FoxyLand Review – A Cute Platformer With Good Graphics and Music, But…

FoxyLand is a cute 2D Platformer that starts out really well. It has quality graphics, enjoyable music, and when I first played it, the control and gameplay seemed fine. However, as I got further into it, I grew to dislike it more and more.

Premise and Gameplay

The title begins with Foxy hanging out with his girlfriend and then a hawk comes and takes her away. While you’re chasing after her she drops gems that fall to the ground. You need to get the gems back and rescue your girlfriend!

Once you start the game you find out that those gems are littered throughout the level. They need to be collected to unlock a door at the end of the stage. Along with them, there’s also cherries scattered throughout each area. These are used to unlock extra lives between stages.

As is typical of 2D Platformers, you jump on enemies to defeat them. Along with a standard jump, you can also double jump at any time. This is easy to do and makes the game a bit more fun. Avoiding traps such as spikes and falling blocks is another common gameplay element. There’s also vines to climb, objects to help you jump higher, and switches to hit that unlock new areas. The latter is often necessary to get the last gem in a stage.

FoxyLand is made-up of about five main areas, each with six or so levels. Of course, each area has some sort of boss fight at the end. The game gives you a few continues before a game over, and a few lives for each. You have three hit points for your character. However, during boss battles hearts often appear at times, allowing to regain some of your life. There is no way to have more than three hit points for Foxy and there are no passwords in the game.

Graphics

Complementing this gameplay, FoxyLand has enjoyable graphics for your cute little guy. He runs around a lot and looks funny wherever he goes. My kids liked it when he went up and down ladders because they thought he looked funny. All the sprites look good and the animation is fine. Visually, the game gives a good first impression.

Music and Sound Effects

The music is the same. While there isn’t a lot of variety, I liked the game’s soundtrack, and most areas have a main song. There’s also a piece that plays after beating a boss or tallying up the cherries you acquired in a level. The sound effects are also effective and work well.

Level Design and Difficulty

Unfortunately, even though FoxyLand features a great foundation of gameplay, graphics and music, I grew to greatly despise this game. Essentially, this comes down to the level design. FoxyLand starts out pretty easy with the first area, but by the time I reached the boss, cracks began to appear.

He’s a skeleton who has an axe. When he tries to cut you with it, you need to jump in the air and hit him on the head. Meanwhile, you are also avoiding spikes and other enemies. Unfortunately, you can only hit him when he gets his axe stuck in the ground. This doesn’t happen all the time though, sometimes he could swing his ax at you 4-5 times before he gets stuck. If you try and hit him at other times then you’ll just hurt yourself. Sure, you can earn hearts in the middle of the battle, but it’s still frustrating. At least I was able to overcome it.

However, the worst thing about the game are the blocks that fall and crush you. Even though you have three hit points, when you are crushed by them, it means instant death. Because the falling blocks are a huge part of the game, I’d say that if you hate one-hit-deaths in your platformers, stay far away from FoxyLand.

The only way I was able to overcome it was by running toward a block that was already on the ground, pushing myself up against it, and then waiting for it to go back up to proceed further. If I tried to space Foxy between blocks while they were both in the air, he’d always be at least a little bit too far to the right or left and die once they came down again. These immediate deaths were especially irritating because spikes and regular enemies still hurt you normally.

While most stages are short, they don’t have checkpoints. And as I’ve shared before, the game has limited continues and no passwords.

Having said all this, let me mention that there was one point where my hatred of FoxyLand was solidified. I came to a stage that was obviously a callback to a classic platformer that I’ve reviewed on this blog already. Essentially, you need to jump over boulders that the boss is rolling down toward you. This isn’t a problem, except that the lights are out so you can only see about 10% of the screen. In order for the lights to come back on you have to light 14 lanterns while navigating ladders and making sure you don’t get hit by the boulders. Of course, if they do hit you, it is instant death! Just like the falling blocks.

It was here that I considered FoxyLand to be a piece of junk from a gameplay design standpoint.

I save scummed my way to the end of the game anyway, though. The ending sets itself up for a sequel, which at one point I had saved on my Steam Wishlist. After completing this one, I no longer have any desire to play the second game.

Summary

I think FoxyLand could have worked well if a few design changes were made,

• If your hit points were used consistently (no instant deaths),
• If there were ways to restore your health in more levels, and
• If there were passwords for every stage.

As it stands now, I see the game as a missed opportunity. The graphics and sounds are good, as are the controls. Unfortunately, the gameplay and level design are infuriating, which makes it not fun to play after a while.

For those who still want to play it, I recommend going through 2 or 3 of the areas, and once the game gets painful to play, just stop. It isn’t worth completing.

For the Indie Heroes Collection 1 cart, only PLOID (Review) came close to making me this angry from a design standpoint. My last two reviews on Indie Heroes Collection 1 include the Gameboy Runner game, Chain Break, and the Gameboy Color Adventure, Quest Arrest.

Concerning the Use of Sprite Assets

Although you can consider this review done with the previous section, I want to say one more thing about the game. After completing it I did further research on the title and discovered that it seems to use assets from SunnyLand by CelineZhou99 (GitHub). According to one place I read, these assets are in Creative Commons. I’ve seen them used in FoxyLand (Steam) and also Solo Fox (Steam). This apparent reuse of assets has had no impact on this review. Still, I wanted potential players to be aware of this.

Title: FoxyLand
Genre: 2D Platformer
Year Released: 2017 on Steam and 2020 on Sega Genesis
Developer: BUG-Studio
Available On: Itch.io, Sega Genesis (Link to demo), Steam, and Evercade through Indie Heroes Collection 1.
Price Paid: $1.14, or $16.00 for Indie Heroes Collection 1

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.