I threw cakes, robbed banks, and stomped a monarch in Claire a la Mode

This faster paced sequel to Curse Crackers requires no prior knowledge to enjoy. The game has three full unique storylines, each with five unique stages, and 2-3 playable characters. I really enjoyed the size and exeuction of almost everything in the game. The moment to moment gameplay reminded me of Kirby games of yore.

Claire a la Mode, is a sort of sequel to Curse Crackers, although it plays quite differently. Claire is somehow even faster, especially when sprinting (once again, I highly recommend you don’t do that, unless you’re a speedrunner type person, or you know you can get away with it in a particular moment).

The “three HP” system from Curse Crackers I mentioned previously and complained about… has actualy become worse. Now you only have one HP. Yes, you get a lot of lives… but bosses can be a bit frustrating since you technically have to “perfect” all of them now. This means that farming lives is a requirement if you aren’t great at them. There were at least a few bosses were I had to quit and go farm lives because I was having a tough time, and when you get a game over, you will just restart the boss with a few lives, and that’s just no fun.

Perhaps I’m just too old and out of touch, but I feel a lot of games these days are really fast paced and involve a lot of single hit deaths on both sides, and I just have a hard time keeping up, lol.

What is fun, though, is the three unique stories you get, and that each story has completely unique levels and characters. With 15+ levels, 15+ characters, optional co-op on any level, this game certainly has a lot of stuff to do, especially if you like replaying things. And there’s lot of extra secrets to get in every level. Not every character has the right abilities to access every secret too, so they incentivize replaying levels with different characters, which is fun.

You could critize that every level has to be possible to be finished by every character, and one character has no movement abilities besides jump and sprint… so the game doesn’t ever require that you lean into advanced movement… but I promise that it has lots of interesting routes that reward you for learning how to use its interesting mechanics like balloons (one time use platforms that propel you), or the ability gain upward momentum by throwing projectiles downward.

The game doesn’t have difficulty selection, but each character has wildly different approaches to platforming, and I think they’re intentionally not balanced, in a way that lets the player choose the experience they find the most engaging. I think one or two characters may be reskins or near reskins of another character, but there’s still at least ten or so fully unique character abilities that will have playing levels in interesting ways. Think of them more like Kirby’s copy abilities, but you select them from the menu before entering a level.

I feel like this game has a broad appeal to from casual gamers to speedrunners, and the co-op mode sounds promising (though I didn’t try it). There’s a lot to love here, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The price point is quite nice, as well :)