Game review
Inversion
4.3 / 10
- Developer
- Ben Budnevich, Menglin "Mark" Xu
- Publisher
- remarkablegames
- Released
- 1 January 2022
- Platforms
- web
- Genre
- platformer,puzzle
- Monetisation
- free
- Players
- false
The short version
A genuinely clever split-screen inversion puzzle-platformer, fixed here from a build whose bundled assets 404'd entirely, but confirmed to have absolutely no touch input anywhere - not a d-pad, not a swipe, not a single tap-responsive zone - leaving it fully unplayable on a phone.
Biggest strengths
- A genuinely original concept once running - two characters, one in a white world and one in a black world, controlled together to solve platforming puzzles neither could solve alone
- Clean, legible pixel-art presentation with a striking inverted colour-scheme gimmick that reads clearly even in screenshots
- Once its build issues were fixed for this review (see below), gameplay and physics via keyboard felt responsive and correct
Biggest weaknesses
- Confirmed directly, not just from the on-screen "Arrow/WASD to move & jump" instruction: real touch taps were dispatched at multiple screen zones (left edge, right edge, centre) on a simulated phone and produced zero player movement in any case, while an identical keyboard press moved the character immediately - there is no touch equivalent for movement, jumping, or any other action anywhere in this build
- The build as published on the project's gh-pages branch was completely broken before this review's fixes: every sprite and sound asset requested from a root-absolute /inversion/assets/... path that doesn't exist once hosted under a subpath, and the page also loaded a live Google Analytics tag - both were corrected here (asset paths repointed to resolve correctly, analytics replaced with a harmless no-op stub) just to get the game rendering at all
- The canvas renders at a fixed aspect ratio, letterboxing into a fairly small strip on a tall phone screen even with the build fixes in place
Who it's for: Desktop keyboard players only. A touchscreen visitor cannot move either character at all right now.
Our recommendation: skip
4.3 / 10
Opening
Inversion splits the screen into a white world and a black world, each with its own character, and asks the player to move both at once to solve platforming puzzles that require using each world's obstacles against the other. It's a smart, well-executed twist on the co-op-with-yourself platformer format, built with Phaser.
The build had to be fixed just to load
Before touch controls could even be evaluated, the game didn't load its own art or sound. The gh-pages build ships with every sprite and audio file requested from a root-absolute path (/inversion/assets/...), baked in from a Vite config built for hosting at the site root — once installed under /play/inversion/, every single asset 404'd, leaving a blank stage with only text visible. Fixing that (repointing the bundle's asset URLs to resolve relative to their own location, including a second, distinct bug where four audio files doubled their own path) was necessary just to get a playable game on screen for this review. A live Google Analytics tag loading on every visit was also found and replaced with a harmless no-op stub before anything else was tested.
No touch input exists
With the game actually rendering, the core question for this shelf was tested directly. Real touch taps were dispatched via Chrome DevTools Protocol at the left edge of the screen, the right edge, and dead centre near the player character — each produced no change in the player's position whatsoever. An identical test using a keyboard arrow-key press, run immediately afterward for comparison, moved the character right away. The on-screen instruction text ("Arrow/WASD to move & jump") turns out to be accurate and complete: there is no on-screen d-pad, no swipe gesture, no tap-to-move, nothing. A touchscreen visitor cannot make either character take a single step.
Final Verdict
Once patched to actually load, this is a smart, nicely presented puzzle-platformer that plays well on a keyboard. But it has zero touch input of any kind, confirmed by direct testing rather than assumption, which makes it entirely unplayable on the exact devices this shelf exists to serve. Not recommended until touch controls are added; worth another look if they are.
Pros and cons
Pros
- A genuinely original concept once running - two characters, one in a white world and one in a black world, controlled together to solve platforming puzzles neither could solve alone
- Clean, legible pixel-art presentation with a striking inverted colour-scheme gimmick that reads clearly even in screenshots
- Once its build issues were fixed for this review (see below), gameplay and physics via keyboard felt responsive and correct
Cons
- Confirmed directly, not just from the on-screen "Arrow/WASD to move & jump" instruction: real touch taps were dispatched at multiple screen zones (left edge, right edge, centre) on a simulated phone and produced zero player movement in any case, while an identical keyboard press moved the character immediately - there is no touch equivalent for movement, jumping, or any other action anywhere in this build
- The build as published on the project's gh-pages branch was completely broken before this review's fixes: every sprite and sound asset requested from a root-absolute /inversion/assets/... path that doesn't exist once hosted under a subpath, and the page also loaded a live Google Analytics tag - both were corrected here (asset paths repointed to resolve correctly, analytics replaced with a harmless no-op stub) just to get the game rendering at all
- The canvas renders at a fixed aspect ratio, letterboxing into a fairly small strip on a tall phone screen even with the build fixes in place