Cloudbuilt

I have a soft spot for games that do something structurally unusual with their narrative, and Cloudbuilt earns that affection fast. You play as Demi, a young soldier lying comatose in a hospital room, and every level you clear is a piece of her psychological recovery made physical. The platforms suspended in the clouds are not just an obstacle course - they are the architecture of a broken mind rebuilding itself. Between stages, Demi's inner monologue ties the action to her emotional state, and the better moments genuinely let the platforming carry the metaphor without over-explaining it. It does not always land - the voice performance has been criticised for feeling detached - but the concept is more intentional than most action games in this bracket ever attempt. The movement system is where Cloudbuilt earns its cult reputation. Wall-runs, boost-jumps, jetpack air-dashes, and triangle jumps can all be chained together, and when you find a clean line through a level it feels like you invented it yourself. Each stage has multiple branching paths: a safer central route exists for learning the space, while faster, riskier lines reward mastery and shave precious seconds for leaderboard chasers. The level-select screen branches like a mind map, so if one stage is grinding you down you can route around it and return later. That design choice keeps frustration from curdling into abandonment, which is wise given how demanding the moment-to-moment play gets. The 2020 update from Coilworks is worth knowing about before you buy. The studio retrofitted two distinct modes into the game: a Default Mode with reworked level versions, infinite retries, and slightly reduced game speed aimed at newcomers, and a Competitive Mode that preserves the original brutal configuration for ranking runs and leaderboard glory. Alternative versions of 34 core levels were built specifically for this update, adding fresh routing puzzles even for veterans. For a game released in 2014, that is a genuinely generous act of post-launch stewardship from a small studio. Not everything holds together. The combat has always been the weakest link - Demi carries a five-shot homing weapon that auto-reloads, and while turrets, drones, and leaping mines all have distinct behaviours, shooting your way through them rarely feels as satisfying as simply outrunning them. Several critics called it clunky even by the genre's standards, and the enemies with bullet-absorbing shields invite the question of why you engaged them at all. The cel-shaded art style, spread across seven worlds with distinct colour palettes, has aged beautifully and runs at a locked 60fps - your eyes never feel cheated even when your fingers are. The soundtrack sits somewhere between 8-bit energy and J-pop momentum during levels, dropping to a sparse, bleak piano in the hub, and it matches the emotional register of the game better than almost anything else here. Cloudbuilt is the kind of title that asks you to accept a steep learning curve and a combat system that never quite clicks, in exchange for movement that - when it flows - is as satisfying as anything the 3D platformer genre has produced. The community levels via Workshop extend the lifespan well past the base campaign, and four possible endings give completionists a reason to chase every route. This is not a casual drop-in experience and the original design made no apologies for that. The 2020 update softened the entry point considerably, so if you bounced off it years ago, the version sitting on your shelf now is a genuinely different proposition.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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