Thanks to Blowfish Studios for the review code

Title: Infinite: Beyond the Mind
System: Nintendo Switch
Price: $9.99
Release Date: 05/07/2020

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Story

In this action platformer, you take control of one of two sisters, who each have powerful fighting abilities and are thus being hunted down by the evil queen Bramann. These two are the last hope to save the planet!

Presentation

The game makes a great first visual impression, with the title screen sporting some super gorgeous pixel art that renders a stunning image, not unlike how some older Japanese PC games would do the same! Unfortunately, the game itself looks very bland, with super simplistic sprites and designs for the main characters and most grunts that look as if they might have come out of a newgrounds video, and not at all the best with the chibi look they were aiming for.

They still animate fine and aren’t choppy at all, but it definitely was surprising to see just how basic a lot of things in this game looked, especially compared to the amazing title screen, though several bosses do impress at times, and the cutscenes that pop up during the game, such as when obtaining an upgrade or near the ending, are as eyecatching as the intro, so at least you still have that to look forward to, and a lot of great work went into this game’s design regardless!

On the audial front, the game starts off on a weak note, with a pretty boring and repetitious stage 1 theme, before picking up with some surprisingly energetic tunes by Stage 2 and the boss fights, with the rest of the game gradually offering more and more solid tracks! It’s still not iPod worthy or anything, but the game does put in a good effort overall despite a weak first impression, leading to a score that has some gems in it.

Gameplay

Infinite is a side scrolling platformer where the main objective is to go through each level’s set of acts, before reaching the end boss and taking it out. The controls are extremely basic, with your typical jump/dodge/attack setup, so in no time at all you’ll be controlling one of the gals and setting out to stop evil.

With three difficulty modes to choose from, you pick one and then you’re off on your adventure, spanning sixteen different zones with multiple endings depending on met criteria. The difficulty options are your standard Easy, Normal and Hard, with hard preventing you from saving at all during the adventure, (making it a single sitting experience only) and then you’re off!

You’ll realize incredibly quickly that your basic slash attack is really simple to pull off, so much so that the game honestly feels like it takes a lot of inspiration from the Arcade Strider game, which is a very good thing, since it means combat is fast and fluid. Even better, you have a dash roll move, which can help you zip around when used in mid-air. Despite a cooldown, it’s not that long, meaning that levels in Infinite can be perfect for speedrunning once you memorize a layout. In fact, there’s even a timer for that very purpose!

Overall, the main single player game is pretty decent, going from act to act before reaching the boss level of the stage, rinse and repeat until you beat all sixteen stages. Every few levels though, (mainly when fighting one of the empire’s generals) you’ll get a nifty armor upgrade, which acts as a cool boost to your abilities. There’s even some levels that shake things up a bit, such as a side-scrolling shooter segment, though they aren’t really as fun as the main action-slashing gameplay.

With just that, Infinite would be a decent, yet unremarkable action platformer, but it has a really nifty co-op mode that I really wanted to try out to see if it would improve the core concept I liked: due to the pandemic though, I had to wait around a year to do so, but I’m happy to say the co-op mode here is fantastic. Both girls are playable, and it just feels super exciting slashing down enemies with a friend by your side. The game is seemingly locked to only the normal difficulty however, so sadly you can’t make it easier or harder. (though the game gets much easier with a friend covering for you) Still, this is absolutely where the game’s fast-paced action shines, since working in tandem with a friend makes these stages extremely fun to play, and add a bit of extra replay value if you’ve beaten it solo already.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Infinite was an OK game, one that’s really boring and uninteresting to play solo, but a lot more fun and engaging in co-op, with simple controls, pick up and play stage design, and interesting stage gimmicks that keep you interested. While it definitely took a long while for me to try the local co-op due to you know what, I am very glad I did, as Infinite makes for a surprisingly fun and enjoyable co-op adventure, even if the main game is still a basic platformer that’s not too engaging solo.

For $10, it’s a pretty tough asking point if you’re a solo player, but if you have a friend and want to kill an afternoon stopping an empire together, then I seriously recommend considering this fun platformer!

I give INFINITE: Beyond the Mind a 7 out of 10.