Darwin’s Paradox is a killer Konami game that’s not Metal Gear or Silent Hill

After a decade of bad decisions, Konami has rebounded as a publisher over the past couple of years thanks to games like Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, the remake of Silent Hill 2, and Silent Hill f. This week, Konami showed that it could launch a killer new IP, too, with Darwin’s Paradox.

Darwin’s Paradox is the first game from French developer ZDT Studio and a puzzle-platformer about an octopus trying to escape a food production facility run by aliens on Earth. It’s an incredibly charming and well-animated game full of clever platforming challenges and memorable set pieces. It proves that Konami doesn’t need to rely solely on classic franchises as it stages a comeback.

If you enjoy slower-paced platformers like Unravel or Inside, then you’ll feel right at home playing Darwin’s Paradox. While it’s under six hours long, this game urges players to take their time, soak up the beautiful animation and art direction, and use Darwin’s abilities to creatively solve puzzles. Darwin can stick to any surface, shoot ink, and camouflage himself within the environment, which gives this game a unique flair compared to its platformer contemporaries.

Darwin’s Paradox finds lots of creative ways to incorporate those abilities into different challenges. In one segment, I slowly inched my way across a room, camouflaging myself every time a large group of enemies performing a martial arts routine turned around. Every couple of minutes, Darwin’s Paradox offered something new for me to discover and explore, which made experience engaging the whole way through.

Most of Darwin’s Paradox takes place within the same industrial complex, though it never really feels like it, as I would only retread through familiar areas after they’d been radically changed via flooding or some other sort of destruction. Movement feels akin to Ecco the Dolphin when underwater, further expanding the potential obstacles players are challenged with. Everything is colorful and wonderfully animated as well, so I can easily recall my favorite parts of the adventure.

The only issue I have with Darwin’s Paradox is that its platforming challenges can sometimes feel stop-and-go. Checkpoints are sometimes spread out fairly far from each other, so if I died, I’d have to spend more time than I’d like getting back to where I messed up to try again. While games like Celeste or Super Meat Boy 3D get players back in the action quickly, that’s not always the case with Darwin’s Paradox, which can add some tedium to an already short game.

Outside of those checkpoint-driven frustrations, playing through Darwin’s Paradox is a breeze. Its incredible animation and inventive puzzle-platforming mechanic ideas made the whole adventure feel worth it by the time I rolled credits. If you’re looking for a cheerful game to improve your mood or are tired of playing platformers that lack new ideas, then I’d recommend Darwin’s Paradox to you.

Although Konami is sitting on a treasure trove of beloved franchises, I also like that the Japanese publisher was willing to back a smaller, more experimental new IP like this. It needs to mix the old with the new to reestablish itself as a premier game publisher, and games like Darwin’s Paradox put Konami on the right track to do just that.