As a gamer who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s I have a massive soft spot in my heart for side-scrolling pixel art platformers, and I’ve really loved their resurgence over the past decade or so during the big indie gaming boom. That said, there are A LOT of indie developers with a similar gaming upbringing to mine, and they’ve leaned SO heavily into the pixel art platformer genre that, despite loving the genre so much, my eyes just kind of glaze over at this point whenever I see a new one. I mean for every genuinely fantastic new entry there are at least a couple dozen entirely mediocre or even just straight up bad ones.
It would be very easy to look at Rayark’s MO: Astray on the surface and just gloss over it as yet another one of “those" pixel art platforming games. I did that exact same thing myself with the game’s PC launch a year ago and its Nintendo Switch launch just a couple of months ago. I mean I have an anxiety-inducing backlog of platformers as is, so despite hearing a ton of buzz and seeing glowing reviews left and right, I’ve had a hard time justifying picking up MO: Astray on either of those platforms. But with the game arriving on iOS and Android this week, it’s much easier to give the game a chance because in this context it’s literally my job, and so now after finally playing MO: Astray for myself I can safely say: Don’t be an idiot like me. Don’t sleep on this absolute masterpiece....