I'll start by saying I love platformers, but I'll be honest: I'm not very good at them. When it comes to fast-paced precision platforming, I panic and accidentally hold down direction buttons which send me plummeting into fire pits or spikes and send me back to the beginning. It's a constant battle, but I find it to be half the fun. If I could perfectly breeze through any platformer, my drive to keep playing them no matter how frustrated I get would be completely eradicated. Fortunately, Gimmick! 2 is filled with opportunities for me to repeat myself over and over again to my heart's content, and my controller is nearly snapped in half.
If anything, my frustrations are an obvious ode to how successful platforming in Gimmick! 2 is. It's a hard game, there's no denying that. No amount of glittery stars or pastel rainbows could cover up the challenge of certain sequences of jumps I was expected to complete. But the satisfaction of getting through certain levels no matter how many attempts it took is something I haven't felt in a platformer since my first time playing Celeste. Each time I had to go through a challenging boss fight I felt like I was holding my breath, which only heightened the relief that washed over me when I finally did it and saw confetti pop up either side of the screen.
It's also incredibly hard to stay mad at a protagonist like Yumetaro, which helped during the moments where I was incredibly close to walking away from the game. This tiny green dinosaur-looking blob that takes you through the whole adventure immediately struck a chord with me. I never played the original Gimmick, so I can't say it comes from an affectionately nostalgic point of view, but there is something about the character design that glistens with familiarity. Paired with feeling like I needed to hand my controller over to an older sibling when I couldn't complete a level, there was a lot about Gimmick! 2 that ignited a childlike glee within me.
But Yumetaro's appearance isn't even the best part of the character, its ability to summon a powerful star which you use to take down enemies and trigger switches is easily my favourite part about the whole game. It doesn't feel particularly impressive when you initially learn that you can summon it, but the further you get in the game, the more important how you use it becomes. You can't just throw it and have it immediately land where you need it to go. Instead, you need to learn how to utilise physics to get it to help you. For example, a lot of the time you need to throw the star at platforms so it bounces off and perfectly lands on a switch, but that's never as easy as it sounds—which I'm now realising is a recurring theme within Gimmick.
I could've spent hours hurling this star around trying to trickshot it into the right spot, or desperately trying to jump on the back of it to speedrun my way through certain levels. Even though it's a really simple tool, it definitely adds an extra layer of fun to the game. The devs are blatant about getting you to use it, too: Each area I discovered after seeing how I can make the most of the star power had a reward tucked away like a new outfit for Yumetaro or a different colour scheme. Being rewarded for what I assumed to be cheesing my way through the game only kept me wanting to try it time and time again, essentially making a secondary game for me to play when I didn't want to stick to the traditional platforming.
But there's a lot within the platforming that keeps gameplay exciting too, whether it's a race against a giant snowball tumbling toward you or a tense run-in with a horde of enemies that requires a lot of jumping around before you can throw your star. Gimmick! 2 is a prime example of expecting the unexpected even in something as hypothetically simple as 2D platforming.
In particular, the races against something chasing you were the most exciting parts for me. I was gripping my controller with such strength that I was convinced it would break, and for no reason either. Gimmick doesn't punish you for messing up, it just takes you back to the last checkpoint, but for some reason I convinced myself that a lot was on the line and I couldn't mess it up.
For a game that appears so simple, there's so much about Gimmick! 2 that has kept me wanting to come back. I really expected myself to get frustrated at how challenging some of the platforming is, but the adorable world design and pure satisfaction I get from solving puzzles is more than enough to keep me coming back and wanting to try again.
