The levels take the spotlight in Lode Runner 2. Who would ever want to leave Jungle World? For the same reasons the game is sometimes confusing, its visual density is intoxicating to play in.
The plastic-y psychedelia of Wacky World. Mona World’s Escher-inspired Renaissance dreamscapes. The eyeball plants drooping amid Jungle World’s root-covered cliffs. The whirring, wooden machinery in Gear World, floating in storm clouds. Lode Runner 2‘s stage themes have plenty of excuses for an indulgent level of detail. The heavy layering and busy level design look incredible. The controls are also stuck in that middle ground, particularly the four separate buttons for digging in different directions and their all-around mushiness.īut again, the new depth adds a lot. Thankfully, you can only fall off of the corners of platforms, assuming you can see them – one of the game’s awkward compromises to represent 2D platform gameplay. I loved navigating these stages and climbing around the jungle gym structures, but because of their busy visual language, I sometimes couldn’t tell what was below or above me or where platforms ended. All piled together, it can be difficult to read what layer something is on. Everything is overflowing with visual information every surface has texture to it. In 2D, pipes, ladders, and bricks all sit in a single plane and look pretty simple. Aside from the minor inclusion of items like an invisibility powerup, Lode Runner 2 sticks to the basics and stretches them out into 3D. You get around the mazes by climbing ladders, hanging from pipes, and using your laser weapon to dig holes and trap the enemies chasing you (in this game, they’re the cloaked order of Monks). It drops you into maze-like stages to collect pieces of gold while escaping from wandering enemies.
Lode Runner 2 has the same bones as the earlier Lode Runner games. In complex stages, height and depth are hard to pick out
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