Volt: Batter on the loose was a picked up on Steam via a Steam Coupon during the buy-with-coupons phase I was in last year. Or possibly 2015. In any case, it has been sitting installed and unplayed for a long time.

Volt is a physics platformer where your character is a little battery. And you have no legs. So no pretending to be this guy.

Short answer is that it is quite good, but deserves the current 'mixed' rating it has on Steam.

After a short animated intro where we see your character, a battery with googly eyes and tiny arms, fall off some machinery you are dropped into a main menu to start the game.

There are two difficulty modes, Normal and Hard, and unless you're experienced with this genre I'd recommend starting on Normal. There's enough challenge there unless you've been playing rope physics games on Kongregate all day because you're bored at work and IT has not blocked off the site yet.

Aside from this there is a character customisation selection that you'll unlock through play, a level select, and a clear-progress option.

Being a unity game, visual and sound settings are set in a windows menu before you start.

I will say it is not worth going into the level select and doing the tutorial level if it does not activate immediately. You are taught how to play as you progress, through the design of the levels themselves.

The basic idea is to get Volt from his starting position to an exit portal that is represented by a glowing black cube. Since Volt can't walk you'll need to swing him to places on the map using his own battery charge.

To swing Volt creates energy beams that latch onto most surfaces allowing him to hang. You have to beams to control bound to the mouse left and right buttons. Each level has a set number of charges you can use, though powerups to increase them are fairly common.

Volt can also make little jumps on solid flat platforms, but not on enemies, level hazards, and a number of energy elevator beams.

Using gravity and momentum your aim is to make your way throughout each level towards the end portal.

What I really like here is how each level introduces various concepts. There's really no text or voice indication on what you need to do, it is all told through the design of each level. It works very well and it is rather nice to see this being done without a bunch of pretentious BS as a guide.

There might be an occasional arrow to show level direction but other than that the flow of the levels are fairly straightforward. Indicators when they do show often are part of the puzzle themselves.

For example: Early on you are in a room hanging from the roof and there's a giant orange field to the right. A charge powerup exists below your position and saw-blades are on the roof of the orange area. If you swing into the orange area, you'll retain some momentum until being pushed back to the left.

The solution? Grab hold of the side sphere where an indicator arrow sits. Volt will swing around it due to the shape and position of his beam. You'll grab the powerup and gain speed via a gravity slingshot effect. Timing it right, you can release your beam and zip through the orange field. Time it wrong and he'll swing into the sphere and you'll want to restart. There's a few things you need to time as you get to the end of this level, but at this point the game is slow enough to handle.

Which means...

Unfortunately the games becomes one of those games when you get to the end of the first zone.

It has what amounts to a damn boss battle. A boss battle in a physics platformer.

Sure, most of what you face is level hazards, but you are in a single framed room with saw-blades, rockets, and spider robots.

All that slow pacing you could play by up to this point? Throw it all out. You need to be fast now. You need to get your timing near perfect. You need to learn that the spider bots that you've seen only one of once before this and likely avoided can be destroyed by your beams.

Damnit game. You were doing so well too.

Oh, I got past that level. I learnt a lot of techniques getting past it too. Techniques that I did not find a use for on the next zone. I've mentioned before that I hate games that do this, so it was really disappointing to see it here. Difficulty spikes caused by changing how the player needs to play are a very bad thing. Stop it. Stop.

Despite the difficulty bullshit it pulled, I do like this one. It has a lovely visual minimalism to it. Level design teaches the player what to do to progress, and the soundtrack has a great feel to it.

I know most of you don't mind these type of boss battles in puzzle games. And to be honest, it is just a personal bugbear. The curve here is steep, but not unforgiving and the levels are short enough to not be a huge issue when you do need to reset.

There's a great game here and a fair amount of entertainment for the $2USD it costs.

Game Acquisition: Steam Coupon.
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 8 April 2017
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP
Processor: 1.7 Ghz
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: Intel GMA 900
DirectX: Version 9.0
Storage: 150 MB available space