you can use your fallen comrades to get past a variety of obstacles.

The main conceit of the game allows the developer to really get creative with the way the levels are designed. Often you will find that by sacrificing yourself under a circular saw your corpse will press a button and allow your next knight to proceed through the puzzle, presumably to sacrifice himself for the Greater Good in the next area. The game takes this rather simple concept and steadily ratchets up the complexity, one of the later levels has you pushing a frozen soldier through a warren of pipes so that you can use him to press a button at the end of the maze.

Most of the levels are formulaic, the general method of how the player should solve them is pretty clear. While they are all reasonably simple and can probably be done in a few minutes, I did find myself getting stuck on several missions throughout the game. Most of the difficulty with these came from the general logistics of the puzzles rather than proper comprehension. That being said, all of the puzzles were entertaining, if not overly difficult.

The game’s controls are not in any way complex. Your character runs either left or right and has the ability to jump. The puzzles are mainly solved by the way that your characters interact with the various objects and terrain in the game. In fact it does seem at times that the game was designed with tablets and mobile gaming in mind. Especially because a lot of the levels are short and do not take full advantage of the PC platform.

In short, Life Goes On is very enjoyable, if a little easy, for a puzzle platformer. So long as you don’t have a complete aversion to video game violence it is worth picking up.

Pros:

  • Enjoyable, if slightly macabre take on puzzle platforming.
  • Great art style.
  • The various objectives encourage score attacking.

Cons:

  • The puzzles are not overly varied.
  • Most of the levels seem quite easy.
  • You cannot see your friends’ scores after each level. 
  • Doesn’t seem to take full advantage of the PC architecture.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
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