As I continue my quest to unearth quick-fire skill-based arcade games, I came across a game that’s been 16 years in the oven. Originally a 2008 game jam, Rescue: The Beagles is a game that’s simple to pick up but quick to teach you a lesson. A 2D platformer with the goal to collect and rescue all the beagles in each level, you’ll need to have your wits about you and stop making fall damage mistakes.
The clever twist with this game lies in its parallax platforms. Each procedurally generated level contains 3 or 4 platforms arranged like layers that you can move back and forth between. Your character can climb up and jump down very small height differences so initially you’ll be looking at where platforms meet closely in the middle to switch platforms to collect the beagle or fire bats at your enemies. If a beagle exits the end of your play screen, you lose a life so you must be quick as enemies often pick beagles up and run away with them. This wasn’t the main reason I kept dying though – it was fall damage.
As I mentioned earlier, your character dies easily when jumping down from one platform to another. Thankfully you can pick up parachutes to trigger to help you land from a fall. Ropes can also help you climb big gaps up too. However, you need to use them sparingly because the levels aren’t always teeming with them. When things get tricky and beagles are about to escape, or enemies are getting in the way, I kept making silly mistakes and leaping down thinking I’d make it but alas no, I’d die. It was usually in the heat of the chase when I’d make mistakes and jump forgetting to trigger the parachute or running out of them. Thankfully there is an aid that highlights with a red cross if you’ll die from jumping and I found this helped me get a bit better at the game.
When a level is completed, you can choose a skill to level up or claim an extra life. The skills include increasing your run or swim speed, increase the number of bats you can collect when collecting the power-up, reducing the amount of damage radioactive goo does to you or you can make beagles come to you if they sniff you out. All skills are worthwhile but I usually invested in bats early on so I could be more aggressive with my moves to be faster. As levels are procedural, you don’t quite get the same level each time but the difficulty curve is consistent. Certain enemies appear after X levels. Water that you can dive into without death appears after a few levels too. Weather adds modifiers and the platforms get more complex and varied. It’s a real challenge to keep your cool and do well and that’s what I really enjoyed about this game. I wasn’t great at it, but I knew it was me – not poor game design.
Outside of a single-player experience, you can play co-op with a friend or competitively against each other. There are also two soundtracks that you can switch between as well as a cleaner or pixelated graphical style. All these options are fantastic to have and add extra longevity and customisation to the mix.
Don’t let its simple setup fool you. Rescue: The Beagles is a 2D platformer arcade score attack challenge. I’ll be chipping away to get better so I can ascend those leaderboards and if you enjoy retro arcade classics of old,I think you’ll get bitten by the addictive nature of this game too.
Review copy provided by the developer. Out now on Steam.
Higher Plain Games is part of the Higher Plain Network. If you like what I do, please consider supporting me via Patreon for as little as $1/£1 a month. There are additional perks for supporting me, such as behind-the-scenes content and downloads. You can also share the website or use the affiliate buy now links on reviews. Buying credit from CD Keys using my affiliate link means I get a couple of pence per sale. All your support will enable me to produce better content, more often. Thank you.
