In some deep corner of my brain there's a wheel of fortune with four quadrants that starts spinning whenever I sit down to assess what to cover here next. On the four quadrants are written: RPG throwback, 3D platformer, explormer, and adventure game. I have a type, or four in this case, and suffice it to say this week I'm once again firmly inside my wheelhouse after booting up New Super Lucky's Tale, a 2019 3D platformer that is more or less a heavily-reworked rerelease of Regular Super Lucky's Tale from 2017. Now, 2017 would've been a hard year for any Indie 3D platformer to shine—it saw what was arguably the Indie sector's best attempt at the genre, A Hat in Time, as well as Nintendo's own nonpareil Super Mario Odyssey—so I half wonder if this new coat of paint wasn't also an excuse to give New Super Lucky's Tale a better chance at finding an audience without some enormous shadows to avoid.

The game is relatively simple, both in its structure and presentation: the player is the eponymous Lucky, an adventurous fox who comes from a family of "Guardians"; those that guard the multiverse from ne'er-do-wells and anything else that might threaten them. A while ago, a Guardian called Jinx turned rogue (maybe should've seen that coming) and scattered the Guardian forces across dimensions, leaving the young fox stranded in an unknown world prior to receiving his official Guardian training. Nonetheless, he is determined to find his way back home and help whomever needs helping along the way. The game offers five worlds (with a sixth as a post-game challenge) and with three-to-five levels in each, presenting a mix of exploration-heavy 3D levels, linear 2D levels, and automatic-runner 2D levels. The first group hides their many collectibles around corners and other level geometry, the second behind obfuscating foreground objects, and the third are challenging enough that it can stick them all in your path and it would still be tough to grab them all in one run.

We're very much following the Super Mario 3D World blueprint for the 3D levels as they tend to branch off into their own little courses or offer some other set of challenges to complete, though the 2D ones remind me more of the Donkey Kong Country Returns reboots than anything else. Lucky has a double-jump move from the outset—always a big help in 3D platformers, since it's handy to have that second hop to correct for the first—and can also burrow underground, which allows him to dig up objects, get under low barriers, and avoid hazards and enemies on the surface. Beyond that, there's nothing too complex about the platforming nor much of a learning curve to pick up. It's very much throwing you into the thick of things and letting you progress through the game's levels at your pace: there's a few challenging areas to the game, like some of the sliding statue puzzles (boy I hope you like those because there's a lot), but is otherwise a breeze. Given the easygoing and kid-friendly energy, I suspect the low difficulty factor was intended.

New Super Lucky's Tale is instantly appealing between its simple goals, fetching polygonal art style, and the effortless flow of its platforming controls. The way you can burrow for a stretch, pop out the ground and instantly go into a double-jump before using an angled ground-pound to duck back under the soil is a combo frequently employed by the auto-runner levels in particular, but it feels good to pull off and the game is generous about telegraphing its hazards. Each level also gives you four goals to pursue to unlock its main collectible set, a series of pages for a mystical book that allows Lucky to travel dimensions, and the boss target for these collectibles is very low for most worlds so players shouldn't feel like they need to do everything on every stage. For each, there's a page for simply finishing the level, one for finding a set of letters that spell out Lucky's name, one for a hidden page that might require locating a bonus challenge area, and the fourth and last for finding 300 coins across the stage. Most stages have much more than that, usually tied up in the 20-coin or 50-coin diamonds that might take a little more effort to reach, so even if you were the type to snatch every floating object going don't feel like you need to go overboard here. Collecting lots of coins also means being able to buy cosmetic costumes for Lucky though, so it's worth it to grab as many as you can even after passing that 300 requirement. I mean, that is if you wanted to dress up a fox like Indiana Jones or the Ultimate Warrior. And who wouldn't? (By the way, there's a surprising amount of '80s nostalgia given it's the entirely wrong decade for 3D platformers. I guess '80s stuff is more fun?)

The game can still be a bit glitchy even after its big renovation (which makes me wonder how rough it was before). For whatever reason, getting hit can sometimes cause the game to get extremely frame-y for a few seconds and this time it can't be blamed on a potato PC acting up because I'm packing a Ryzen 5600G and a RTX 30-series these days—not top of the line, but enough to handle a cartoon fox falling on some spikes I should think. Beyond that there's a few other weird visual bugs but nothing too major: there was one time where a key was supposed to float into a door and unlock it, but it floated a few inches too high and just kind of got stuck there for a while before the cutscene eventually activated. Building a fully 3D game with a small studio leads to no end of issues I'd wager, so comparatively speaking New Super Lucky's Tale is probably one of the more stable ones available, but be ready for a few hiccups here and there regardless.

New Super Lucky's Tale is ultimately a game about getting the genre right rather than trying to find its own novel spin or a big evolution or offering an expert-level experience for genre diehards like many of its peers. It controls well, looks great, has a genteel personality and equally gentle difficulty curve suited for a younger audience (or oldies who haven't played a game like this for decades and could use some softer onboarding), and there's plenty to see and find and jump upon across its small but varied set of worlds and stages. I managed to squeeze just over seven hours of playtime from it after getting everything, which I feel is probably the right size for a game like this seeing as it began recycling its ideas for the post-game challenges. If you wanted a Donkey Kong Country Returns or Super Mario 3D World type without dealing with the exorbitant Nintendo Tax for first-party games, New Super Lucky's Tale might serve as a smaller-scale but otherwise adequate replacement. (And heck, keeping up with Nintendo is no small feat for any Indie dev.)

Rating: 4 out of 5.