A ball with legs that sprints through screamingly colorful 2D worlds and shoots its babies at bosses. That sounds quite strange, but in the test, Spinch turns out to be an inspired, extremely worth seeing par force ride on the border between Super Mario and Super Meat Boy.
Before we get down to the nitty-gritty of gameplay mechanics and level design, we need to talk about the look. Of course, the artwork is cool (e.g. this motif from the American Switch store), but that's of little use if the game looks like gray grit. But far from it: The on-screen action is also as creative as it is colorful - a psychedelic pixelated mix of Mayan monsters, space worms, Lego bricks, and billowing rainbows.
Your ball character Spinch has to dash nimbly in all directions and dodge to get to the level exit unharmed. Nice of the makers to give him a manageable but powerful repertoire of moves: The character can jump up walls an unlimited number of times (without having to hop back and forth between two walls like Mario) or slide down them very slowly. Staying vertical for a long time in this way makes it possible to avoid adversity on the ground. In addition, Spinch can dash out of the race in the running direction - perfect for dashing under crashing blocks. This is joined by a kind of "turtle shell" that the game uses regularly.
The level design relies on a mixture of speed passages and small brainteasers: Sometimes it's a matter of pure timing when heavy blocks crash down or you flee from greedy mouths that want to eat their way vertically up a tree trunk and devour Spinch. Sometimes you have to land on small blocks with millimeter precision or use dash jumps to take advantage of gaps in enemy swarms to get from left to right unharmed. Elsewhere, Spinch must flip switches to redirect onrushing tree trunks or glide sluggishly through tubes filled with pink gloop. You should always keep an eye out for the three Spinch Babies per level, which you also "keep" when Spinch crashes into nirvana after collecting them and restarts at the last checkpoint. At the end of each world, an insanely colorful boss fight awaits, in which the little rascals serve as ammunition.
In terms of difficulty, Spinch is demanding and can give you a few gray hairs in the second half of the game. Especially since super fast backtracking of the camera through the level after each death shows how much distance you have to cover again from the last checkpoint - nasty! Nevertheless, the title remains mostly fair and the clean, if not perfect, controls fit the successful overall picture.
Conclusion
Cool visuals, cool game! Spinch doesn't turn the platformer genre upside down, nor does the title bring enough of its ideas to the table. But it works wonderfully as a short color kick in between The blocky visuals with their weird creatures and pulsating rainbows hit my nerve just as much as the entertaining mix of high speed, small switch inserts, and precise jumps; the occasionally interspersed vertical passages are also good for me. If the controls were even more precise and the boss fights were more sophisticated beyond the great idea of "babies as ammunition", I would recommend the game to every genre fan. As it is, it remains a good, likable, challenging indie-hopper for the little hops-hunger in between.
