Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams Review, 9.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is the latest from a series that started life as a brazen attempt to plagiarize the original Super Mario Bros. (to the point that The Great Giana Sisters even featured levels whose layouts where directly lifted from SMB wholesale). With the release of Twisted Dreams the series finally has a game able to stand proudly on its merits (a Giana DS game did come out in 2009, but the less said about it the better). This is not to say that GSTD escapes the shadow of the world’s most famous plumber completely–the game has nary a single original bone in its body. The result is a game that will feel instantly familiar to almost any gamer alive, so the question remains: does this indie 2D platformer have what it takes to hang with the big boys who directly inspired it?

GSTD focuses on an older, teenage Giana who is forced to return to the dreamland setting of her initial game after a mysterious force from there kidnaps her younger sister Maria. Going through that stage of life where everything starts to change, even one’s own self-identity, Giana now has the ability to switch between the more innocent and wholesome personality of her past and a new more aggressive and darker aspect of her psyche. It in an interesting enough idea and one that the game uses to good effect in terms of gameplay, visuals, and audio, even while simultaneously completely failing to exploit it as a storytelling device. Essentially, there is no real story in the game aside from a very brief and oblique cutscene at the game’s outset, a fact which I found disappointing.

Gameplay-wise, Giana Sisters is your standard 2D platformer that follows the classic Super Mario Bros. formula to a large degree. In practice, this translates to more or less exactly what players would expect: lots of running, jumping (both across platforms and on the heads of countless enemies who conveniently walk back and forth along the same limited area endlessly), and engaging in the collecting of mass amounts of shiny things, in this case gems. Indeed, over the course of GSTD’s 23 expansive levels you should be prepared for little in the way of real surprises, at least as far as gameplay goes. Those looking for the next Limbo or Braid should keep on looking, because this is one game with a minimum interest in innovation at best.

Twisted Dreams’ dark world pulls off the impressive trick of being both visually unpleasant yet gorgeous at the same time.

Which is not to say Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams does not have a hook. Every good platformer, especially these days, needs at least some sort of unique gameplay element to call its own and in the case of Twisted Dreams that would be Giana’s ability to swap her personality at will. Each personality has its own unique abilities, with “Cute” Giana having an upward-boosting spin jump while her darker “Punk” persona gives players access to a powerful attack that sees Giana charge forward (or whatever direction players currently has her pointed in) while wreathed in flames. Furthermore, swapping personalities also changes the world around Giana as well, right down to altering the layout of a level at times, and the majority of the game’s well designed environmental puzzles are built around this fact. The same is also true for the many seemingly just-out-of-reach secrets (like giant gems that unlock concept art and other bonuses) that litter the various nooks and crannies of most levels as well.

Not only does Twisted Sisters give players a dedicated button for switching personalities, but activating a personality’s unique attack (each of which is mapped to a separate button or key) has the same effect, a fact players will often have to take advantage of when making their way through a level. Unfortunately, these attacks are also not always as responsive as they should be, which in turn makes using them a less than ideal prospect at times. To be fair, I would not call the implementation of these attacks outright broken, just sticky, and for the most part Twisted Dream’s other controls work fine, but even minor issues like this can lead to any number of cheap deaths over the course of the game. This is one of those titles that increasingly demands greater and more exacting precision from its players but when the controls get in the way of that very precision it can in turn leave players feeling frustrated and ill-used.

Seriously, this is one remarkably beautiful game, especially considering its relatively low budget nature.

This get even more problematic when a player moves beyond the more forgiving main mode of the game in order to try their hand at such gameplay variations as GSTD’s self-titled uber-hardcore mode where players are charged with completing the entire game without dying once. As a means of comparison, whatever problems one might have with the New Super Mario Bros. subseries, at the very least all of those games have featured dead-on controls. When players take command of Mario they can always count on being able to move and position him exactly where they want, when they want. It is one of the hallmarks of the series as a whole and a big reason why even lesser Mario titles are still ultimately among the best platformers available on the market today. The fact that the same cannot be said about Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is an undeniable mark against a game that already faces certain harsh truths in terms of the crowded market it finds itself in.

Leaving that aside for the moment, Giana’s ability to swap her personalities is reflected as much by the game’s production values as it by its gameplay. Just as Giana has her Cute and Punk side, so too do the levels she finds herself in have their “light” and “dark.” So while Cute Giana is trapped in a nightmare-like realm filled with demons, twisted trees, and a general pallor of darkness and gloom, Punk Giana is forced to make her way through a bright and sugary realm filled with burbling brooks, enemies in the form of happy (yet till deadly) adorable forest critters, and lots of sunshine and rainbows. There is no question that Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is a gorgeous looking game, to a degree that belies its indie nature, but there are times when its visuals are a hindrance as well. That is because it can be a struggle at various points in the game to differentiate foreground elements from background elements, leaving yet another potential source of cheap deaths for players to deal with. As with the control issues, this aspect of Twisted Dreams is simply sloppy design work and one that even an indie game has no excuse for failing to avoid.

Seeing what amazing view is around the next corner is a great motivation to blow through Twisted Dreams’ short main campaign.

Perhaps the main claim to fame The Great Giana Sisters had beyond being a blatant Super Mario Bros. rip-off was its truly outstanding soundtrack courtesy of famed German video game music composer Chris Hülsbeck. So it is a real coup that Hülsbeck returned to compose the soundtrack for Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams and in the end he has produced some of the best work of his career for the game. Yet, the aural strength of GSTD does not stop there, because just as the game’s visuals shift alongside Giana’s personality, so too does the music change between the orchestral compositions of Hülsbeck and a rearrangement of these same pieces as performed by Swedish heavy metal band Machinae Supremacy. This transition could have been messy and off-putting but instead ends up working perfectly and it makes for a soundtrack that is as brilliant as it is original.

With only twenty-three levels, Twisted Dreams is not a game that will take people long to complete, a fact likely to be even truer for the hardcore platforming set always on the lookout for the next Super Meat Boy or Ms. Splosion Man. To be fair, the game does feature a number of additional variations beyond its main quest to further pad things out. These include a time attack mode, score attack mode, a hardcore mode that removes in-level checkpoints, and the aforementioned uber-hardcore mode for the truly masochistic. The game’s fifteen dollar price tag does not hurt matters either and on the whole GSTD is one of the better Mario-clones I have run into in recent years.

Boss battles are nothing special but they do at least break up the action.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is a game with no real originality in terms of gameplay and while its central hook is decent enough, it is also one that has seen plenty of previous use as well (including any number of games featured in my D(LC)elightful Treats column over the years). Combine this with a few awkward control issues and a series of obstructive visuals and what is left is a game that many may find too familiar for its own good. Especially when the huge preexisting selection of quality (and in many cases free) indie platformers already available on PC to satisfy any players need is taken into consideration. Judged solely on its own merits GSTD, is a good platformer with above-average production values and those specifically in the market for another iteration of that most classic of platforming formula will find a satisfying experience on the whole. For everyone else, a lack of innovation and an at times sloppy implementation might be enough to leave Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams just another pretty face in the crowd.

A review code for this game was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review. The reviewer spent approximately five hours playing the game on PC.

Also, feel free to follow the reviewer on Twitter @bigred_13 please if you feel so inclined.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams Review

By Shaun K.

Does this indie 2D platformer have what it takes to hang with the big boys who directly inspired it?