The Indie Informer

After stumbling over The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time at Summer Game Fest and now this, I’m convinced the next hot trend in indie games is ridiculously long titles, and I’m here for it. Though, it’s not just the title I’m here for. Reggie, His Cousin, Two Scientists and Most Likely the End of the World is a wild game to play, as it includes things like mechanics for reversing gravity at will, environments succumbing violently to temporal entropy, and humor steering into Turnip Boy territory.

Reggie, as I’m going to call it from now on for simplicity’s sake, isn’t due out until sometime next year. So, my hands-on is, understandably, an early build of the game. Nonetheless, it gets the point across. It’s fun.

How the chaotic time-jumping and irreverent cameos from honored scientific minds weave into the story is a mystery for another time. Though I get glimpses of the story, this demo is focused on giving me a sense of its unique controls.

While many games have played around with gravitational platforming trickery, none have felt quite like Reggie. Swapping my gravitational pull from the ground to the sky is a skill I can call on at any moment. It almost defeats the purpose of including a jump. I can yeet myself over giant enemies with ease, collect otherwise impossible-to-reach currency, and navigate increasingly complex levels with a smoothness so crisp it could quench your thirst.

That doesn’t make the game easy, though. As the brother and sister duo at Degoma explain in a quick meeting with me, the mechanic feels world-breaking, but it’s not OP. And it allows for even more devious obstacles. The first restriction being I can’t swap infinitely. After a handful of gravity direction changes, I have to touch grass or an enemy to “recharge” the ability. I recognize the power is running low because my forward momentum begins to slow, and the swirls around me start to change color and become less vibrant.

The second big hurdle with using this game-changer is remembering that it doesn’t grant me the ability to fly — just the power to alter gravity. That means if I don’t have a handy treetop or building ledge to “land” on while I’m upside down, I’m flying into outer space to my death.

Death, by the way, is hilarious. Whether hurdling to my doom in the stars or plummeting past a ledge, the game offers up a small, dramatically animated, cutscene after every demise to take the sting out of it. Seriously, I might have died on purpose a few times just to see the different scenes play out. I don’t know how that will work in the game’s proposed local co-op mode (which I did not get to try out), but I’m interested to see it when I can.

Again, it’s early, and I don’t know how Reggie, His Cousin, Two Scientists and Most Likely the End of the World will stitch its narrative, humor, and overall adventure together. However, the mechanics are promising for this 2D time-misusing adventure.