Spoiler Alert is the first game you’ll probably ever unbeat. While the game is in reverse, this review will not be.
I decided to get Spoiler Alert as a random purchase, though mainly so I had something to actually stream. I had an idea as to what it was about – you saw the ending and then went backwards to see how you got there. Playing it was definitely an experience though.
Have you ever thought about how to undo that jump you just made? About how to unkill that enemy you just killed? These are things you will have to think about. If you miss something that you “did”, you’ll cause a time paradox. I don’t even want to think about how many paradoxes I made… There was at least 95 of them when I went through in Speedrunner mode!
When you see the ending of the game, you’ll think you have seen it all. Well, I should say, the start of the game. Well… you know what I mean. The princess is saved, the big baddy protecting her is dead. However, perhaps it’s not all as it seems. You’ll just have to find this out when you get back to the start… or the end… or whatever you want to call it. This won’t take you too terrible long to do either – you’ll likely beat it in under an hour. I know I did. That’s unfortunately one of the downsides to the game, however there are modes such as Speedrunner mode, the Mariachi levels, and Custom levels to help fill this gap.
Speedrunner mode will pit you against the entire game once again. The catch, however, is that it’s all continuous. Each “level” is still its own checkpoint if you die, but there’s no level select. You’ll be against the clock to try and beat it as fast as you can. While my time of 22 minutes with 95 paradoxes can definitely be improved, I’d say it’s pretty good for a first try at it. I had gone into it thinking that unkilling the enemies was going to be my bane, but it turned out some of the precise jumps was really my bane. It’s really a nice mode for challenging yourself though, especially when you’re already someone who is a speedrunner!
The Mariachi levels are 10 levels that will have you going through a variety of reskinned enemies from the main 90 levels. The theme? Mariachi of course! These won’t last you very long of course, unless you decide to try for all the gold medals. Even then, however, you’ll likely be done with this mode really fast.
The Custom levels are all user-made levels. When I played the game it had been out for awhile now and it still felt like there really wasn’t much available to choose from. Perhaps it’s just from a lack of game popularity, but I really was hoping to be able to try out more. I did try out the two highest rated ones and one that was themed after Super Mario Bros, however.
Returning to the main story, another one of my main complaints is that as you got closer to the “start” the game got harder with longer levels. It almost feels like it should’ve started out with the hard and long levels and progressively made its way to the easier ones. Sure, it’d be harder for people to get into that way, but it’d make so much more sense. Unless, of course, it’s just a game that starts out hard and gets easier (and shorter) the further you get, were you to play it in a way you were beating it instead of unbeating it.
I also noticed some oddities with the mouse with each level I beat. No matter how hard I tried to get my mouse to the side, each time I beat a level it’d go back to a specific spot. This “specific spot”, at least for me, just happened to be where my Steam window was. The amount of times the little preview popped up before I just gave up and let it go away on its own… It makes no sense as to why it’d do this, at least to me, other than it trying to force the mouse into a specific spot on the window (I was in windowed mode of course). It was made even more annoying by the fact I was on controller for playing.
So is Spoiler Alert worth playing? I would say yes, and that I’d recommend it. Even as someone who isn’t that great at platformers (yet I seem to keep playing them), I enjoyed myself. I’ll likely be going back at some point to try and get all of the levels gold medaled and to try out more custom levels. Even though the game is short, especially with there only being 3 main worlds, there’s a lot of replay value in there for getting all the gold medals. Well, unless you’re some platforming game legend, but not all of us are.
Spoiler Alert Review Score
4.5/5
Spoiler Alert is available now on Steam.
