3.5/5 ★ – benhmedia's review of You Are Peter Shorts.

Despite how long I had been anticipating this one, You Are Peter Shorts took a while to win me over. I was immediately put off by the very floaty/slippery character movement, and a few rooms that felt unfair in their design (all involving insta-kill spikes). Those two things alone almost caused me to abandon this altogether despite being a smaller metroidvania. I am very glad that I stuck with it! I’ve played every single game made by Ondy Dev, a one-man team with a charmingly quirky pixel art style. He also composes all the chiptune music for every one his games. While not every game of his is incredible, they’re always packed with personality and incredibly catchy tunes. Perhaps that’s why I stuck with this one. You Are Peter Shorts takes a somewhat dark plot and makes it as silly as could be: you’re an armless man - the titular Peter Shorts - who wants nothing more than to grill out on the yard. But soon you’re captured and taken into a top-secret facility, where your DNA is used to make clones of every kind: Tiger Peters, Baby Peters, Tomato Peters, and Penguin Peters too! All of them kooky little freaks that you’d expect to see in an episode of Smiling Friends. I mentioned before that this is a metroidvania, but it’s just as much a platform fighter in the style of Super Smash Bros. Each Peter has a grab, a block, a charge move, aerial attacks, and more. So much work went into its simple-yet-noteworthy combat system, there’s even a fully-fledged Smash Bros side mode that’s quite fun. The main campaign is ultimately enjoyable as well, there’s just some rooms that could have been cleaned up a bit. And arguably…it maybe wasn’t the best idea to have this game be equal parts metroidvania and platform fighter. Peter Shorts himself just isn’t as satisfying to control as characters from other Ondy Dev games (Tres-Bashers and Binky’s Trash Service, particularly). But the more Peters you unlock, the easier it is to traverse the facility and get through the more challenging platforming sections. While I can understand why some might be tempted to give this up shortly after playing, I’d personally vouch for seeing it though to the end. It’s short, the final boss fights & escape sequence are incredible, and the Peter Brawl side mode is surprisingly competent and well fleshed-out. Is it one of the best games I’ve played all year? Not quite. But it is the only game release this year where you can play as Peter Shorts, and there’s something to be said for that.