Infestor Review

Infestor is a game that presents some potential in its concept, and in its early stages, it feels like it could be something special. But it just never really reaches that point.

Created by Ravenous Games, makers of League of Evil, Random Heroes, and Beatdown, this is their take on the puzzle platformer. Well, it’s certainly more cerebral than League of Evil ever was. Players control a green blob, the infestor, who needs to get around by latching on to the heads of humans and using their abilities to get through each of the game’s 60 levels. There’s a soldier with a gun to take out enemies (including the un-infestable robots), a box pusher, a prisoner type that can jump higher and farther, and the general, who can open up certain doors. Players can take one hit before losing their host, or they can pop high in the air off of them, which also serves as a useful way to get to high up ledges!

The game definitely works as something that requires some thought, but nothing too strenuous. Once a level is mentally figured out, then it’s just about the execution. The controls work solidly. Fans of the Ravenous Games pixel art style will see it back in full force here.

Sadly, the game just does not reach its full potential. There are few side goals, or any other reasons to explore outside the beaten path. Given the various abilities of each character, some form of exploration seems like a must for this game! Alas, it’s all white bread. Later levels don’t increase much in the way of difficulty or in the creativeness of the challenge presented. It feels like an opportunity wasted so far, to have a game that only puts up a mild resistance to me. Also, the game may be unbeatable right now: there’s a bug on level 57 with pushing one box on top of another that causes the infested box pusher to be killed, rendering the level seemingly unbeatable. iCloud support was not working for me at launch, but Ravenous Games claims it will be fixed soon.

I want to see more from this game: there are times when I feel like the game is about to break on through and be something exceptional, but it never quite does.