Brimstone

BRIMSTONE is a single-screen platformer,  which is the polite way of saying it is 1990 at heart and it would like you dead. Ten rooms, one screen each, nothing scrolling off for the game to hide behind. Everything that kills you was on the screen the whole time. You walked into it.

It is hard on purpose and fair on purpose, which are two different things, and most hard games only manage the first. The whole thing runs on a fixed 60Hz clock, so a jump that clears once clears every time. The game never catches a lucky frame, and neither do you. Every death is one you can explain in a single sentence. If you cannot, the room is at fault and not your thumbs. The rooms are not at fault.

Partway through you earn a jetpack, and then you learn that fuel is a number, and that the number goes down whether or not you had a plan for it. The last room floods with a red tide that rises out of the floor and will not wait for you, or care how close you were. The exit door is polite to a fault and steps away from a greedy grab, because even the door holds you to a standard.

One run, ten rooms, in order, on five shared lives, the way 1990 meant it. You take them with no level select and no checkpoint to fall back on. Lose the five and you are back at room one, to feel how far you have come. Reach the end and the run earns a grade, S down to C, plus a best time and the two medals per room you almost certainly left on the table. C means you finished. Finishing this is not nothing.

This is World 1, shipped as a slice to find out whether the feel is right before more of it exists. It costs nothing. Pay a couple of dollars only if it earned them, which you will know, because you will be able to say exactly why, in one sentence.

Move        Left / Right arrows, or A / D

Jump        Z or Space   (hold it for a higher jump)

Jetpack     Up arrow or W   (once a room decides to hand you one)

Retry       R   (instant, always there, and you will wear it out)

Mute        M

Start       Enter, Z, Space, or a click