Project Blue (Review)

If you play Project Blue on the Nintendo Switch or Xbox, there’s NO ability to save your progress. There are no save files, and despite being an NES game running on an emulator, there are no save states. That means if you want to play this on your Nintendo Switch and intend to finish the game, you can’t play anything else until you defeat the final boss. That might change eventually via a patch, but keep in mind that Project Blue is a fairly difficult game, even on its lowest difficulty setting. It’s also a game that features lengthy levels with two tiers of checkpoints: “lose a life” checkpoints that are much more generous and “game over” checkpoints that could potentially send you quite a ways back. While it’s a lot of fun, it also means you can’t knock out one stage at a time while playing other games. You can put your console on sleep mode, but once you turn off Project Blue, you have to start over from the beginning. If this was a twenty hour game, that’d obviously be a deal breaker. However, Project Blue thankfully only has four levels that I’d think an average player would need three to five hours to finish. At least on their first attempt. It’s still very annoying that a game in 2023 doesn’t use our space age technology to allow you to record your progress, but you could finish Project Blue on your first attempt during a screening of Avatar. You know, keeping with the blue theme.

What the Xbox/Switch package DOES come with is a damn good instruction book. Seriously, this thing is so NES authentic WHILE being kind of morbidly dark. Hey, it made me smile. I should also note that this is the ONLY WAY you can get the story of the game. While the graphics are good enough to immerse you in the in-game universe, you really don’t get a whole lot of story out of it. What story there is, well, just read the book. It’s all kinds of delightfully twisted.

I didn’t beat Project Blue on Switch. I swapped over to my PC and an NES emulator, because I wanted to play other games on my Switch too. Oh, and because I wanted to cheat. A lot, actually. With rewind and save states. Mostly save states, because those allow for SOME challenge. It’s how I maximize my own enjoyment, which is the whole point of playing games. Also, with a game like this, or any other “difficult” platformer, I normally prefer to knock out a few rooms at a time, then take a break. I probably should have played this more this week, because now it’s 1:19 in the morning and I’m rushing to get this out by time the game releases on Switch and Xbox, because Project Blue is really good and I want people to see this review as it launches. Take all my guesses on how much time you’ll need with a grain of salt. You’ll probably play Project Blue better than I did. It kicked my ass. And I kind of loved it for it.

I’m almost certain this would break your neck. By the way, there’s a handful of different colored borders if you get the Switch/Xbox version. I found the red one to be distracting, but the other two work really well AND took actual effort. Some of the best borders I’ve seen, and I play a lot of games that use borders. I just did Taito Milestones 2, which phones in the borders for 9 out of the 10 games. “Who does this bitch think she is? The border patrol?” Thank you! Don’t forget to tip your waiter!

Project Blue is maybe the most conventional NES game I’ve played as of yet that also pulls double duty as an elite-tier indie game. Despite being made within the last few years, there’s no modern strings attached. Which.. yea, come to think of it, the whole “you cannot save” thing tracks with that. But I’m speaking in terms of raw gameplay. You, me, and anyone else could believe that this is a genuine lost 1988-1991 NES release that somehow fell through a time warp. It didn’t succumb to the temptation of featuring gore or swearing like so many modern NES indies, nor does it use state-of-the-art (for NES at least) graphics chips to buff up the appearance. It passes the eye test, but it’s not just the presentation that makes it convincing. I’ve played four NES indies now (along with last year’s Garbage Pail Kids, micro-sized metroidvania Böbl, and Tetris tribute From Below) that are good enough to crack my top 100. Project Blue is probably the most believable as a genuine 80s/90s NES release. Defeating Garbage Pail Kids for that title is no small feat. It’s close, but I think the authenticity edge goes to Project Blue.

Even on the “normal” difficulty, this is a tough one.

Do you know what the secret sauce is? This is going to sound incredibly counter-intuitive, but the way to make your game perfectly NES-like is through imperfections, especially in movement and controls. Now, keep in mind that I don’t mean BAD controls. If you have unresponsive or sluggish inputs, your game is probably going to suck. Rather, I’m talking about good controls and movement physics that have a sharp learning curve to them. When that happens, it hearkens back to a time when developers (including Nintendo) hadn’t quite perfected the art of jumping around. In the case of Project Blue, it’s a game based around platforming and shooting your way through a series of interconnecting single-screen rooms. While enemies play a big role, I found the majority of the excitement came from the level layouts. The rooms are built around creating as many hold-your-breath jumps and close calls as any 8-bit game could possibly squeeze in. It’s nearly non-stop, even after you reach the point where the physics are intuitive. Project Blue is like an assembly line that turns out nail-biting platforming moments. And mind you, this isn’t a Super Meat Boy-like punisher. This is more like a Mega Man-style hop ‘n pop action game.

I confess that, after the first boss, I was worried that future boss encounters would be the low-point of Project Blue. But all the other bosses are an absolute blast to battle. Difficult, but clockable and fair. I really love this one, folks.

You don’t hold a button to run, but rather your movement speed builds automatically. Project Blue leans heavily on having to get a running start to make both high jumps AND long jumps. This premise, combined with movement that has a real sense of momentum and inertia, makes for a truly thrilling 8-bit experience. One that somehow feels totally unique while also feeling like dozens of other era-specific games. You get a little bit of Mega Man, but also a little bit of Blaster Master, or maybe Metroid or Journey to Silius, and probably tons of other NES games I’ve never even played. It feels like the developers set out to make each of the rooms feel unique from all other ones, but they didn’t stop there. Enemy placement is so measured and works in collaboration with the harrowing jumps that it feels practically scientific. Some rooms are optimized for combat, while others are optimized for jumping bits. Some combine the two, and some even have the enemies hopping off springs with you. But the bottom line is that nearly every single room offers some kind of unique challenge. Project Blue never feels repetitive. It never feels like they’re just recycling layouts. It never feels like they phoned it in and said “screw it, just shove a placeholder in here!” There’s nothing lazy about Project Blue. It really feels like it explored most everything the basic engine they created could do.

Project Blue also avoided the very worst NES platforming tropes. While I certainly won’t say there’s NO “gotchas” (I legitimately injured my throat trying to comically feign outrage at one death) there’s no invisible floors, no sliding on ice, no enemies that snipe you as soon as you enter a room, no invisible traps, and the bosses aren’t spongy. Project Blue’s challenge is as pure as the driven snow. I genuinely have no clue why driven snow is especially pure. I don’t know, folks. It’s the term. Work with me here.

And I swear, while the movement and the jumping physics are tough to learn, especially compared to modern 2D games, it DOES eventually become second nature thanks to stellar level design. Early on in the game, I struggled with measuring out which jumps I would need to build-up speed in order to clear. By the end of the game, I knew as soon as I entered a room “okay, that last platform I’m going to need a full running start for.” You typically have time to plot out a course. There’s only a couple “think fast” levels sprung on players, and they don’t really happen until the very end of Project Blue. The funny thing is, despite borrowing heavily from sci-fi run-n-jump shooters, the combat takes a back seat to the platforming. Honestly, I think I would have liked Project Blue equally as much if there was no shooting. It’s the rare action game where you could remove that element entirely and lose almost no excitement. It’s not as if the combat is crap, either. But, when I decided the safest strategy was to avoid enemies and leg it for the door, IT WAS STILL EXCITING! Holy cow, when does THAT ever happen? Where a game has good combat, but it could still do without it and be just as well? Almost never. That’s how special Project Blue is.

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Sometimes the decision to make a run for my life was made for me. Not all enemies can be killed, and sometimes you have to weave your way around them while hopping over instakill cliffs AND keeping enough momentum to reach the final platform. Especially once you near the end of the game, the biggest gameplay theme becomes “try not to stop moving.” It’s almost Sonic-like in that regard. And hey, that’s yet another classic game this seems to take inspiration from. That’s the thing about Project Blue: it’s not just borrowing ANY bits from classic games. It’s taking their best parts AND maintaining a sense of originality. It’s really remarkable in that regard, and it also doesn’t feel like it cheated by doing things that modern games would take for granted. It has a minimum amount of enemy designs, like so many NES games do. But, it’s not about how many enemies there are, but rather what the developers could do with them. In Project Blue, their usage is stretched to their absolute limits. Just when you think you’ve seen every possible way the invincible tanks can put up a challenge, you’ll enter a room with a pair of them flying off springs and hitting walls in perfect synchronization. Wow. Project Blue pulls off situations like that all the time, and it always took my breath away.

It’s a looker, too. Lots of tiny little details that give the world a lived-in sense.

Okay, besides those opening paragraphs, this is a little too lovey-dovey of a review, so here’s what I didn’t like: what you see IS what you get with Project Blue. If there’s hidden rooms, breakaway walls, etc, I didn’t find them. There’s only one gun upgrade that has limited ammo. With no permanent weapon upgrades and a linear level design, Project Blue kind of feels a bit on the bare-bones side. It also looks like you’re navigating a series of mazes, but you really aren’t. I figured the game would feature Kid Icarus-style mazes along the lines of the temple levels in that game, but that isn’t the case at all. I never got lost once. For the most part, each room has one entrance and exit. Typically if there are multiple points of entry and exit, they’re blocked off until you zig-zag around in a very linear fashion before coming back to them from a different angle. There ARE moments where I know I could have gone in another direction, typically via some ultra-long jump. But, I didn’t hit those jumps, and I didn’t want to replay Project Blue until I did. I don’t know what I missed, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. When I finished the game, as much fun as I had, I was also ready for it to be done. At least with Project Blue 1. If they ever do a sequel, I’ll be first in line.

With rewind/save states, I needed about ninety minutes to beat Project Blue, but mind you, I had beaten the first world three times before. It takes about thirty minutes per world with cheating. Without? Probably an hour per world. Ninety minutes, max.

BUT, if they ever do a sequel, what my challenge to the development team would be is to turn the worlds into genuine labyrinths that require navigation and maps, and maybe even permanent upgrades. I’m not suggesting they do a full-blown Metroidvania. There’s so many of those nowadays that it’s exhausting. Stick with levels, BUT, make them mazes. Clearly the developers have the talent to pull that off. I can’t stress enough: I have NO nostalgia for the NES. I’m a child of the PlayStation/Nintendo 64/Dreamcast era. This isn’t my wheelhouse. The novelty of playing an era-authentic NES indie in 2023 doesn’t mean squat to me. I’m never going to play Project Blue on a cartridge. No, for as minimalist as Project Blue is, it really holds up on its own as a truly great video game experience. Project Blue is intense and exciting and white knuckle. The combat is solid, but the level design shines like few other back-to-basics action games can do. It doesn’t matter if Project Blue feels like it comes from a different time or not, because all its best qualities are timeless.

Project Blue is Chick-Approved
Leaderboard Ranking: #36 of 309 Indie Gamer Chick-Approved Indie Games*
Top 94.4 Percentile of All 640 IGC-Reviewed Indie Games
Top 88.4 Percentile of All 306 IGC-Approved Indie Games
*Rankings based on time of publication. Check the Leaderboard for updated standings.

Project Blue was developed by toggleswitch, FrankenGraphics, and M-Tee
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, Xbox, Itch.io

$9.99 sang the blues in the making of this review.

A review copy was supplied for Nintendo Switch. Either a second Switch copy or an Xbox copy will be paid for out of pocket by Indie Gamer Chick. Or, rather her father, who wants to play it too. He’s cool like that.