Colossal Crisis Review – Graphics Aren’t Everything, So Does It Make Up for It With Good Control and Gameplay?

As I’ve shared in other posts, 2D side-scrolling platformers, especially those with a focus on action, are among my favorite types of games. One that intrigued me in my first Fridays Free Games! post was Colossal Crisis.

Controls

It doesn’t look like much, but I was hoping it would still be fun, even if the graphics are less than impressive. Sadly, once I started the game, I had a poor first impression. When I looked at the game on its Steam page, I didn’t see joystick support for it. To work around this, I used JoyToKey to play the game in a somewhat reasonable manner. Shockingly enough, the default control is A and D to move left and right, the space bar to jump, and left-click on the mouse to swing your sword. Most of these are OK, but the last one is a real irritation. Why would you put three out of four controls on the keyboard, and the last one on the mouse? That doesn’t make any sense!

Although, I should say that the game’s controls were generally good once I had my input method set up. There was one time that the controller stopped working, but once I put the mouse on the screen, JoyToKey started to work again

User Interface

Afterward, additional oddities reared their ugly heads. These being related to an unusual user interface. The game features a level select option, which feels out of place and unnecessary in a title that only has four levels (more on this later). When you start the game, you come to a screen with your character inside one of four blocks. Using the A and D keys, you move your protagonist to one of the boxes and then hit Enter to select it. You are then placed at the start of the level. Upon completing it, you aren’t taken to the next one automatically. Instead, you go back to the stage select screen again.

This is a bizarre design choice for such a short game, with only four levels to play. Or is it seven? The Steam sales page says there are seven levels, but I could never find the last three even though I beat the first four. I don’t know how to access them.

Graphics

Not that I care too much; the graphics look like they were drawn in MS Paint. Which is fine, but there isn’t much variation in the assets at all. As I was playing, I saw two regular enemies, one larger version of one of those, and a unique enemy at the end of stage four. That means for a four-stage game, there is a ton of repetition in enemy usage throughout. Also used regularly are foreground and background assets.

Each stage has the same grass, fences, little boxes, and other items. I never went to a castle, cave, swamp, or any other typical location for a fantasy-themed game. There is gradation in the background of some parts of the levels, but it doesn’t help much. Oh, and your character has a really funny walk cycle. It almost looks like he is trying to kick something as he walks.

Gameplay

I think the worst thing about the game is that there’s clear gameplay issues in regard to balance issues. Not that the game is hard. Far from it! Your character has four hit points as indicated by the hearts at the top left of the screen, but the game is extremely liberal in giving you additional hearts. Usually after every 2-3 platforms or enemies there would be a heart waiting for me to pick up to replenish my lifebar. This contributes to the game being rather boring with little challenge.

Music and Sound Effects

Concerning music and sound effects, there is almost nothing that interested me about them either. The game did have music at least once, but the track is short and doesn’t repeat; you are often playing to just sound effects. Of which there is the sound of your sword slashes and enemies exploding. Both of which are not very exciting. Sometimes I was wondered if the music was playing and I just couldn’t hear it. So while writing this review I watched a little of my gameplay footage, and the music is indeed turned off a lot of the time. I raised the volume of my recording to check.

Conclusion

As has been conveyed during this review, I did not have a good time playing Colossal Crisis. As sad as that is, the only thing that seemed to work pretty good for me was the control, but that was because I used JoyToKey to make it so I could play this game with a controller. The only aspect that I can see someone liking is the easy difficulty with the large number of life replenishing hearts that are given to the player. Otherwise, I think most people will be disappointed in this title.

I know that this is a harsh review, but I want to say that I still think the developer can make some quality titles in the future. And I hope he does. But I cannot give this game a positive review when I don’t think it warrants that kind of rating. I also hope that he doesn’t take this review personally and uses it as an opportunity to improve the game.

Title: Colossal Crisis
Genre: Side-scrolling Action Platformer
Year Released: 2025
Developer: Benjamin Scott
Played On: Steam
Price Paid: Free

Remember, we can have different opinions about the games we play. If you like something more (or less) than I do, both of our perspectives are valid.