Recently I was lucky enough to be invited to play Waking Amy, a 2.5D platformer from Martian Media Inc, the game was pitched to me as a similar to early Playstation platform games, in particular Crash Bandicoot, so – whilst not my favourite genre of game – I do have happy memories of playing those games.

The game’s premise follows Amy, a girl who was in a coma following a car crash and her mother’s attempt to try and wake up from it. Think like that episode of Futurama where Leela’s in a coma, similar to that. Anyway, this tubby looking doctor has this machine that allows her mother to go into Amy’s dreams and nightmares, and most of what you see is Amy (whether her or controlled by her mother, I’m not sure) in various dream-like abilities, trying to get through as many levels as possible. Although an early alpha demo didn’t really disclose too much of the story, but surely later that’ll be added.

Each level is taken from a memory from Amy’s past. For example the first level has the memory of Amy in the Aquarium, so for the first level you play as “Jelly” Amy. Jelly Amy from what I saw can hit and trip enemies with her tentacles, as well as climb walls (which was something you may be able to do normally, not sure!).

So how does it play? Well first of all the game moves at a fair pace, even in the alpha build. Martian Media must be commended for the speed, particularly as I wasn’t confident of it even running on my computer (which is ancient). The game moves at a fair pace, in fact one some parts of the game (Jelly Amy running along a boardwalk towards the camera) you can see that the designers were influenced by some of the Dreamcast Sonic Games.

In the alpha build you can see what direction the game is taking. There’s a little bit of combat, and a few puzzle elements in there, but it is primarily a platformer. The one game it reminded me of in particular was Pandemonium, particularly with the look.

One element from the game that I loved though was the music, it is very well composed as well. Thankfully you can get the Original Sound Track for rewards for over $10.

Yes – you see Waking Amy is a kickstarter project for a PC/Linux/Mac game.  At the time of writing there is 3 weeks to go with 30% of the game funded. I do hope it gets funded as speaking to the guys they are passionate about this game, and there is no way this game is getting made without funding. With the final game available for a $5 donation, if you are a fan of this genre, you’d be daft to not fund this.

In short, if you are a fan of Pandemonium, Sonic Adventure, or Crash Bandicoot, you’d find few better ways to spend your cash on this game. If you’re a keen PC gamer as well I think you’ll do worse than investing in this kickstarter. The game was an Alpha Build but was quite a solid build, and showed a fair bit of promise.

You can check out Waking Amy here.

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