Thanks to Bitwave Games for the review code
Title: Gimmick! 2
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $24.99
Release Date: 09/06/2024
Story
In this sequel to the original Gimmick, you take control of Yumetaro, handed down to a new generation… As his owner’s daughter gets kidnapped! Now it’s up to him to go back into the illusionary world for another physics-based adventure.
Presentation
Gimmick 2 ditches the pixel art look of the original game, and doesn’t even attempt to do a modern take on it ala the Blaster Master Zero games. That was worrying at first, but luckily playing for a few minutes put those fears to rest, since Gimmick 2 just amplifies the cuteness levels thanks to a new cartoony visual style! It looks really darn good in motion, with a lot of the enemies being pretty cute and expressive, and lots of adorable background details. The only real oddity I have to point out is that Gimmick doesn’t really grab anything when he lifts items around, since they just stick to his face. Besides that, this game just looks gorgeous, and even has decent HDR support that I was able to use via docking my Steam Deck.
Still, even on the Deck LCD, this game is colorful, and more than keeps up the adorable feeling of the original game. And yes, for pixel art fans, there is a way to get a little bit of that here, but that’s a challenge for you to discover on your own, but needless to say, it’s a very rad inclusion.
The music is another aspect I worried about before getting my hands on Gimmick 2, as while the original game had a godly soundtrack by the one and only Masashi Kageyama, that person did not return for this sequel, nor did original creator Tomoi Sakai. With some of the leads of the past having no involvement or even prior knowledge of this game, that made me rather worried the gameplay and especially the soundtrack would suffer as a result.
Well, Bitwave’s answer on the Soundtrack was to hire David Wise, a famous European composer. He made some outright amazing tracks back in the 90s, but I never found his newer scores to be nearly as excellent as his mid 90s compositions, even if a few things like his Tengami score are incredibly captivating. Gimmick 2 has a mix of remixed older tracks, ambience, and some brand new tunes, and somehow, David Wise managed to nail all of that to a satisfying degree. It still doesn’t hold up to the perfection of the original score, but it goes for a different style that works and is consistently of great quality from start to finish, so if you like your old fashioned instruments, this soundtrack is for you.
Some songs in this OST like the icier parts of the third stage are easily toe to toe with the best of the first Gimmick, and that was a feat I didn’t think would ever be possible, so Wise gets major kudos from me on somehow pulling that off.
Gameplay
Gimmick 2 is another physics-based platformer where you control Yumetaro, with him using his power star to attack enemies and use as a platform once again! The original game had a simple control setup where the true genius came from the physics system and all the creative levels, and Gimmick 2 continues that trend, with just a jump and star as your only main options. You don’t even have an inventory to use anymore, so no random bombs or health potions to pick up from enemies this time around.
Luckily, Gimmick 2 knows it can’t just copy the original and try to make a new level pack out of old ideas, so it decided to expand the core concept of the physics based platforming and introduce loads of crazy, fun puzzles and challenges across several huge stages. These levels aren’t gonna be cleared in 3-5 minutes like in the first Gimmick, and if anything, the amount of time it’ll take you to fiddle around to clear the later stages might be enough to beat most of the original game; yeah, Gimmick 2 is way longer, but thankfully none of that extra length feels like padding! The controls are tight, the physics are still great, it brings back the goodness of Gimmick and then some.
Now instead of just rushing to a boss while hunting down an optional item to work towards the true ending, you have bigger stages where yes, a boss might be at the end, but not always, as the stages have quite a lot of surprises that shake things up! That aspect combined with plentiful checkpoints and warp spots to help you ease further along these tricky stages (or go back to spots you may have missed a collectible), helps Gimmick 2 feel a lot more approachable than the original game, while still maintaining a classic sense of difficulty. Gone are lives, for they are now infinite, but plenty of late-game segments are insanely tricky and will put your physics brain to the ultimate test.
In fact, if you want to get the true ending here, you’ll have to find all the optional stickers, and while there are a bunch of collectibles to find across the stages now, (mostly cute customization options) these stickers are the trickiest to find by far, and I could only find two of them in my pre-review time with the game. Once you do find your way toward one, you’ll usually have to clear an insanely difficult segment to obtain it, but upon clearing these you sure feel like a genius, just like how figuring out the optional items in the original game!
It also was quite a relief to see that even the tougher segments of Gimmick 2 never felt cheap to me. Even on the default difficulty setting, I was able to eventually get past rough spots by just trying over and over again and figuring it out on my own until I got past it, and that was brilliant. Even more brilliant was the feeling I had whenever I poked around with the Star and stumbled upon a new treasure chest or secret, since a lot of these hidden items are placed exactly where you’d hope they would be, with others even requiring a bit of extra work to get to. Add in the fact that yes, the game still lets you make your own shortcuts with the star if you’re crafty, and this truly was a game made with loads of love for the original title, despite the lack of shared staff; it became very apparent after finding several of these shortcuts, that these developers had to have watched the GDQ runs of the original religiously, and I just love that attention to detail in the physics system.
You can beat the main game with enough persistence, but getting 100% and especially all the stickers will be the true test of strength, and one I’m eager to keep at for a while longer. Still, while it may not have the wow factor or shock of the original game, Gimmick 2 is a damn fun time, and one that’s just a perfect pick up and play physics platformer. Oddly enough, I found the quick retry nature of this sequel to remind me a bit of games like Celeste, and mainly that comes down to how even when the game is absolutely difficult with no holding back, you won’t get frustrated trying again and again, and will eventually overcome the challenge, and for a tough game, that’s a brilliant mindset.
Conclusion
I gotta be honest, I had a huge worry when this game was initially revealed that this sequel wouldn’t live up to the original Gimmick, and most concerning, that it might not even focus on the physics system which made the first game so magical.
Thankfully, by some miracle, Gimmick 2 ended up being a damn good time. It still feels different enough from the original and traded the short action stages for bigger areas with more focus on learning the physics, but just like in the original game once you know how to get the star going you feel absolutely magical riding it through puzzles and enemy rooms with ease. Once you get the hang of things, the game is just a blast to play, and it truly feels like a bigger, better take on the original concept.
I also wasn’t sure how to deal with the shift in composer and if any new track would live up to Masashi Kageyama’s Legendary OST, but somehow David Wise pulled off a great set of remixes and awesome new original tunes, along with some solid ambience tracks. Add in a gorgeous visual presentation, precise controls, and wonderful puzzles and you have yourselves an excellent physics platformer that comes very very close to toppling that original game. I feel it was a very smart move for the Bitwave crew to avoid just making a level pack for that original game design and instead add in all these new mechanics, and in doing so, they managed to expand the concept brilliantly without feeling like it betrays the original.
The fact that there are still plenty of moments of high difficulty, yet done in a way that gets you to try and try again until you nail it is also very commendable, and for that alone, I think this is much easier to recommend to newcomers than the first game, especially with the Assist option giving you some extra health. Plus, the fact that the true ending is just as tough to get as it should be is all the more commendable. All in all, Gimmick 2 is a wonderful followup that shows Yumetaro’s game having a bright modern comeback akin to Blaster Master Zero and Ufouria before it.
I give Gimmick 2 an 8 out of 10.