Miles & Kilo

I do events on Twitter where I hand out thousands of free indie games. I don’t advertise them here at Indie Gamer Chick because they’re not about me. I’ll hand out any non-toxic-subject matter title as long as the developer is open to feedback, since the primary goal is to get under-the-radar games feedback. Sometimes I’ve played them. Sometimes I haven’t. I don’t discriminate between games I’ve liked and disliked. Again, it’s not about me. It’s about the indie gaming community. Still, it’s always awkward when I give a game out only to play it later and not like it at all. Maybe even hate it. Cue ominous thunder-clasp.

So during #IndieXmas this last year, I was giving out copies of an endless runner called Kid Tripp. It went over well, but some people weren’t fans of the genre and said they would have liked it more if it had just been a normal platformer. Developer Michael Burns said “well actually, I just released a sequel called Miles & Kilo on Steam that isn’t an endless runner.” I ended up giving copies of it out as well and it was one of the big sleeper hits of the event. I bought Kid Tripp for myself and did play a little bit of it and “not for me” seemed to fit the bill. I don’t like games designed around “gotcha” deaths and huge body counts. I figured Miles & Kilo would be more up my alley. Wrong.

Miles & Kilo is supposed to be the non-endless-runner counterpart of Kid Tripp. But the problem is, it’s designed exactly like an endless runner. In fact, you can turn on an endless runner mode right from the get-go, without having to unlock it. Every aspect of the level design was clearly built with endless running in mind, making me think it started life as a mechanically direct sequel to Kid Tripp and endless running was aborted in response to people who preferred the ability to stop moving. But honestly, the amount of times I actually stopped myself from moving were so few that I don’t even know what the point of dropping the endless running was. Since Miles & Kilo looks like Kid Tripp and is designed like Kid Tripp, why not just call it Kid Tripp 2? I call shenanigans. Miles & Kilo is a Kid Tripp double-dip.

Also, if you took a shot every time I said “endless running” or some variation of it that last paragraph, you would not be reading this because you would be on the floor dead.

Anyway, like Kid Tripp, Miles & Kilo is built around dying. A lot. This is trial-and-error gameplay with so much emphasis on the “error” part that it’s practically being projected into the sky like the fucking Bat-Signal. Early on, I completed a whopping two stages on my first attempt and figured that an ample supply of “Glorious Victory” (my pet term for difficult games where you have a slim but real chance of beating stages on your first attempt, triggering sensations akin to gaming nirvana. Super Meat Boy is the all time king of Glorious Victory) would be in store. But then, Miles & Kilo got cheap and “gotcha deaths” started piling up. Deaths that I don’t feel anyone could reasonably be expected to avoid on their first attempt at a stage. Thus, the difficulty doesn’t feel genuine. As I proved myself with Mario Maker, any idiot can design a frustrating platforming stage. Sure, when it was me who was that idiot, it was cathartic. But watching people actually attempt to beat my stages (one of which was called Cathy’s Horrible Hypocrisy. Hey, at least I admit it. Try it yourself: 0BD1-0000-0031-CD40) wasn’t as entertaining as I figured. And actually, most of those who streamed it sounded as bored playing it as I did watching it.

Sure, children of the 80s will tell you that games were better back in the days when they were hard. You know, because apparently games stopped being hard around 2001 because some of them started with a tutorial, God forbid. But ask those same gamers how much fun they had playing, say, Battletoads.

“YES! Battletoads! Loved it!”

“Tell me, did you like the speederbike stage?”

“Oh yeah! I totally died a ton playing it.”

“But did have fun playing it?”

“Of course! Games were more fun back then!”

“Did you ever beat Battletoads?”

“No, I never could get past the speederbike stage.”

“Right. So you really liked it, but not enough to actually finish it.”

“Well, I just didn’t get around to it.”

“Uh huh. That’s so weird because when I’m really having fun with a game, I can’t put it down regardless of difficulty. Spelunky for example. I can’t remember too many games I liked a lot but never got around to finishing.”

“Well I liked Battletoads!”

“Obviously not that much. Otherwise you’d be telling me how proud you were when you beat the speederbike stage.”

“Well lots of people didn’t finish it. Games were harder back then.”

“You keep saying things were a certain way back then. Did you play Cuphead? It’s pretty hard.”

“Yeah, that’s what I love about it! It’s old school! It doesn’t hold your hand. You wouldn’t know, you’re not a real gamer.”

“So did you beat Cuphead?”

“Well I haven’t..”

“Gotten around to it. Yeah. I mean, I didn’t even like Cuphead but I still managed to beat every boss on Easy mode, which, according to the achievements percentage, 90% of Cuphead owners couldn’t be bothered to do. It kind of sounds like I’m more of a real gamer than you are and the rest of you old-school quitters were. Because I actually finish the games I like, and even some I don’t.”

“What are you saying?”

“That you’re surrendering to herd mentality saying you have to like a game if it’s hard because if you don’t, that makes you a pussy. You clearly don’t enjoy them. If you did, you’d actually finish them. You’ve had twenty years to finish Battletoads. If you haven’t by now, you’re probably never going to.”

“Well, um, I mean, games WERE harder back then.”

“They still make hard games. I’m reviewing one right now. I’m quoting you verbatim for the review as we speak, and trust me, it’s not coming off flattering. You sound like an idiot. It’s okay. Every 80s gamer does when they try to convince themselves how much fun it was to quit and not finish difficult games. I’m sure all the people who tell me how much they loved Ghosts ‘n Goblins were having a real fun time not finishing it because it was too hard. LOTS of fun. And frankly, people bring up Battletoads in the same phony tone they do when reminiscing about back when they had to blow into cartridges just to be able to get the fucking game to boot-up as if that were a good thing.”

“OH MY GOD! I REMEMBER BLOWING INTO CARTRIDGES! WOW, I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE! HERE, TAKE MY MONEY!”

“I’m not selling anything.”

“Just take it!”

“Fine.”

And that’s the problem with neo-retro games that rely on lots of dying: they count on gamers convincing themselves they’re having fun, in lieu of actually having fun. I’m not drunk on nostalgia for NES-era platformers, and thus I have to accept that I didn’t have any fun at all with Miles & Kilo. I give developer Michael Burns credit: it looks great. And there’s enough variety in the level design that it never feels like a slog. But gameplay, more or less, is like this: run right, die. Run right, jump over thing that killed you, die. Run right, jump over think that killed you, shoot second thing that killed you, die. Run right, jump over the first thing that killed you, forget about the second thing that killed you because you’re planning for the third thing that killed you, die. Repeat this for a few hours.

Well that’s barely video game. That’s more like Simon. You know, that memory game with the red, blue, green, and yellow buttons where you memorize which buttons light up, with a new button added to the end of the sequence every level? If you don’t have a reasonable chance to get past certain areas of a stage on your first attempt, your punisher is just a fancy version of Simon no matter how much effort you put into dressing it up. With all due respect to Ralph Baer (yes, THAT Ralph Baer. The guy who invented video games. He created Simon as well), I think Simon is boring. And video games where the action is just a tarted-up version of Simon are usually just as boring. That’s why I appreciated the Impossible Game. It was cheap, it advertised its difficulty, and (at least when it first came out) it was one stage. Finish it and you get the sense of accomplishment and you’re done. Miles & Kilo has more stages but after a while the endless trial and error becomes less a game and more a chore that you don’t even get an allowance for.

Whether I give a game away during an event or not, I dread saying I hate any game. It’s not what I’m here for. So I take no pleasure in saying I hated Miles & Kilo. No, I didn’t finish it. After nearly two hours of gameplay, I was just getting angrier and angrier, until I finally realized that no entertainment breakthrough was on the horizon. Pressing on further would do neither Miles & Kilo nor my blood pressure any favors. And I’m still sort of hung up on why this wasn’t an endless runner. Look, Michael, I didn’t like your game, but come on man. You clearly wanted to make another endless runner. Just to do what you want to do and to hell with everyone else. If people demand you change your endless runner into a normal platformer, tell them you don’t negotiate with terrorists. Trust me, I’ve played your games. You’re the one bringing the terror to them.

Miles & Kilo was developed by Michael Burns
Point of Sale: Switch, Steam

$7.99’s new dog, Fireball, is about as well-behaved as the Kilo the dog, and that’s not a good thing in the making of this review.