4.5/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of Mission in Snowdriftland.

Earlier this year, I played the original Flash game UPIXO in Action: Mission in Snowdriftland after discovering it how most people did, through Nick Robinson's YouTube video, and it was such an enjoyable platformer that had blew my expectations on what a Flash game could do out of the water, with wonderful controls and great sprite art. And this new remake/remaster does such a great job at updating it for modern times. Each of the world's level assets have been fully remade and look absolutely gorgeous. Each and every level theme is now distinct from one another and all look beautiful. This is especially great for World 3 - Mountain as it no longer looks like a copy of World 1 - Lake, with new a new purple or grey color scheme. The backgrounds this time around are also detailed to an even further extent, so it makes the levels really feel alive. The sprite art though, while still the same as the original, seems to be rendered poorly due to the Unity engine. The pixels of each sprite seem to flicker instead of constantly being rendered "pixel perfect" but once you look past that, the sprite art still looks great. The controls are also once again super tight, precise, and fun to play. When you find yourself speeding through a level, with your platforming skills allowing you to breeze through every platform, obstacle, and enemy truly feels amazing. I played the game with a keyboard throughout my playthrough, but I also played a few levels with a controller, and it felt just as good, if not better! So either work well in my opinion. A nitpick that carries over from the original is the severe difficulty spike in the first world. Before I continue, each level is significantly more challenging when you are aiming to collect each of the 24 Snowflakes in each level in comparison to just getting to the end. But when you're just starting out in the game, it is quite difficult. As soon as you reach the second world, the difficulty drops significantly, although World 2's levels are much lengthier. And it's not until World 4 where the difficulty spikes again. I think it's due to the water pits in World 1 and the lava pits in World 4 being present; they certainly lead to a lot of those level's deaths. One thing I think this game definitely would benefit with would be the settings option to configure keys to customize your controls, because one thing I liked about the original is that you could play it with just one hand by using the arrow keys, with the Up key used for jumping, with the spacebar also being an option. This time around, you can either use WASD to move or the arrow keys, but the spacebar is the only jump button. But this is just a minor nitpick on my part. The opening cutscene has also been beautifully recreated with updated artwork. Along with this, I appreciate the developer's resolution on how to replace the original game's Nintendo advertisements. This time around we have Game Artifacts. Each artifact is a reference to a retro game, with most of them being pretty on the nose. It was kind of funny for me to see just how similar some of the artifacts looked in comparison to what they were referencing. I also can't wait for the bonus content that has been promised to be coming to the game. A Bonus Level as a reward for collecting all 576 Snowflakes in the game, which will supposedly be a hard test of skill. We also have the two Kickstarter Stretch Goals that were funded such as mini-bosses and secret areas spread throughout 24 of the game's levels, both things that I think the game needs to make it just a little bit more perfect. Any of those updates will be mentioned after this paragraph once they're released. To begin, the Bonus Level was such an expansive level. Definitely can take you more than an hour to finish, and very difficult, specifically in the starting area. The level is split into four areas, each using assets from each of the game's four worlds. In order to progress to the next part of the stage, one must collect all of that section's 24 Snowflakes. The level gets easier and easier as it goes on, just like the worlds within the game, but it certainly will test your skills, and is a welcome addition and completion reward. So all in all, I'm so glad that I discovered this game, let alone that it got remastered, and I'm also glad that I backed it on Kickstarter. I truly appreciate all of the effort that the developers "tons of bits" put into this absolute hidden gem of a platformer. I'll even most likely buy it again once it eventually comes to Switch. I really hope they decide to make a sequel some day!! Please check this game out! Especially since it's only $7.99 on Steam!