A 3D Platformer That Feels Ripped From 1996
I grew up with Super Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie. As a ten year-old, I assumed that they were pioneering. They were going to be the future: 3D spaces to hop around in and complete in any order. Bless that little ten year-old, as it hasn’t worked out that way.
Crosak comes from an alternate reality where things did work out differently. In that reality, there were a dozen Banjo Kazooie games, several Mario 64 sequels, and more Jak & Daxters than you could wave an electric bug-swatter at. It follows their rulebook: create a tactile 3D space that’s just big enough to get lost in, then hide several collectibles behind feats, bosses, obstacle courses and collectathons.
Something else survived from the ‘90s in that alternate dimension, and that’s claymation. Maybe Clayfighter was a huge hit over there. It means that Crosak is made out of two anachronisms: stop-motion clay animation, and 3D platforming worlds. It’s determined to make the least 2026 game possible.
My inner ten year-old has a lot riding on Crosak being a success, so I am very happy to say that, yep, it’s a big success. It manages to be an homage to 3D platformers and stop-motion AND a funtastic game in its own right. Cracking work, Gromit.
Making A Claymation Game Is Aard, Man
I want to start with the stop-motion stuff, because sorcery has been used to make it work. Levels like Dino Cave are so tactile that I want to ball them up and then roll them into a sausage. They’ve got the fingerprints and dented edges of real, human-made play-doh constructions.
But when I think of older claymation games like Clayfighter or Armikrog, they’re anything but pretty. The framerate is choppy, the assets blurry, and everything looks a bit duff. Crosak is the first game of this type that I could call modern. I can actually see everything, and there’s no stop-motion-like stuttering. And since the world feels like a physical place, there’s no confusion about what you can interact with.
This tactility and sense of place works incredibly well with the Mario Galaxy worlds. Crosak’s playgrounds are tiny planets – or series of planets – that contain all sorts of secrets and wonders. I just want to 3D print them and stick them on a desktop. They remind me of why I loved Mario 64 and Mario Galaxy in the first place. There’s no objective marker on the HUD: you’re left to explore in any direction that you fancy. Often that’s wherever there are nuts and bolts (think Mario’s coins) as they indicate where you haven’t been.
Your destination could be any number of things. A cave that leads to some 2D platforming. A bit of Super Monkey Ball. A Donkey Kong Bananza fall down a long, cavernous hole. A series of combat waves. Crosak is the spirit of variety, pulling from Nintendo’s back catalogue to create a sense of anything-goes. I loved that, on entering one of Crosak’s levels, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I knew that I wanted to hunt for captured cavemen (the game’s Banjo jiggies), but I didn’t know where I would find one and what I’d do to save one.
Namechecking All Of The Vintage Platformers
While Crosak doesn’t quite have the slickness and dynamism of Mario Galaxy, it shares some of its gravity-twisting. The worlds are commonly globes and spheres where you’re running around on the surface before being propelled to a nearby planet. Ratchet and Clank-style rails bring you from one location to another, and it’s great fun watching the camera try to keep up. Levels can be rollercoasters where, again, you don’t know quite where you’ll end up.
And those levels are as wildly diverse as you’d hope. Magma Heart HAS to be an homage to Super Mario 64’s Lethal Lava Land, with its revolving rings and Floor-is-Lava approach to platforming. Mount Fluffy Blanket is a long chain of wintry sausages. Big Rock is basically one planet within another planet, and zooming between the two is a joy.
It’s a good thing that Crosak is so utterly charming, with ambitions for 3D platforming that I’m 100% on board with. Because it’s not perfect, and you’ll need deep stocks of love for it if you want to ignore its problem.
There Was Always Going To Be A ‘But’
In a win for alliteration, Crosak’s problems all begin with C. Camera, controls and combat.
3D platforming has always struggled with a decent camera, and Crosak is no different. Considering you are tinkering with gravity, moving Super Mario Galaxy-like from one side of a doughnut planet to another, it’s perhaps no surprise that the camera becomes a problem. It often springs up Crosak’s butt, giving you no field-of-view at all. There’s also some wonky things going on with depth-of-field. Crosak will make everything blurry to hide some camera quirks, and that can make gameplay even harder to see.
After completing Crosak, I still don’t feel like I am fully in control of it. The jump is a diddy thing, with a spinning double-jump that is barely better, and often sends you in unwanted directions. Bottom-bouncing enemies is so inconsistent that we stopped trying. All that’s left is a spinning melee attack that breaks the tactility that Crosak tried so hard to create. It never feels like you are hitting the enemies: more spinning around them.
Exploring the wonderful worlds wasn’t quite as satisfying as it should have been. I was in a slight state of tug-of-war with the main character, trying to pull them in the direction I wanted them to go. Controls and camera would have been that final missing piece; Crosak could have been a modern Banjo Kazooie. But they’re not quite right.
Worth The Attention
Despite camera and control woes, Crosak is still worthy of your attention. There aren’t many spiritual successors to ‘90s 3D platformers, and Crosak knows what made them great. It makes levels that I want to yank from the screen, turn around in my hands and study, searching for the jiggy (sorry, caveman) that will unlock the next level.
That Crosak does all of the above while managing to be made out of play-doh – well, that’s a minor miracle.
Important Links
Explore Multi-Gravity Worlds In Crosak, Now On Xbox And Switch – https://www.thexboxhub.com/explore-multi-gravity-worlds-in-crosak-now-on-xbox-and-switch/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/crosak/9NKH9R9K9LVJ/0010
