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It's been equal parts fascinating and off-putting to see cliffside climbing and similar parkour platforming spread across games like Uncharted, God of War, Horizon, and plenty of non-PlayStation Studios action-adventure-y things. Stellar Blade comes to mind. These weren't the first games to climb, obviously, but it feels like a specific approach and flow has been popularized in the past decade and change. I swear I recognize some of the same rocks.
This stuff works well enough, and it's decent environmental glue, but it can be so dreadfully passive, devoid of skill expression or risk or frankly any exciting movement. Just nudge the analog stick and watch the hero have what we can charitably describe as all the fun. In a pinch, hit the jump button. It's fine, but it's not fun, and for my money the more fun a game can pack in, the better. So – and here's me finally getting on with it – I was inordinately pleased with the minor climbing bits in the Steam Next Fest demo for 2.5D platformer Ari Buktu and the Anytime Elevator, which adds just a little bit of spice to rocky outcrops that makes all the difference.
Ari Buktu is billed as a single-player comedy adventure, and its style – hovering Rayman limbs loosely attached to simple characters navigating bright and chunky environments – makes a lot more sense when you realize the lead designer, Jeffrey Ashbrook, is a former ride engineer of Walt Disney Imagineering. I have to wonder if Ashbrook also looked at the climbing in Uncharted and thought that could probably be more fun. Because Ari Buktu gives climbing a bit of rhythm: move to the next handhold at just the right time and protagonist Ari will move a little faster. That's it! That's basically all I wanted; something active, a little more doing and a little less watching. Lo and behold, the climbing bits are more fun. Job done. I still think Ratchet & Clank does this stuff far better than anyone, but I'll take it.
The short demo is a solid little romp through ancient Egypt, one of 13 planned levels for what seems like a delightfully compact platformer rooted in time travel shenanigans. The 2.5D perspective gets a bit weird at times – holding left sometimes transitions into moving right – but the jump, double jump, and grappling hook feel pretty good, which puts us solidly in the black for a platformer. Tonally, it seems somewhere in the realm of the Lego games – kid-friendly, but fun for anyone – which works just fine for me. I'm down for new platformers on any day that ends in Y, and Ari Buktu's Disney ride DNA seems like a good pairing.
