Considering the fact that you could call Nintendo the House that Mario built overall, the prevalence of platformers on their systems should never be a surprise. Of course, with so many options available out there, consumers are able to choose to be a lot more picky about which ones they pick up. On the cheaper end of the spectrum, within the indie space, making your choice can actually be a challenge, as there are many candidates that all have their own strengths. Aside from its budget-friendly price, Pogui offers up a simple and very approachable experience that honors older-school titles from yesteryear. While it may not match some of the classics in terms of its quality, there’s no question that its heart is in the right place and is still a good deal of fun as well.

You’ll play the game as a goofy-looking dog, who may have a pretty limited repertoire of moves, but thankfully for the most part they’re all you need. You’ll work your way through a series of worlds with pretty wildly different and creative themes, with each bringing their own unique elements into play, that manage to keep things feeling fresh. This is a title that’s all about avoiding traps and falls, so you won’t need to worry about taking anything out, just on making sure your jumps and occasional running jumps keep you out of trouble, with your duck move being at least a little novel and well-used periodically for variety.

Given the budget price, though there are some nitpicks here and there, I’d say they’re pretty minor. The first is simply that for old-school gamers this won’t likely be much of a challenge. The good news is that it isn’t mind-numbingly easy either though, so I can respect the decision to go with an approachable skill level requirement. I would say that your run is a little dodgy and isn’t as effortless to use as in a game like Mario, it just feels like it takes a little distance to ramp the speed up but then if you run too far a distance it gets a little trickier to control. You can adapt to it, if nothing else by being judicious in its use to avoid troubles, but that is one small rough patch in the controls, given your capabilities are so limited. Still, on the whole I had a good time with this, even if there isn’t much here that I haven’t played before in some way or another.