Cliff Kingdom Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Play
Hand-drawn metroidvania inside a sea cliff where a depressed whale, a lonely badger, and a toupee-wearing slug called St
I met a whale that wants you to kill him. I met a badger looking for more friends. I fought a giant slug with armour on his head that looked like a toupee, named him Steven, and then kept spotting little Stevens all over the sewer.
Cliff Kingdom is from Most likely no reason for hysteria. You are Mothboy, last in a line of lightkeepers summoned because the lighthouse went dark. I spent about an hour in the playtest without a clear sense of what I was supposed to be doing, cleared most of the map anyway, and still landed on Play.
Cliff Kingdom is a Play if you want a hand-drawn metroidvania that prioritises mood and weird characters over a loud quest log. Steven alone is almost worth the download. Go in expecting to wander, expect some cling-to-wall spike deaths, and decide whether slow direction is your kind of mystery or your kind of annoyance.
Pros
- Hand-drawn dark aesthetic is genuinely beautiful and atmospheric enough to pull you through vague objectives
- Creature writing and encounters (whale, badger, Steven and the little Stevens) are strange, funny, and memorable
- Interconnected biome warren rewards doubling back, hidden possum zones, and map unlocks
- Puzzle and ability-gated routes (codebreaker, jump order rooms) add variety beyond basic combat
- Playtest slice offers more room to explore than a single hour suggests if you enjoy getting lost on purpose
Cons
- Main objective stays hazy deep into the demo, which drained momentum for me even while the world stayed interesting
- No map until you find one, and player position on the map needs a trinket unlock before navigation feels fair
- Wall-cling platforming missed often enough that spike deaths felt like control friction, not fair failure
Strange creatures in a cliff full of biomes
The lighthouse has gone dark and you climb, fight, and explore a warren of interconnected biomes inside a cliff in the middle of the sea. Caves, platforms, mutated creatures, and machines from whatever came before all sit in a dark hand-drawn Metroidvania shell that makes you want to keep pushing even when the objective stays fuzzy.
The locals are the best part. The depressed whale would quite like you to end things for him. The badger rattles around looking for company. Steven the slug wears his head armour like a bad hairpiece, and after you fight a few big ones you notice little Stevens scattered across the map like a family reunion. Hidden zones with a possum handed me a boost along the way. The whole story skews funny and odd in a way the art sells hard.
Maps, signposts, and puzzles that reveal slowly
Signposts nudge you in a general direction, but there is no map until you find one. When I finally unlocked it, I had already cleared most of what it showed. A trinket later marked my position on that map, which sounds basic, but without it you are navigating blind in a game that expects a lot of doubling back.
Puzzle rooms show up too: a codebreaker, platform sections where double jump and attack jump order matter, and unlock gates that only open once you revisit old routes from a new angle. Some clicked fast. Some frustrated me when I was not sure why I was still digging. The direction reveals itself slowly, which will suit explorers and annoy players who want a mission statement upfront.
Platforming friction and save-point confusion
The Platformer controls have rough edges. I would jump to cling a wall, miss the grab, slide off, and land on spikes more than I wanted in a game asking for precise wall climbing. That friction adds up when backtracking is the point.
Save points bit me as well. I locked myself to the surface save and could not work out how to switch back to the one closer to the centre of the map. That might be me misunderstanding the system rather than a hard flaw, but it is worth knowing if you expect to hop between checkpoints freely.
Compared with Well Dweller, another dark hand-drawn 2D platformer I reviewed recently, Well Dweller gave me a clearer mission. Cliff Kingdom trusts you to find your own reason to keep going. Whether that is an asset or a problem depends on what you want from an Adventure demo. The slice I played had a few hours in it if you are happy to keep exploring. I stopped after about an hour once the map suggested I had seen most of the chambers.
Developer: Most likely no reason for hysteria
View on Steam
Watch the video review: YouTube
Tags: Metroidvania, Platformer, Adventure, Action, Indie, Exploration
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