Some say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; however in the mid 1980s when the Great Giana Sisters was released on the Commodore 64 and Amiga, Nintendo didn’t seem to think so, bearing a striking resemblance to their own Super Mario Bros. After much fist shaking from Nintendo’s legal department, the games developers were strong armed into removing the game from sale. This resulted has resulted in it becoming one of the most collectable, notorious and pirated games of the period.
Some twenty odd years and a successful Kickstarter campaign later, developer Black Forest Games have successfully resurrected the series with the brilliantly bizarre Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams.
When her sister Maria is sucked into a mysterious portal and abducted by a dragon, her sister Giana dives in after her to rescue her,
Within the Dream world Giana finds that she has the power to shift between two parallel dreams depending on her mood. Shifting between her Cute form; stuck in a dark, desolate wasteland full of demons, and her Punk form: trapped in a bright, bountiful, wonderland packed with colourful creatures.
In game you can instantly flick between Giana’s two forms with the press of a button which also instantly transforms the world around her. Not only does this look insanely cool as the landscape morphs around you swinging from one extreme to the other in seconds, closed gates open, thickets wither and die and platforms appear and disappear in the blink of an eye.
It is also key to being able to successfully navigate through the game’s levels and collect all of the gems strewn throughout each stage
Giana’s two forms also each have their own specific powers that compliment each other. Cute Giana can twirl through the air hovering down to the ground as well as providing extra height to her jumps. Punk Giana turns into a fireball, ricocheting off walls and bouncing from one enemy to the next like a demented pinball.
This difference in the play styles of her two forms makes the game feel at times like the words best Mario and Sonic cross over that never was, as Cute Giana’s precise platforming and gentle drifting makes way for punk Giana’s fevered fireball attacks that send her hurtling through destructible walls, enemies and anything else that gets in her way. Like its predecessor, Twisted Dreams wears its influences on its sleeve, successfully managing to encapsulate the look and feel of platforming greats from the 8 and 16bit eras while forging its own identity in the process.
Each of the games stages are large labyrinthine deathtraps with multiple routes to the end, littered with hidden passages and secret areas. Successfully getting through all of them is a serious challenge as one wrongly timed jump or switch of persona will more often than not result in your demise. Luckily there are numerous checkpoints dotted throughout each stage and in another clever twist the game tracks how many times you die as opposed to giving you x amount of lives. This makes death more of an inconvenience than a punishment and, in adventure mode at least, mitigates a lot of the frustration that some of the games trickier sections could easily of induced.
At the end of each of the games three worlds there is an inevitable boss battle. The game’s three bosses are big, intimidating creatures which are tough but fair, If you die there’s no doubt that it was your fault but there are plenty of chances to screw up. Especially during the games final fight against Gurglewocky; the Dragon that is holding Maria hostage or as I like to call him, Bastardface. By the end of every boss fight I had died at least a hundred times. Although each of them were frustrating at times they never felt overwhelming.
This however isn’t the case once you’ve unlocked the Hardcore and Uber Hardcore modes which ramp up the difficulty to insane levels. Uber Hardcore mode in particular is certainly not for the faint of heart, asking players to perform a perfect run of the entire game as death will send you hurtling back to the first stage. If you haven’t either got a lot of spare pads or know how to fix one, I really wouldn’t recommend it.
On the whole, though, Twisted Dreams is challenging, beautiful and incredibly fun. As a fan of the genre and the period of gaming that it so deftly emulates I would happily recommend it to anyone who pines for the days of the C64 and the Amiga and certainly to the few lucky people that managed to play the original. It’s not a game for everyone, with minimal hand holding and a relatively steep learning curve, but if you’re up to the challenge or are even vaguely curious at least give the demo a try, you never know you might fall for its charms. I know I have.
