Recoil (2025)

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"Recoil" 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 is a particularly badly made platformer (an objective failure on Steam Direct) with a lame and unengaging sci-fi backstory about being stranged on an alien planet. The platforming part involves poorly done rocket jumping (hence the name "Recoil") that adds nothing to the tired and dead platformer format. 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. The game is really simple and unambitious in terms of implementation, more of a tech demo or one of those cases where an amateur developer spends $100 to publish something on Steam Direct to see if it's possible. Yes, obviously it's possible. A proof of concept, tech demo, or something that's less than a little blip on the radar isn't offerin…

Recoil is a difficult platformer that relies on using the recoil of your weapon to assist in your characters trajectory. Like most platformers, it is rewarding when you pull off a move successfully. This was covered as part of this week's episode of Free2Play Weekly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTFfoazBMVQ&t=1388

i played it threw and it was fun. the movement is janky but i dont mind because it reminds me of flash and cool math games. i like the charm in those types of games so it was cool to find something like that on steam.

This game has a weird mechanic where when midair you can't move left or right. This means that if you move right and jump, you can't stop or move left during your jump. I understand it was meant to be a creative mechanic, but it's just not fun

I had a lot of fun playing through this game and discovering all the secrets. The different endings are each interesting in their own unique way, while the lore papers that you discover paint a vivid picture of this alien world. The gameplay is challenging but rewarding, reminding me a lot other other difficult platformers like Celeste. Overall I would definitely recommend checking it out!