Giving stoners sufficient entertainment isn’t too hard—just throw some lava lamp visuals on the screen and set appropriate mood music churning away in the background. It’s much more difficult for the temporarily impaired to actually play a game that requires precise timing and coordination, so PixelJunk Eden may not be best choice if you’re too fucked up to concentrate.
In the fine tradition of trippy games like Rez, Lumines, and fl0w, Eden has a soothing aesthetic, with gorgeous fine-line drawings of leaves, roots, and shoots that spring out of every point on the map. Your sticky little figure can leap between blades of grass like an aphid, or suspend himself from the environment on delicate strands of silk, like a spider.
Although you can’t actually fire out your grappling line, which would have drastically altered the gameplay, all you need to do is stand sturdily on any piece of terrain to plot your next jump. Later in the game, when solid ground becomes scarce and environmental traps like continually shifting gravity take over the simple mechanics, Eden becomes a truly devious challenge that should sober up any serious player.
With ten gardens total, there is enough variety in the locations to choose from, but ultimately you are urged to replay each garden five times to collect each “spectra” and unlock new areas. Having to replay the same sections so often was a bit irritating (something we didn’t know about when we played the game at E3), but it may not be such a problem for those suffering from short-term memory loss.
A comparison that comes to mind for me is Super Mario Bros— if after beating level 1-1, you had to replay 1-1 to play level 1-2, and then repeat 1-1 and 1-2 to play 1-3, and so on, then you would essentially be going down the same forced replayability road as Eden.
Sure, the Eden gardens are much more open than a typical platformer’s level. But in replaying a level five times, you’re forced to collect each spectra multiple times. This, plus the repetitive background tunes make certain sections of Pixeljunk Eden feel like a drag.
Still, the uniqueness of the game and surprising depth of its swing-and-release gameplay make this title worth checking out. I don’t know that it would rank as high as the classic stoner games Rez and Lumines, but it’s quite a bit more fun than fl0w. If you’re in that kind of mood for a game, and don’t mind grinding through the same levels multiple times, PixelJunk Eden is a very relaxing way to pass a few slow weekends.
What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.
Also, check out our interview with Dylan Cuthbert from Q Games.
