Flipping Is Hard : one rage clever, cruel and surprisingly endearing game

The heart of the game rests on a unique mechanics, and above all very well found.

Flippy doesn't work. It rotates, takes momentum and jumps. This seems limited at the beginning, but all the interest comes from this constraint. The more you play, the more you understand how to measure angles, manage inertia and transform a seemingly clumsy shift into a real controlled movement.

The progression is immediately legible: one learns, falls, repeats, and ends up succeeding a passage that seemed impossible a few minutes earlier.

The game also knows how to renew itself thanks to its ten zones, its various obstacles and its ideas of level design. The online co-op adds in addition a much more chaotic and fun dimension.

On the other hand, we have to accept the philosophy of the genre. An error can be expensive, and some players will find the punishment a little too severe in solo.

Flipping Is Hard largely offsets its modest means by a strong artistic direction.

The Trashlands, this world built from forgotten objects of years 90 and 2000, gives the game a very nice visual identity. The set is colorful, readable and expressive enough to keep the different areas easily.

Flippy himself is an excellent game character. His design works immediately, and the contrast between his almost cute appearance and the brutality of what he goes through helps a lot to give charm to the whole.

It's not a technical slap, of course, but the universe has enough personality to compensate very widely.

The sound work supports the experience.

The noises of surfaces, rebounds and falls play a great part in the physical sensation of gameplay, which is essential in a game that is also focused on precision.

The sound ambience accompanies the strange and a little melancholy side of this absurd ascension, while the narrator adds a real presence to the ensemble. His voice brings rhythm, humor and a little soul supplement to a progression that could otherwise become too mechanical.

It's not necessarily the most striking soundtrack of the year, but it's clearly doing the job.

It's probably one of the good surprises of the game.

Flipping Is Hard Instead, he tries to add a real context to Flippy's ascension and plays on a rather special mix of humour, absurdity and tenderness.

The fact of having to go back to Jeff, the calls received, the little characters crossed and the narration give the game a warmer identity than what is expected of a simple rage game.

This does not turn adventure into a great story, but it is enough to give it more relief than the average of the genre.

The content is stronger than it appears at first glance.

Between the ten zones, the co-op mode, the accompanying challenges, the customisations, the mini-games, the different modes of difficulty and the elements designed for speedrun, Flipping Is Hard offers more than just one course to finish once.

Chill mode with checkpoints is also a very good idea, as it opens the experience to a wider audience without completely distorting the concept.

The main brake remains linked to the very nature of the game: if you don't adhere to the principle of starting again after big falls, you risk getting out quickly. But for the target audience, the content is coherent and well calibrated.