Refunct

Refunct is, by design, simple. Astonishingly so. But that’s all it needs to be in order to be fun. It’s a first-person 3D platformer at its most pure. The objective of the game? Colour everything in and bring the world to life. It’s a giant blank colouring book you can freerun in. What’s not to love? The red beacon leads to a big red button, which when you step on it, reveals more white squares and another button… And another button… And another-

But the game is happy to let you loose in the world and let you go where you like, despite there being no point to doing so. But the option is appreciated nonetheless. With no timers, instructions or any HUD at all in fact, you have all the time in the world to go diving, cannonballing or swimming to the edge of the world if you so wish… And I most certainly did. How do you think I got half of these screenshots?

Unless you became blind in the process of reading this sentence, you’ll see that the game is staggeringly beautiful, but the best bit is that it runs like a dream. I’d often stop just to admire my surroundings. I was hammering F12 so much while playing this game I was practically Frank West. Fortunately, the gameplay holds its own just as well as the shiny pixels do.

As you run, you pick up momentum, which helps you leap some of the bigger gaps between platforms. By hitting jump over a ledge while in mid-air, you’ll grab and climb it, but this isn’t the best mechanic. That would belong to the wall jump. This makes the game feel so good to play. Either to kick off a wall to gain enough air to reach another area faster or to chain them together repeatedly between walls to scale a tower.

Hell, you can even jump, kick off the wall, and then from the air you gained grab a ledge that was previously inaccessible via regular jumping. It’s wonderful. My mind always fizzles with all the potential lines to try out in this playground style environment. Basically, runner vision from Mirror’s Edge gone into overload. But you might be thinking: “Yeah, that sounds great and all, but surely it gets tiresome pretty fast, right?”

You’d be right… And that’s why the game is bitesize. It’s very short, but intensely sweet. You can expect to beat it on average in about 20-30 minutes. Some people would inevitably whine it’s too short, but I think it’s the perfect length for the experience this game provides. It’s just a quick burst of feel-good platforming and that’s all it sets out to achieve, and with that in mind it nails it. Anyway, the game is £2. So don’t expect a 40 hour RPG.

So if you’re even vaguely interested, you should pick this up. It’s pretty relaxed (though speedrun mode now exists!) and will only set you back two-hundred of your shiniest pennies… Or your equivalent currency. Point is, the game is fun, buy it! Oh, and one final thing…

Pro tip: Some platforms can only be reached by staying ducked while jumping. That had me stumped for a while at first. You’re welcome.