Aeon Drive Review (PC)

A quick throw of my red dagger teleportation device (dagporting? teledagger?) gets me past a beam of death. A suite of wall jumps leads me to an enemy I chop down expertly before flinging the teleport item again to move faster to the nearest wall. I fail to expertly wall jump again, and I think I have no more time. I shoot my teledagger up, but I connect to nothing. As the countdown reaches zero my character dissolves. I am ready to run again, but hopefully with a better result.

Aeon Drive is developed by 2Awesome Studio and published by Critical Reflex. The game is offered on the PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X/S, older platforms from both Sony and Microsoft, the Nintendo Switch, but I played it on the PC using Steam.

The narrative is built around Jackelyne, a space ranger that moves through a futuristic version of Barcelona. She seeks items needed to repair her ship (inter-dimensional travel is involved) and that involves moving through the cyberpunk location, getting help from her digital assistant Vera. Conveniently, getting the drives Jackelyne needs also means saving Neo-Barcelona from destruction. The story is limited but a solid framing device for the action.

Aeon Drive is a two-dimensional action platformer with a focus on fast movement and level replay. When each level (there are 100 of them to move through) starts the player only has 30 seconds on the clock to complete it. The only way to extend that limit, just slightly, is to get at least four hourglasses from the level. If the protagonist gets hit you are back to the start of the level, with some extra knowledge and a new chance to reach the exit before time runs out.

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Jackelyne is pretty nimble, able to wall jump and slide through the levels, using a sword to take out enemies, more speed bumps than actual threats. But her main trick is a teleporter that sticks to surfaces and allows her to move significant distances quickly. It is also the only way to get past deadly beams and other obstacles.

Movement, slashes, throws, and recalls need to be combined in fluid ways to get across the levels before 30 seconds expire. There are multiple paths, some of them featuring a chance to get collectibles, and I failed every new area the first time I tackled it. The game basically asks the player to get familiar with the environment for a few runs. Then test their plan of approach for two or three. And only then move as fast as they can to reach the end and maybe grab some hot dogs or gems.

For the truly dedicated ones, the process continues with more exploration that can lead to even lower-level run times. There are levels where I just sneaked under the time limit that some people have completed in six seconds. Technically anyone can do the same thing, but I refuse to think of how many hours that would take.

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One mistake will not destroy a run most of the time. But it is easy to make a mistake and then another, trying to repair the first, then even a third, which means that it’s better to just commit suicide to get a restart. The game will delight players who love aiming for perfection, but it tended to frustrate me quite a bit. And neither the setting nor the story can compensate for the fact that I simply don’t have the muscle memory or reflex to excel.

Aeon Drive uses a pixel-driven look to make the world of Neo Barcelona come alive. This is clearly not a city that could exist, even in a cyberpunk future, but the levels are good, challenging but with plenty of visual cues for navigation. Jackelyne herself should have a little more detail to make her come alive. But the focus of the experience is not on the presentation but on the action. The soundtrack has some very good tunes, designed to give players the drive they need to solve the puzzles and complete levels as fast as possible.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion