It’s very difficult to describe PixelJunk Eden to someone who has never played it. Once you’ve seen the game and had a chance to play it, however, it’s fairly simple to understand. You are in control of a Grimp, a character that can grimp or jump. You can create a piece of silk on any plant you land on in the garden and swing to collect pollen to grow more plants. The game is a platformer at heart, jumping from plant to plant trying to progress higher and further into the level, but it does it in such an elegant, involving and different way that it draws in whoever is around and gets people asking “Just what is this?”

Since we know the heart of the game is the platforming element, the soul is the style. The game is an art collaboration from Q Games and the art group Baiyon, and it sounds and looks beautiful the entire time you play it. The style is minimalistic, the plants and rocks and pollen spores (enemies) making the foreground with silhouette detail, and psychedelic backgrounds that change as the level progress, all in high definition. Your Grimp travels the level as each action plays in tune with the electronic background music, almost giving the game a flOw or Electroplankton aesthetic, but with the focus of actual goals and metrics that rank you against players across the world.

The game is also the first PS3 game that has at launch trophy support, and it makes you work for them. From collecting all seeds in a single garden, or collecting all Spectra (which are 5 items scattered in each level and the item your ultimately supposed to collect to progress in the game) across all the levels, getting all the trophies in this game will be quite a challenge for most. The game also features a video recording system that allows you to capture up to 10 minutes of your gameplay and upload it to your hard drive, or directly to YouTube, so you can show off your speed runs through each garden to the world. There is a multiplayer element, as well, but it is limited to offline multiplayer, which is a bit of a disappointment, but allows you to at least experience the game with a few others. There is a few issues with the multiplayer, in that when one of your fellow Grimps fall, it doesn’t really know who to focus on and often causes the focus of the screen to the falling user which makes it more difficult. However, sometimes it just stays in place and the player who fell reappears.

Eden plays phenomenally well, despite the little multiplayer confusions. Each movement you make feels fluid, and when you’re able to string together a series of moves to get you higher scores and bring you higher and higher into the level it feels natural and fun. When you fail, you don’t feel like it’s the game cheating you. The levels are designed very intuitively and when you miss or run out of time, you know how you’ve done it and how to fix it. The graphics are beautiful; one of the best looking games on the PS3 and the music keeps you in each environment and makes the levels come to life.

Each garden will offer you something different from the last, and while the difficulty curve goes from moderate to very difficult around Garden 07, you will find the game teaches you the right things at the right times to keep you moving. The only issue in the graphics is a very pop-in animations for some of the faster moving platforms, but they are few and far between. And while you can get to the final garden without completing each garden preceding it, the online ranking system and trophies will keep you coming back to each garden for its own challenge, style and just the experience you get from each one.

There is a demo available right now on the PSN to try this game out and if it catches you at all, it’s great to know that the title is available on the PSN for only $9.99 (USD/CDN) right now and is absolutely worth every cent. It is one of the strongest titles on the PS3, let alone the PSN, especially at such a low price point. PixelJunk Eden a lot of fun and while it can really be beaten under 10-15 hours, you’ll get a lot out of those hours and may even want to come back to bring your rank up further, or best some of your own scores. For anyone that is a fan of the return-to-retro style games that are flooding the console networks this summer, this is definitely one title you have to check out that offers similar style with a fresh take on platformers.

Reviewed retail game. 40/50 Spectra found. Global rank in the top 100.