A game by Brilliant Blue-G for PC and Xbox 360, originally released in 2011, with the enhanced Chester One version released in 2017.
Chester is a game that is at once both simple and complex in design. On the one hand, it is a pure projectile-based platformer. It has no grand sweeping narrative, no light and dark mechanic, no time travel, and no gravity flipping. It is not a window into the human condition, nor is it a commentary on the difficulty of old-school classics, and its tone is far from dark and moody. It is simply a platformer.
On the other hand, the game offers quite a bit of variety within the confines of basic platformerdom, as well as multiple design styles – ranging from old-school to bubblegummy to slightly twisted – while not forcing the game into any of these styles (quite the opposite, actually), and simultaneously retaining a cohesive overall tone.As a platformer, Chester retains most of the genre conventions and mechanics. The player is able to run, jump, double jump, wall slide, wall jump, and swim. In his default form, Chester can fire off a series of blue projectiles that move in a straight line, and up to 3 of the projectiles can be on the screen at once. The character animations are exaggerated and silly, and firing your weapon is reminiscent of the overblown tone found in Alien Hominid.
And if that’s all there was, Chester would stand as little more than a basic platformer. However, once you begin to explore the unlockables, a number of new possibilities open up. By collecting the stamps spread throughout each level, or by exploring tucked away corners for special pickups, players can unlock new characters. Each of these characters has a different design, and each offers a slight variation on the mechanics of the default character. This is the starting point for many of the game’s nuances.
