High Risers
by: Kumobius
Arcade
High Risers by Kumobius is a fun jumper with pixel art that looks like an arcade from the 80’s. Run around, bounce on walls to change direction and get as high as you can. If you fall down, don’t worry, that’s why you carry a golden parachute.
Review
Gameplay 68%
High Risers is an infinite jumper where a little pixeled character runs automatically and you just tap on the screen to jump to the floor above. When you bump into a wall, you’ll bounce and start running in the opposite direction, but not all floors have walls, so be careful.
You can try and jump many floors above and stop on a floor until you bounce and then repeat, but after a while you’ll get to parts of the building still in construction, and instead of walls, there will be construction workers in susprended platforms you can bump into to turn around, and when you do, they’ll go up a few floors, so you must stay jump onto that floor the next time you change direction, and keep going until you reach already build parts of the sky scrapper.
As you advance, you’ll find parts that work more like a traditional sidescroller platformer, where you’ll go left or right for quite some distance until you get into another building. Along the way you can collect golden coins in the levels that you can use to buy new characters and locations.
You lose when you fall from the building, in which case the character will open a parachute to land safely. In the end screen you can exchange your coins to get a random prize, which can be a new player or place to play in. YOu can choose to watch a video ad to get a few coins, or start over.
Graphics 77%
High Risers feature simple pixel art graphics. The characters only have a running and jumping animation, which doesn’t look very smooth, like it should’ve have some more animation frames.
The backgrounds are pretty detailed, but a little blocky. They look like out of mid-80’s arcade platformers, with many elements making up the whole stage, and while the sky can sometimes be just a blue-ish layer a little brighter on the bottom than on top, as you go up you can see clouds, get to a part where it’s rainning, and if you reach the stratosphere you’ll see the dark space with stars here and there.
It’s worth mentioning that there are lot’s of characters, and while they don’t really differentiate much from each other animation wise, they have fun desings, there’s even an orange and white kitten you can play with.
Production Quality 72%
High Risers is a fun platformer and unlike most similar games of the genre that only have one endless location, here you have 10 places to visit with the 30 characters you have to unlock.
While it is an entertaining game, it lacks power ups or other items to spice things up a little bit and add some variety. Things like a booster that makes you jump 10 floors or maybe an helicopter that gets you back on the building when you fall down would’ve been cool. You can see things like that in Jumping Larva.
Value for your Money 86%
High Risers is free on Google Play and the Apple App Store. While you can unlock all content just by playing, it’ll take quite some time, and each new location is worth about a dollar, which seems to be kind of expensive. Still, you can start over again and again, no need to wait for lives or something, and you’ll only see advertising when you choose to.Launch Video
Summary
High Risers is a simple and fun jumper that can become quite challenging and really test your reflexes to the max once you the to the 100th floor. Its mid-80’s Arcade feeling it’s pretty well done, and while the graphics may seem a little blocky even by pixel art standards, there are lots of elements to see and the backgrounds look detailed and are nice to look at. If you enjoy platformers where you only tap on the screen, it’s worth a download. Pros- Simple gameplay that becomes quite challenging
- Lots of locations and characters
- The blocky graphics may not be of the taste of some users
- Power Ups and Boosters to get and use would’ve been nice
