ElecHead (2021)

A really lovely and focused puzzle platformer with an exquisite set of mechanics and plenty of secrets to uncover along the way.

I really appreciate the straightforward, pantomime presentation. That said, a handful of puzzle solutions were opaque enough to me that I eventually resorted to looking up walkthroughs, and my reaction was generally "I would not have figured that out in a million years."

Game #58/225

Elechead is a fun game that didn’t live up to its reputation for me. It seems like every review online from fan and critic alike has overwhelmingly positive praise for Elechead. It’s a safe game — simple puzzle platformer with retro graphics and music, clearly yet somehow vaguely inspired by Mega Man solid mechanics and well thought out puzzles. It’s very short, only an hour or two long if you’re quick to solve the puzzles, and you probably will be because they’re all fairly easy. It’s not that it wasn’t worth the $6 I spent on it. It’s definitely a decent Limbo-lite (if Limbo wasn’t lite enough as is) with some well strong yet easy puzzles, but the entire package just didn’t have enough meat on its bones to really impress me. It does have about 25 collectibles and a secret ending, many of which I didn’t (care to) find, but with only 6 short “worlds” in which mostly the same music, color pallettes, and stage designs are used (all very blue and blocky), it leans a little too comfortably into the minimalism schtick. You’ll find the head throwing and purposefully slow and floaty Elechead fun and unique to control, but he doesn’t gain any new powers, doesn’t face more than a small handful of new types of hazards or challenges, and doesn’t really seem to have any major mind bending obstacles. I’m thinking of N++, which has both difficult puzzles and a high skill requirement, or Cocoon (played recently), that challenges the player to think in ways that you’ve never seen in other games. I think that there’s a higher standard in place for puzzle platformers and there’s nothing remarkable about Elechead that Limbo didn’t already do 11 years earlier.

But yes, I am still charmed by the graphics and style.

A fun thing about a family Switch is your kids finding games of yours and just trying them out. My son picked up ElecHead out of the blue and has been really digging it.

It's cool to see my son, who was born a year before the Switch came out, can get into pixel art games.

Anyway, this game doesn't have a lot of discourse on this site, and it is a pretty great puzzle platformer. You should pick it up!

Elechead is a puzzle platformer with very tasteful pixel art and solid mechanics. I loved it for about the first half, but I have my mental limits with puzzles. I enjoy them to a certain point, but when every puzzles starts taking extreme out-of-the-box thinking, it just kills the pacing for me.

If you enjoy that type of gameplay, you would really like this. But I enjoyed it when it was a bit more platformer and a bit less abstract puzzler

I beat this game in under two hours, and I felt full. Some really clever puzzles with stellar art, secrets feel well hidden but not obtuse, just... Chef's kiss design.

Music is good but unremarkable. That's okay. Something for them to work on in Elec Head 2, a game I would happily pick up for ten buckarinos.

Minus a star because there are puzzles where you gotta be a little patient boy which wouldn't be a big deal except there is some backtracking which makes patience puzzles problematic.*

*To be read like MKBHD ending a video. Catch you on the next one!