When picking a game for inspiration it can be tough as there are just so many good ones out there. Choosing something like Commander Keen is a safe bet that also comes with huge shoes to fill. Planet Cloudius IX seems to fill them quite well.

The story so far

Playing as jake Rodgers, you are on a quest to find a mysterious girl that has suffered an unfortunate accident. She crashed on a strange island-in-the-sky formation known as “Planet Cloudius IX”. This area is full of weird aliens, secrets, and of course adventure. How can you resist?

What is in the box

Planet Cloudius IX features over 30 levels full of jumping, shooting, enemies, secrets, and more. According to the Game Jolt page, there is support for controllers and mappable keys, multiple difficulties and even a speed run mode.

First impressions

What I have experienced so far is an interesting action adventure game that definitely draws quite a bit of inspiration from the classic Commander Keen. So much inspiration that the engine used to power Planet Cloudius IX, Keen Game Engine, is inspired by Commander Keen. KGE is free and quite a bit more capable than their webpage makes it out to seem. This is quite evident when you compare a game like Planet Cloudius IX against the placeholder graphics on the engine website.

Some details before the review hits

The graphics are clean but still detailed enough to get the point across – bad guys, platforms, NPC’s, etc are easy to identify in a moment. That is crucial for these types of games.

Don’t wait for the review, seriously, fans grab this now

For a free game you would be hard pressed to find something better at the moment in this style anyhow.