Shiny Review

Save all the Robots!
By Taylor Wolfe
Reviewed on Xbox One
Released on October 10th, 2017 on Xbox One
Developer: Garage 227 Studios Publisher: IC Company

Shiny is a 2D Platformer set on a planet named Aurora that’s heading towards its doom, where all the humans have fled leaving their robot workers behind. You take control of a robot named Kramer 227 to try and save all of your robot friends before Aurora crashes into its sun. Shiny is the first game developed by Garage 227 Studios and published by 1C Company. Garage 227 Studios is an Independent Brazilian game developer founded in 2014 by a small group of nine. Originally released on August 31st, 2016 on Steam it has finally made its way to Xbox One. Was it worth the wait? 

Shiny is a pretty basic platformer with the only variety in gameplay coming from the three upgrades that you get throughout the game. For the first few levels, you just jump across platforms while trying to collect the various collectibles. The only obstacles in your path are falling to your death, running out of energy, falling rocks, and trying not to get squished by the piston styled traps. The first upgrade you get is the ability to shield yourself from getting hit by rocks and it’s obtained after about five levels. Then after about five more levels, you will make your way to the next power-up which will allow you to vent the heat you get when stepping on the fire by rapidly spamming the triggers. The final power up you get is a jetpack. The levels with the jetpack were the most fun for me because you are able to fly around and go wherever you feel like going. I couldn’t stand the fire levels, they were just so frustrating. Using any of the power-ups will use some of your energy and if you run out of energy you will die, causing you to respawn. If you die during the levels it just respawns you at the checkpoint machines. You do need to watch the number on the respawn station because if it hits zero you have to restart the level over again. There is also a special power bar that you charge by reviving robots. When you use the special power you become invulnerable and you have unlimited power.

The music and sound effects in Shiny are fine; however, during the last few levels, the music sounded off to me. I honestly thought that my headset was messing up when I first loaded into the level and I had to eventually turn off the music because I couldn’t stand hearing it any longer.
 
I beat Shiny in just over three hours, but I spent a while looking for every collectible in all the levels so realistically it will probably take a little over two hours to beat if you're decent at platformers. Throughout the levels, in Shiny you can collect batteries and revive robots. Collecting the batteries seems to give you a bit of energy back. You will also get an achievement for collect twenty, fifty, seventy and one hundred percent of all the batteries. When you revive the robots you will lose a good chunk of energy, but you will receive half of your special move bar for each robot. Reviving robots doesn’t really do anything for you other that makes you feel better and more importantly giving you achievements. There are four named robots that you can save in the first few levels which you get achievements for and you unlock achievements for reviving robots at the same ratio of the batteries. Currently, you cannot collect all of the batteries or revive all the robots. There are three batteries missing on level six and there are two missing robots on level twenty. The devs are aware of the problem and have submitted a patch to Microsoft and are awaiting certification. 

There are a few problems I had with the game. One of the biggest is that there are incredibly long loading screens. When I say incredibly long, I mean between thirty seconds and a minute of pure loading screens. That may not seem like much, but in a game of this nature, it is quite a break. Another problem I had was that some of the platforms feel like they are covered in ice and I slid off platforms a lot. It gets really frustrating when you nail a jump and then the character just slides off without you moving. The conveyor belts were a big pain as well. If there’s a piston along the way on a conveyor belt and you get pushed into the piston a lot of time it will just kill you. I also had a few frame drops while playing, but it wasn’t anything really serious. The last problem I had was the frame rate on the cutscenes that play throughout the game. The cutscenes were super choppy and I actually had to look away during the beginning cutscene because it was starting to make me sick, it triggered my motion sickness easily.
 
Overall Shiny wasn’t a bad game, but it was really short and buggy. If you like platformers you will most likely enjoy Shiny to some extent; however, I don’t know if it’s worth the $9.99 for around three to four hours of gameplay. That is for you to decide! If you are into achievements and want a quick and easy game then Shiny may be for you after they patch the broken achievements. While I didn’t hate my time with Shiny, I would’ve rather spent it elsewhere.
 
*Note: A copy of the game was provided for the purpose of the review

​Final Score: 4/10 

+Fun Levels

-Game Length
-Spotty Gameplay
-Long Load Times