Review – JYDGE

Twin-stick shooter/top down/roguelike

Only God can jydge me.

10tons Ltd are a Finnish dev team who have been on our radar for ages.  They first turned up on the PS4 porting over their mobile game Tennis in the Face and then followed it up with Baseball Riot.  These were simple physics puzzlers that didn’t turn too many heads.

It seemed that 10tons were destined for mobile mediocrity and then they dropped Neon Chrome on us.  For the first time it was like they’d made a proper game and we loved it.  Initially gloomy and too difficult, it eventually blossomed thanks to some very nice roguelike mechanics.

Then they brought out Time Recoil which seemed to be pretty much the same game but with less of the fun rogue stuff and more of a puzzle-based approach to it’s time-freezing gameplay.  It was still a twin-stick shooter but it didn’t really resonate with us.

And then they brought out Jydge.  The third game in this unofficial trilogy.  They are linked by basically being the same game engine (in terms of visuals and the core shooting gameplay) but this one is the best of the three.

You play as the Jydge.  Essentially a Judge Dredd type of lawbringer who has to dispense instant justice across the game’s twenty or so levels.  Yes, it’s a rogue like and yes it’s a twin-stick shooter but there’s a ton of customisation going on with abilities, weapons, special weapons and perks to unlock and apply to your judge in order to make him even scarier to the criminals.

Each level has three medals to earn and these can involve suddenly needing to be super stealthy and cautious.  There are even times where you can’t kill people or damage scenary, making the game challenging but in a different way.  The game’s excellent level design seems to make these objectives tantalisingly achievable but just out of reach for ages.  And then you nail them and feel like GOD HIMSELF.  But real.

I don’t know, man.  There’s just something about JYDGE that can’t be denied.  It may look like much but we’re so happy that 10tons switched from randomly generated levels to properly crafted ones.  The controls are on point, the objectives are great, the customisation is super interesting and the game is as addictive as chocolate covered heroin.  It’s so good that we’re going to nominate it as our game of the year because we can’t even be bothered to play Zelda, Mario or anything that comes on a disc.  JYDGE is the truth.

Score: Game of the year/10.