Aeon Drive is a 2D platformer from developer 2Awesome Studio about speed and flow, taking after titles like Celeste and Dead Cells. Jack, Aeon Drive's protagonist, has a handful of mobility options that can work together in interesting ways to either speed up or slow down a run; however, they don't always feel as tight or as fluid as they should. For the most part, Aeon Drive is a quick and fun platformer that offers replayability and speedrunning potential, but its controls, story, and design occasionally present roadblocks to the player and their enjoyment.
Aeon Drive's story is more of a framing device than it is an actual narrative. Jack and her robot companion VERA escape their dimension in order to flee from a galactic war and arrive in "our" dimension. They get pulled into Earth's orbit and crash-land in the cyberpunk city of Neo Barcelona, which VERA quickly realizes is close to destruction thanks to a chain reaction being caused by unstable dimensional drives. To save the city, they need to retrieve all six, but they only have 30 seconds before they go critical; luckily VERA can create a small time-pocket to extend that time.
In gameplay, each stage has a 30 second timer in which to complete it and Jack has plenty of tools to help her do just that. First and foremost, Jack is agile and has a sword which lets her quickly dispatch robotic enemies, which are more of an obstacle than they are a threat. There are also small dimensional drives scattered across each level that will extend the time by 5 seconds for every four that are collected, which can often make the difference between success and failure. Her most important tool is VERA herself, as Jack can throw her to different places and teleport to her, destroy enemies, and bypass certain obstacles like laser walls.
Jack moves well for the most part, but definitely has some hiccups here and there, such as inconsistent detection which makes wall-jumping a gamble at times. Throwing VERA is also just as frustrating as it is satisfying, as there are moments when Jack must throw VERA directly above her in order to get through a laser wall, but there isn't enough hangtime after teleporting to comfortably avoid falling back down on said wall. However, using VERA for horizontal and diagonal movement feels great and, after a few successful teleports, will naturally put players into a really satisfying flow state.
In later stages, VERA is used in more interesting ways such as solving door and switch puzzles. While many of them are great, one variety of those puzzles presented a huge headache, which were switch puzzles that required VERA to remain on the switch for a door to open - teleporting back to her would just reset the player. While most stages had alternate paths to keep this from getting egregiously bad, one stage in the final level was impossible until, after playing with the controls, the realization hit that there is an input that can recall VERA rather than just teleport to her. This was particularly frustrating as this specific mechanic was never introduced in the tutorial but was absolutely necessary in order to complete the final levels of the game.
Aeon Drive is an otherwise solid experience with nuanced mechanics. The biggest areas where the game struggles are, luckily, in the smaller details such as the lack of hangtime and forgetting to include a mechanic in the tutorial that, thankfully, didn't hinder the gameplay until the end. With its comfortable three-hour playtime, native speedrunning leaderboards, competitive mode, and charming personality, Aeon Drive is definitely worth checking out.
Aeon Drive releases September 30, 2021 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, & Nintendo Switch. Screen Rant was provided with a Steam download code for the purpose of this review.
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