Collect Call (2024)

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Collect Call is one of literally thousands of retro 2D platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere... and I'm not kidding. Searching for "platformers" on the Steam store page yields over 17,000 results! Is this one of the best of those? Absolutely not. This godawful platformer offers nothing at all new or interesting, it's plodding and pointless, with just a couple of trite puzzles. The graphics look particularly bad even for pixelcrap, which at least gives us some hope this isn't an asset flip. Anyway, there's nothing of value here for gamers. Platforming is an old, mostly dead genre, and this lacklustre experience, while it doesn't have an upfront cost, isn't saving the genre... it's no surprise this failed to capture any attention from gamers in the era of immersive 3D gaming. This features really godawful pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks much worse than most other games because of that decision, and t…

I appear to be a shadow A silhouette that presses levers Does anyone really know Why we take on these endeavors? I call the phone booth to get some advice But to tell you the truth I would like to talk to them twice I go to the passcode There are only two digits, two choices? Even though it was never showed to me from the phone voices The computer tells me lore Of the past prior As I keep always finding more I would really like to jump higher There is a box of the ground A square on a plate A blue cube has been found! Used to open up the bridge gate There is a doppelganger duplicate copy He thinks he is cool matching my moves But actually is very sloppy He doesn’t improve my groves But now there is a formidable puzzle Four buttons, two shadows, and a box Twenty platforms is a lot to guzzle Much harder than a two digit lock After trying for half an hour My patience has turned sour

Collect Call is a puzzle platformer that requires cooperation from yourself, to yourself. It’s a time paradox game! As you play the game, the story is laid out over terminals and phone calls with yourself, or somebody who looks and sounds like you. The game play has you flipping switches and using your ability to warp back in time. It mainly operates as a reset, with the option to get around some obstacles, or bring back a heavy stone to trigger pressure pads. There is also some weirdly tricky platforming early on that I couldn’t get past. I figured I’d take a break and try out the level editor, but there is no documentation on how to make levels, well, almost none, but turns out you need a third party app to edit levels, but I couldn’t figure this out either. I went back to the game and realized you just have to make a super tricky jump across the gaps, pixel perfect style. The developer seems to enjoy making puzzles obtuse and difficult, an achievement even calls this out. I like the art and story of this game, but the abusive nature of it is rather tedious. Everything from the level editor, to the slow and complex puzzles seems designed to troll. You don’t solve puzzles so much …