|| Early Access Preview || Cloak and Dasher (PC)

 Developed By : Spirit Stone Studio                       Published By : Spirit Stone Studio
Category : Action, Indie, Precision-Platformer
Release : February 24, 2020 (Early Access)

A few years ago, pre-COVID, I used to make it a point to attend a small gaming convention in my home state called the RetroWorld Expo. My family and I went a few years in a row and enjoyed it every time. It was definitely an event that was focused more on sellers and vendors, so there weren't as many dev's there showcasing games they were working on. However, I did get to meet a few over the years, but one that always held a permanent spot in my mind was Cloak and Dasher from Spirit Stone Studio.

Platforming games have always been a personal favorite of mine, and as far as sub-genres go within platforming, you'll generally find me in the areas of puzzle or precision games. Getting challenged and pushed to the brink of almost considering throwing a controller or keyboard is, for some reason, is the emotion I like to frequent the most when gaming. 

 

I felt very lucky getting a Beta-peek at Cloak and Dasher. I've put a decent amount of precision platformers under my belt, and while some have captured the perfect balance of skill and frustration, there are others that lean way too heavily on making a frustrating scenario (I'm looking at you SuperMeat Boy) and it sucks all the fun out of it. 

This game offers you both normal versions of levels as well as hard variants, and while I haven't played through all of the hard ones, I can say one thing for certain. Spirit Stone Studio has perfectly captured that balance that so many games miss. Using the simple abilities of running, jumping, and dashing, you need to navigate Cloak through a good amount of levels to the exit point. Sometimes there's keys to grab, sometimes there's enemies to defeat, but each further level you experience will test you more and more. 

Cloak and Dasher is still very early in the Beta phase, the version I got to check out is currently the 0.4.5 version, with a big update coming on June 1st (still won't be 1.0). But to be completely honest, this game is absolute amazing and perfect as it is, and it will only get better as it gets closer to 1.0. Since this title is so early in its Beta phase I don't want to slap a score or grade on it just yet, but what I will say is if you enjoy precision platformers, grab this game on Steam right now because you won't want to miss a single thing that happens with it.