Quadroids is like Lemmings in space, and a lot of fun | Hands-on preview

After a handful of stages within the demo, I got to see a small glimpse of the hundreds of levels available in the full release of Quadroids. What started off relatively straightforward turned into a chaotic platformer where I was trying to control two little quadroids across four screens all at once. Despite spending less than an hour playing everything the demo had to offer, it was challenging enough to terrify me for what’s waiting whenever it comes out.

Each of the four screens which appear all at once have a button command for the quadroid when it appears. It’ll leave its ship and move constantly in one direction, and only you can make it jump by pressing the corresponding button. LB, RB, LT, and RT will make it jump across a drop, or up a wall and double jump until it reaches the top.

There’re various traps that can spell the end for your quadroid, such as pools of acid and spikes. If you hit a spike, you’ll cover it so that the next spawning quadroid can safely walk across it. The same goes for the acid as well, however, after a short period quadroids dissolve and leave you to fall in again to form a makeshift bridge.

The challenge comes from completing levels in the shortest amount of time, with the least amount of deaths, and the least amount of jumps. The levels are quick to start and can all be replayed if you want to try and get the best score possible. A bit like Lemmings in space, Quadroids is a tense platformer with an interesting dynamic, and the few levels available were pretty fun.

There’s not a huge amount more I can say about Quadroids at this point, other than the time spent with it was time well spent. Controlling quadroids across four separate screens is challenging the further you get, with some levels frying my brain as I tried to work out the best way to complete them. It falls into the similar category of Super Meat Boy in terms of replayability and the ‘one more go’ mentality, but it’s still far too early to form anything close to a final opinion.

The simple animations and the ease of jumping-in could make Quadroids a fast cult hit. It’ll be interesting to know what the levels will be like the further you progress, and with more obstacles and traps, and potentially different quadroids to uncover, this could be one of those games that connects with the fans much like Vampire Survivors has. It’s stress-inducing, but you feel pretty smug when you get from your spaceship to the end goal, and I’ll definitely be checking it out come release day.

Quadroids is currently listed as “coming soon” on Steam.