Game Review: Shu

After a storm hits the village and separates Shu from everyone, it’s up to the little bird to save the day. Shu must run, jump and glide through fifteen levels split between five distinct lands in this impressive game that gives a firm, proud nod to platformers of old.

To help Shu along the way, sometimes a friend joins up. These friends have abilities ranging from smashing things to making flowers open. Every time Shu crosses a checkpoint the progress on that level is saved. Sound easy, right? Well, it’s not that easy because Shu only has five extra lives per checkpoint. If you keep getting it wrong it’s back to the start of the level. Also that storm keeps showing up so sometimes Shu really needs to get a move on. If speed is your thing, once a level is complete you can repeat it for a timed run.

I took the unusual step (for NerdSpan) of making a very short gameplay video of a few parts of the opening levels. I’m not expecting to win a prize for my filmmaking ability and the video isn’t even running at 60fps (a framerate the game manages easily) but you get the idea. There are videos out there but stay here and read the review. I said stay here. Yes, you, I can see you sneaking off to YouTube. You can even recreate the video review experience by shouting “HEYYYY WHAT’S UP GUYS?” just before you press play if you insist.

You can tell a lot of effort has gone into this game. It’s been in development on and off for a few years and underwent a major graphics change from the original version. Visually, Shu has a simple but stunning cartoon style and the version I played on PC was very smooth. I believe the PS4 version is that same (I’ve not tried it so can’t swear to it) and the planned 2017 Vita version is also aiming for a similar smoothness.  The soundtrack fits the game perfectly. The collision detection was pretty much perfect. I never found myself cursing Shu’s death because I could have sworn I had an extra pixel to land.

The game is suggesting you go right, but it looks like if you jump up to the left there might be something interesting…

The controls for Shu are very responsive – at first I found it almost too responsive. This isn’t a criticism. Once I got used to the idea that Shu is going to do exactly what I wanted the instant I pressed something, I recalibrated my thumbs and soon grew to love the controls. If I were to criticise anything, and this is really reaching for something bad to say, sometimes, SOMETIMES, it wasn’t clear what Shu going to hit when I made a jump so occasionally, OCCASIONALLY, there was a leap of faith where I’d touch a spiky head on the way down that I’d not seen until just before I’d hit it. In many ways that’s part of the nature of platformers, and with those save waypoints you can have a few attempts as you get to learn the levels.

Shu is an enjoyable game that I think I’ll keep returning to for some time. I’m looking forward to whatever the developers, Coatsink, have next. I’ve already made the unusual step on NerdSpan of putting up a gameplay video so I’ll going to make another unusual step of giving it a score because I know people love scores for games. I know some of you don’t have time for reading, so let’s give Shu…93%

With the time you may have saved not reading the review in detail you’ll have a little more time to play Shu. It’s is available now on PS4 and Steam at £9.49 / $11.99 / €11.99. A Vita release is planned in Q1 2017 and will support Playstation’s cross buy feature.

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