THE INSIDER SAYS: “ OK, who turned some late era Cartoon Network show that never existed into a speedrun-friendly 3D platformer when we weren’t looking?!?! 1000 Deaths channels all the weirdness of old Adult Swim from the early 2000s, then drops it all into a blender with Psychonauts.”

1000 Deaths is a game about surreal platforming where you jump, dash, run, and walk along surfaces at any angle. Basically, you might as well just forget about the laws of gravity when you start up this platforming puzzler. In some senses, it could remind you of Super Mario Galaxy as you progress.

The devs bill this as a “gravity-bending 3D platformer where your choices matter.” How does that decision-mattering part work? You’re pushed to different hub areas based on what you do in the game. Little decisions like becoming a rockstar or going the corporate route as you follow the life (and death) of four different playable characters that’d seem equally at home in a game like the above-mentioned, Tim Schaeffer classic.

Getting this far into the write-up and not really digging into the trippy-as-hell visuals is almost criminal, but that goes to show how much fun you can have playing (and dying) your way through this early 3D-era inspired platformer. Visually, it summons memories of late night binges playing Crash Bandicoot and Gex….and maybe Bubsy. Don’t judge.

INSIDE LOOKS:

• Built with speedrunning in mind (or not…if you wanna chill).
•  …and, yes, the game does keep count of how many times you screw up and die. It literally has a running tally of your death count. That alone is sure to be fun to track on a stream. And for the record, we haven’t died 1000 times yet.Z^?aaaaaa

1000 Deaths is currently available on Steam for PC.