DECAY has intrigued me for a long time, but for some reason, I never got around to playing it. I finally played it today, and I understand all the hype that was around it when it dropped. DECAY is a beautiful platformer with strong world building. You enter a world as a little creature that gets informed that it’s decaying and has a limited time left. You progress through a world utilizing your legs to make jumps, until you lose your legs from the decaying the further in you go. This was a really smart way to change up the platforming, and it isn’t close to the only way the level changes up. As you progress, you go higher and higher up in a world in the sky, each one having a different vibe that brings a new feeling to the world around you. I was a big fan of how a storm worsened as you progressed through the last segment, really emphasizing the sense of urgency to get to the ending before you decay away. When you reach the end, there’s a bitter but sweet ending that shows that life goes on. I’m being a bit vague to avoid spoiling anything, but it’s a super nice and emotion filled way to wrap up the short adventure that you travelled on.

As a pure platformer, it isn’t the most outstanding thing of all time. DECAY was relatively early into 2.2, so the gimmicks playability wise were fairly simple. Honestly though, I think this is fine. There’s still some unique ideas I loved, like the Golem creatures that walk back and forth, requiring you to jump on their heads. The characters have fantastic character design overall, with each one being super varied and well animated. Speaking of animation, the level as a whole felt very fluid and pretty. From the animation of the character you play as, to small details like frogs that croak and jump around, Vegtam put a ton of love and care into DECAY, and it really shows. Only a few things stood out to me as a bit of a negative, such as the camera when you switched from left and right, along with the lag due to all the details in the level. However, these really couldn’t take me away from how breathtaking this level was. Overall, I think that the Legendary Rating for this was well deserved. DECAY isn’t completely groundbreaking gameplay wise as a platformer, but it’s one that makes for a fun and very memorable experience with fantastic decoration.