It seems so obvious now: the idea to design a Metroidvania where you hack and slash your way through the inside of a computer, undoing the near catastrophic damage to its systems wrought by an unshackled AI gone berserk. And yet, Recompile is refreshingly novel, a bona fide trailblazer among games that seem tentative by comparison.
Recompile is not an easy game. In fact, it is generally quite aimless for a significant part of the experience. Like any good Metroidvania, backtracking, sidetracking, and upside down-tracking are essential for proper progression. In the early hours of the game, this can seem frustratingly arbitrary – but what else would you expect? You're a program inhabiting the vast, intangible megalopolis of a computer's corrupted software. Why should you know what to do or where to go, as opposed to needing to reappropriate malware and chart a path through sprawling walls of disarming code?
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Speaking of which, although Recompile is remarkable for a variety of reasons, the game’s art is out of this world. It's one thing to establish a distinct, technophilic aesthetic that clearly articulates your presence as a program in a machine. It's another thing entirely to compartmentalise this world into various digitised but unnervingly natural biomes – there are airy blues and ethereal greens, thunderous yellows that shake the sky and a sweltering blaze of rich reds. Recompile's juxtaposition of the natural and artificial is probably its greatest artistic strength, particularly because of its later integration with the game's clever thematic core.
Here, it's worth drawing attention to what Recompile is actually about. Without spoiling too much, your presence in the computer is directly tied to a mysterious entity known as Janus, who serves as a sort of psychopompic guide as you repeatedly die and rise again, moving towards a slow salvation that can only be granted by escape. As you play through the game and read logs stored in the computer – which are unreliable due to certain processes that occurred within the AI's proprietary systems – you'll learn of an extraterrestrial colonisation project that supposedly went south. There is very little more I can speak to here without ruining the experience for you, but rest assured, Recompile is highly aware of the world we live in and is more than capable of critiquing it with class.
But that's just part of the bigger picture. Most of all, Recompile excels in moment-to-moment play. As a 3D platformer, it would be easy for Recompile to feel like a decent technological spin on a genre that's been done to death. Fortunately, Recompile's platforming is its most prominent asset. You jump, dash, bolt, hack, slash, and shoot your way across chasms, bridges, pillars – the movement is so varied and the environments so vast that I feel confident in saying that Recompile is already among the greatest platformers of the last decade. It is, admittedly, a little slow burning in this regard: as a Metroidvania, it obviously takes quite some time for you to unlock your full oeuvre of abilities. As your mobility becomes increasingly freeform, however, this previously intimidating computer framework becomes a playground for experimentation. There were several occasions where I was in legitimate shock that the game had allowed me to progress in unconventional ways that I am 100 percent certain were not the intended route forward. Like all good platformers, the level design is constructed to accommodate its mobility options, as opposed to demanding exact combinations in highly specific, self-contained instances. That's not to mention the puzzles, which revolve around rewiring circuits using logic gates. This might initially feel like a barrier to entry to some – it can admittedly be a little confusing at the beginning – but once you get the hang of it, this too begins to feel paradoxically organic to what is supposed to be an inherently artificial experience by design.
This all serves to accentuate the intentionally sensory nature of Recompile. Aesthetically, it is a spectacle. Every screen is tasteful and oozes purpose. The music is often soft and harmonious, but with a techy twinge capable of converting spaces into places – the world feels simultaneously overwhelming and extremely focused, mostly because it truly is both of those things because of the excellent integration of level design with art and score. In terms of integration, it's also worth noting that Recompile is one of those games that incorporates UI into actual play, radically improving UX and thematic coherence in one fell sweep. It is, at all times, so clever that I often found myself becoming annoyed at it.
I was annoyed at other things, too. Bosses are a pain – some can soak up absurd amounts of damage and one-shot you, demanding a lengthy run of perfect dodging and frantic, not-so-enjoyable shooting. Speaking of which, shooting is often irritating and unreliable. For such a tightly focused and stylishly designed game, a relatively narrow field of view and guns that occasionally feel as if they're squeezing beanbags out a waterlogged barrel just come across as a bit odd. There were a few platforming grievances and some questionable ability-gating making progression confusing near the start, but both of these issues are necessary teething pains with a game packing sharper fangs than the king of the pride. The only real, lasting issues were bosses and combat.
Which, yes, that might seem like a lot. Later in the game these too become non-issues, for what it's worth. But even when they are issues, they are only so momentarily. When you are fighting a boss, sure, you might feel like throwing a bit of a strop. But once it's over, whether you win or lose, the sheer wonder and stunning mystery of the world immediately resumes your attention. It rarely matters where you're going – it is the simple act of movement that makes Recompile special.
As I sit here now, wrapping up this review in an attempt to shut myself up before I accidentally spoil something I would rather people experience for themselves, I am wearing a stupid smile. I am, at this moment, thinking about how great it would be for Recompile to garner the attention, respect, and acclaim it deserves. This is no ordinary game – it is brilliant and ambitious and frustrating in the one and only way that frustration can be a positive term. Recompile is a rare gem in a cave of unremarkable cobblestone, a pearl among cracked shells and coarse sand. If you do one thing after reading this review, do both yourself and I a favour: download Recompile, and once you're done with it, tell your friends to download it, too.
Score: 4.5/5.
A review code was provided by the publisher.
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