Miss Claire Garden

Miss Claire Garden rides the coat tails of Nintendo platformer Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island to such an extent that you half expect to see eggs pop out from the heroine's backside.

Thankfully not, because aside from the alarming reproductive issues it would raise it's one of the few things that separates this fan-made love letter from the superior original.

Sluggish movement, rudimentary controls, and a general lack of polish round out the list of differences between Miss Claire Garden and its beloved inspiration.

Through 24 levels of side-scrolling platforming action, you plays as the cutesy Claire in a trek across an island filled with colourful enemies. Along the way you collect feathers to open up new levels, as well as white birds and flowers scattered across the levels.

Power-ups grant you an edge against enemies, such as the Piouf Hat that enables you to take damage without dying. New power-ups appear as you gain access to the island's interior, which is navigated via a top-down map in the style of Super Mario Bros 3.

Left and right directional arrows at the bottom of the screen control Claire's movement, whereas jumping is handled via a button in the opposite corner. Jumping to kill an enemy is usually insufficient, which means your only other option is to hurl up objects like watermelons and square radishes using the action button in the lower-right corner.

There's little margin for error in Miss Claire Garden - stumble into a pitfall and you're dead, touch an enemy and it's Game Over. It's similar to other platformers, but the slow movement, clunky controls, and lack of checkpoints within levels unintentionally stiffen the difficulty.

The virtual controls are hardly ideal - a contextual analogue stick would be preferable to the two static directional buttons - but the slow rate of movement is what really puts a damper on gameplay. Even with an update to increase the speed at which Claire moves, the game feels sluggish.

You never feel nimble, never have a sense of command over her actions. Whether it's gaining momentum for a big jump or timing a short hop over an enemy, there's no sense of tight, precise control. Everything feels slow.

Unsurprisingly, this leads to frequent accidental deaths. There are no checkpoints, so dying means restarting a level even if you died right at the end. While the levels are brief, it's annoying to be forced into replaying a whole level because you just missed a jump, which of course is a result of the sluggish rate of movement.

It's disappointing because even though the game is highly derivative and lacks the quality of its betters, it's hard not to dig the colourful presentation or developer Chris Neveu's decision to pay homage to one of the best platformers of its time.

Tighter controls, more responsive movement, and level checkpoints would transform this mediocre facsimile of Yoshi's Island into a playable platformer. As it stands, Miss Claire Garden is a cute, though flawed, clone without the polish necessary for it to be playable.