Vibrant Venture

Vibrant Venture is a single-player 2D adventure platformer with a quirky cast and a movement system designed for combination. Four playable characters — Cardinal, Azura, Banana and Pistachio — each have distinct movement abilities, and the game lets you swap between them mid-level to chain their skills together. Cardinal double-jumps. Azura dashes. Banana climbs walls. Pistachio gracefully glides. Wide pits are crossed by stacking the right verbs in the right order.

The premise is appropriately silly. An intergalactic thief has robbed the arcane Power Crystals, and the four characters — working together as one being — have to save the day. Story serves the gameplay rather than dominating it, and the focus stays on the responsive controls, the room for skillful mastery, and the wonderful hand-drawn pixel-art aesthetic that carries the visual identity.

Three distinct worlds run through the campaign, each chock-full of mystery and platforming challenge. Hectic boss fights against larger-than-life creatures punctuate the progression, and the upbeat soundtrack composed by Christoph Jakob accompanies the action. Vehicles and guns also appear at certain points, which is the kind of detail the marketing flags with characteristic playfulness.

A Level Builder lets you create your own stages and upload them to Steam Workshop, where hundreds of user-generated levels are already available to download and play. A Pet Maker lets you create and share customized pets that follow you around in levels. The game ships in Early Access with what the developer describes as a nearly complete experience, and ongoing development will refine elements based on community feedback as it progresses toward 1.0.