Screenshot: Aeon Drive
Speedrunning video games is an art form, and while not everyone wants to spend the time practicing the same game over and over under time pressure, it's easy to aspire to, and fun to watch.
Aeon Drive is a 2D pixel art platformer with a focus on speed and replayability that attempts to spark the competitive nature that lives in all of us. It's a charming indie title that makes you feel like a pro speedrunner even if you're not, which is a pretty unique achievement.
Screenshot: Aeon Drive
In Aeon Drive, you'll play as Jackelyne, a space ranger with a love of hot dogs who has crashed her ship into Neo Barcelona. With the help of her handy time manipulating robot assistant, she’s on a fast paced hunt for her ship's drive cores while also attempting to stop the destruction of Neo Barcelona in the process.
Jackelyne is equipped with a sword for attacks and a teleportation dagger for traversal. If she throws the dagger into a wall, she can teleport directly to that point on the wall, which is useful for quicker movement and for avoiding traps and enemies. There’s also slides, double jumps and wall jumps to aid in your movement across a sizable multi-path stage within a 30 second time limit.
Screenshot: Aeon Drive
Using these tools, you are expected to make it to the end of each level within the time limit. Along the way there are canisters of energy that can be used to extend your time, but they are few and far between. The level design itself is cleverly set up, with multiple pathways giving you the freedom to carve your own route. For me, this hearkened back to the Sonic the Hedgehog series and its multiple routes, with innate freedom built around speed and efficiency. And hey, the protagonists even share an affinity for hotdogs!
Aeon Drive also features built-in leaderboards that update with the times of your friends and overall globally so you can see how you stack up against others in the community. That’s not something I would normally engage with, but seeing my time only a few seconds behind a friend really pushes that competitive angle and encourages taking another shot at that last run. It’s addicting for sure.
Screenshot: Aeon Drive
The pixel art of Jackelyne is beautifully rendered and brings the full nostalgia of the Sega or Super Nintendo days, but the real downside to Aeon Drive is that its biomes are largely the same. They do vary from world to world but with stages reusing similar backgrounds and textures, they tend to feel a little uninspired. Still, the gameplay mechanics and level progression remain rock solid, while the synth wave soundtrack is very much a bop, and is definitely one that is getting heavy replay on my Spotify nowadays.
Aeon Drive does a lot with very little. It takes a simple speed running premise and bases an entire game around it, but damn, does it work. It’s addicting and perfect for short bursts of play that is easily accessible but fun to try and master.
Aeon Drive is available now for
PC via Steam and on
PlayStation,
Xbox and
Nintendo Switch.
A Steam key was provided to us for the purposes of this review.