Clumzee: Vertical Platformer – Review

The game Clumzee opens with what seems to be an unrelated story about a fur ball who was clumsy and made fun of for his awkwardness, but had a dream for adventure so he set out to explore the unknown. There doesn’t seem to be any plot beyond the original movie.

You play as Clumzee who is constantly climbing the inside of a cavern, using sticky tentacles to grab onto rocks and outcroppings to lift him higher. Along the way you can  grab gold coins and fireflies which each have their own uses in the game menu shop. Fireflies will unlock new characters while coins will unlock new stages. If you have an abundance of coins, you can also exchange them, 500 coins to one Firefly.

Lurking along the bottom is a one eyed monster which will eat your character if they falter or fall too low. There are also all sorts of obstacles to maneuver around. The game ends when you hit an obstacle or become food for the hungry monster underneath. The game also happens to track what your record distance is.

The graphics and music are very basic and generic. It has the exact music you would expect: cheery and bouncy but not memorable. The characters seem to have personality and the enemies can be very cute. I wish there had been more plot since they started off with a story before you even saw the title screen.

The controls are simple to use. Sometimes  it was hard to get Clumzee to stick to a rock. There is supposed to be gyroscope functionality that allows you to swing Clumzee to swing right and left but it didn’t seem to work on my phone very well. Even with this small hiccup however the game was not frustrating to play and there were plenty of coins and fireflies to collect. I think the game would be easy enough for a child to play without much frustration.

Clumzee was a fun game to play for awhile, and I’m sure with the many stages to unlock and characters there would be variety to keep this casual platformer fun to play for a long time.